Mr Mark Francois
MP for Rayleigh and Wickford · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Secondly, what actions is he as Defence Secretary, no doubt in consultation with the Chief of the General Staff, taking to push back against these pernicious in-year funding cuts imposed by the Treasury?”
“Taking him at his word, I must press him on some extremely worrying reports—first published in The Times on 3 September, and amplified in the Defence Eye journal on Tuesday—that British Army training is being seriously curtailed in order to provide in-year efficiency savings— “cuts”, in pub English— at the Treasury’s behest.”
“I am sure that I speak for the whole House in paying tribute to the Ukrainians for their fierce and determined resistance. They are fighting for the values of freedom and democracy, which this House has represented for centuries, so when we say, “Slava Ukraini!”, we mean it.”
“On behalf of the shadow Defence team, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the new Defence Secretary—Labour’s third in three months—to his place and to thank him for advance sight of this important statement.”
“Tragically, a number of innocent civilians were murdered in Kyiv last night. On supporting Ukraine and brave President Zelensky, there has been absolute solidarity between ourselves and the Labour party.”
“On housing numbers, there is no Reform MP present this afternoon, but Reform-led Rochford district council has just published its regulation 19 local plan.”
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“My condolences to the Secretary of State. Babcock is one of the largest defence employers in the country, but as reported in the Sunday press, its record on refits of surface ships is woeful. It took over four years to refit the Type 23 frigate HMS Iron Duke. Its record on submarines is even worse, taking seven years to refit a Trident boat. According to the journal Navy Lookout , which said this online, so presumably the Russians and the Chinese could have read it, a few weeks ago not a single one of our attack submarines was at sea; they were all tied up alongside. This is deeply embarrassing to the Department and to the Royal Navy, whose admirals are tearing their hair out. It is Babcock’s fault.”
“When the list is published later this week, can the Secretary of State please ensure that the information in it is absolutely accurate and up to date, because that is the best way to reassure parents, staff and pupils, not least those parents who will be very upset if they hear with virtually no notice that they have to take weeks off work because their children cannot go to school?”
“I commend the work of Baroness Barran and county councillor Tony Ball and all his team at Essex County Council, who have worked their socks off ultimately to keep children safe, but I regret to tell the Secretary of State that, having now managed to speak to all the heads of affected schools in my constituency, there are a number of differences between what I have been told by her Department and the ground truth that I have been told by the headteachers. For instance, back in July Hockley Primary was promised eight relocatable classrooms ready to go by today; they now will not be available until mid-November.”
“May I add, very briefly, to what my hon. Friend has said? We are all aware that my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) did great service to his country in Bosnia, for which he was rightfully awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He was far too modest to mention that, but I think that it is worth putting it on the record none the less.”
“Lastly, Mr Deputy Speaker, I take this opportunity to thank you, all our colleagues, all the staff of the House, my excellent Westminster team, Adele, Oliver, Felix and Mellissa, and all my supporters in my constituency. I hope they all have a relaxing summer recess and that we can all reassemble safely in the autumn. I thank the House.”
“I put on record today that I very much hope it will follow Notting Hill Genesis’s example and hand its homes over to someone more competent to run them. I do not know what the non-executive directors of FirstPort do all day, but holding the company’s executive directors properly to account does not exactly seem to be their top priority. Fifthly, everyone who knew Sir David is well aware that he was a great animal lover, so it is partly in his memory that I am supporting the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation’s “The Crate Escape” campaign to phase out the use of cruel farrowing crates for sows and their piglets—and the sooner the better. Sir David was very keen on this issue, and I hope and believe that we will get there in the end.”
“I am glad to report to the House that the lift is now finally functioning again, but FirstPort could hardly have made a worse job of it if it had tried. The concept of any sense of urgency seems totally alien to it. Furthermore, FirstPort runs another facility called Oak Lodge in Hockley, which I visited recently at the invitation of the residents, only to see a number of maintenance defects, including a back fence that was effectively falling down and had not been repaired despite multiple complaints by the residents. Incidentally, they were also upset by increases in their bills, especially their energy bills, which they regarded as completely disproportionate. FirstPort is particularly poor at replying to correspondence, including from Members of Parliament.”
“I very much hope we will be able to find another major social housing provider, such as perhaps Sanctuary, which has had its own issues but is now gradually improving, to take over NHG’s properties in Essex and run them more successfully. In addition, I have had some dreadful experiences with a property management company called FirstPort, which manages a number of privately run sheltered housing facilities in my constituency. Ironically, as part of its branding, it claims to “prioritise customer service”—well, you could have fooled me! For instance, at King Georges Court in Rayleigh it took FirstPort more than seven months to fix a lift. Partly as a result, some very ill elderly residents had to be carried down flights of steps by ambulance paramedics, who were doing their best, because the lift was not working.”
“Such has been my frustration with NHG over the years that, in the last Sir David Amess summer Adjournment debate, on 21 July last year, I said in the House: “I can only express the hope that Notting Hill Genesis will soon be overtaken by a larger and more professional housing association that will do a much better job for my constituents.” —[ Official Report , 21 July 2022; Vol. 718, c. 1178.] I was therefore delighted to receive a letter only yesterday from Mr Matthew Cornwall-Jones, the group director of assets and sustainability for NHG, confirming that it now intends to sell on the sheltered accommodation it currently owns in Essex, including in my Rayleigh and Wickford constituency. I am not sure whether that will be met with joyous rejoicing in Sangster Court, but it was certainly met with approval in my office yesterday.”
“In short, I believe the game is not worth the candle. I very much hope that Ministers—including the rail Minister, who is a decent chap and to whom I spoke personally about this recently—and the train operators might yet be persuaded to reconsider. Fourthly, I want to raise some issues relating to sheltered housing accommodation in my constituency. Some in the House with good memories might remember my previously referring to a sheltered housing scheme known as Sangster Court—also known as “Gangster Court”—in Rayleigh, run by Notting Hill Genesis.”
“It is important that Abellio keeps to that timetable, and I intend to remain very much on its case until it does so. That leads me on to the related matter of ticket offices, not just in Wickford, but at all the other stations in my constituency. I fully intend to respond to the consultation about proposals to close ticket offices prior to the deadline next week, but suffice it to say at this juncture that I am opposed to the proposals, which are a mistake. The savings that might be generated from doing so are more than outweighed by the potential inconvenience for travellers, particularly those who are visually impaired or otherwise disabled. The other Monday morning when I was waiting on the platform at Rayleigh station, I even saw that—lo and behold—the ticket machine was not working.”
“I am doing everything I can to persuade Basildon Council to find a new site, even a temporary one, to allow Wickford market to reopen, and also to persuade Aldi, which is in the process of rebuilding and expanding its supermarket in Wickford, to keep to its ambitious timetable and make sure that the store is open before Christmas this year. My Wickford constituents are also frustrated by the fact that Abellio Greater Anglia knocked down half their train station without having a proper plan to rebuild it. I have raised this issue with Abellio on multiple occasions, and I now understand it is close to submitting a planning application for a new station design to Basildon Council this summer, which would hopefully allow construction to begin sometime next year.”
“If that cannot be achieved—I very much hope it can—I will work with AET to ensure that there is some kind of plan B, perhaps continuing to use some of the nearby schools. Thirdly, we have a very unfortunate situation in Wickford, whereby both the town’s main supermarkets are closed pending redevelopment, and the old market in Wickford High Street has had to close and is looking for an alternative venue. Many other Members wish to speak today, so to cut a very long story short, my Wickford constituents have been left facing something of a perfect storm regarding their ability to shop locally.”
“On a related matter, Hockley Primary School has also unfortunately been discovered to be suffering from RAAC. Having recently checked with the Academies Enterprise Trust, which runs the school, it is in the midst of a detailed engineering survey, assisted by the Department, to assess the extent of the problem. In the meantime, other AET schools in the Hockley area, including Plumberow and Greensward, have rallied round to provide alternative places for Hockley schoolchildren. We await the results of the engineering survey with great interest, but I am doing everything I can in the meantime to facilitate the provision at least of temporary classrooms for the autumn term on the Hockley Primary School site itself.”
“The third whammy came when they demolished the building and found that it contained a large quantity of asbestos, which no one realised was there. The school had to be completely closed while the area was thoroughly decontaminated. I am glad to report to the House that the new block is now in the early stages of rising phoenix-like from the ashes. I thank the permanent secretary at the Department for Education, who at a recent meeting of the Public Accounts Committee publicly apologised to me and my constituents who were adversely affected by this difficult situation. I am assured by the headteacher, Mr Jonathan Osborn, that the apology has gone down very well with staff, parents and pupils alike, so I want to register my thanks this afternoon on their behalf.”
“I am therefore talking to the cabinet member for education and lifelong learning in Essex County Council, Councillor Tony Ball, as well as Ministers at the Department for Education and a couple of local multi-academy trusts, to see whether we can find a suitable option to open a new school. I hope to have more to say about that by the time the House returns in the autumn, but for the moment I pledge to do my best on this. In that, I hope I will have the support of my constituents, especially parents with special needs children. Secondly, we have had real problems at King Edmund School in Ashingdon, which suffered a triple whammy. First, it was closed like many other schools during covid, and secondly, it had to have a large block demolished because of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, or RAAC.”
“We already have a number of very good special needs schools in Essex, but they are now—almost without exception—heavily over-subscribed, and we simply do not have enough special needs places, particularly in the south of the county, to deal with ever increasing demand. As a result, many parents end up having to go through long appeals processes, desperately trying to get their children into an appropriate school. For those who are unsuccessful, their children are shoehorned into mainstream education, which sometimes leads to behavioural problems and even to mainstream schools themselves getting bad Ofsted reports as a result. We need to cut through this Gordian knot and expand capacity.”
“I am honoured to speak in the Sir David Amess Adjournment debate, which the House kindly agreed some time ago to name in memory of our great friend. We still miss him, and I must confess that I do in particular —especially that famous cheeky Amess grin. I reassure the House that I am not going to try to emulate him and raise 20 different topics in half as many minutes. Nevertheless, there are five particular areas that I would like to touch on before the House adjourns for the summer. First, as those who were here at Education questions on Monday may recall, I have launched a campaign for a new special needs school in south Essex.”
“The Prime Minister mentioned our armed forces. May I mention them again? We lost 457 personnel killed in Afghanistan, and several thousand suffered life-changing injuries. So I and some of my colleagues on the Defence Committee were absolutely stunned to see a video posted by our own Chairman lauding the Taliban’s governance of Afghanistan but not mentioning that they are still trying to identify and kill Afghan civilians who sided with NATO forces, nor the fact that they do not like girls to go to school. Can I make it plain that that was not in our name, and can I have the Prime Minister’s assurance that that silly and naive act was not in his name either?”
“Let me, in all seriousness, encourage the Defence Secretary, when he does his handover to whoever succeeds him—accompanied by his excellent team of junior Ministers—to impress on his successor the fact that we really do need to bring about this reform, not just for industry and not just for our armed forces, but for the whole security and defence of the realm. And with that, we wish him well.”
“For the record, we are about to lose one of the best Defence Secretaries we have ever had. He will be sorely missed in this House, and in the Department. He knows that we have discussed what is wrong with defence procurement on many occasions, and he knows that the Public Accounts Committee and the Defence Committee have published a number of reports saying that it is broken. The most recent, entitled “It is broke—and it’s time to fix it” was published only last Sunday, and on Tuesday we see the DCP refresh, whose acquisition strategy has effectively accepted some of the 22 recommendations in our report within 48 hours. I humbly submit that that is some kind of world record for a Select Committee report. However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
“He is entitled to have whatever bizarre opinions he wants, but does the Minister agree that any Select Committee Chairman who wants to remain a Select Committee Chairman should be careful to make clear that he speaks only for himself and not imply that he speaks for a number of other people who barely agreed with a word that he said?”
“Last night, following a visit to Afghanistan, he posted an utterly bizarre video lauding the Taliban management of the country—something a fellow member of the Defence Committee described to me barely an hour ago as a “wish you were here” video—in which he made no mention of the fact that the Taliban is still attempting to identify and kill Afghan citizens who helped our armed forces, or of the fact that young girls in Afghanistan do not even have the right to go to school under that Government. I wish to make plain, on behalf of the Committee, that he was speaking for himself, even though he used the title of Chairman of our Committee in a number of associated articles. Not in our name.”
“I hardly need remind the Minister, as he fought in Afghanistan, but I will take the liberty of reminding the House that we lost 450 personnel killed in that theatre, and thousands more, unfortunately, sustained life-changing injuries. The right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) is abroad on a Select Committee trip, but I have communicated with him by text to give him notice that I intended to mention him in the Chamber, so I have observed the courtesies of the House.”
“They would not get it if the commission ruled they had not complied. Can the Secretary of State absolutely assure me in his heart of hearts that we are not institutionalising the mechanism for a republican lawyer fest, which would be totally contrary to the whole point of bringing in the Bill in the first place?”
“The Secretary of State said that it has taken a year for the Bill to go through the House of Lords—I and others campaigned for four years for the Bill even to be introduced in the first place. I fear that some of the Government’s own amendments introduced in the other place have had the effect of swinging the pendulum too far—I admit it is a delicate balance—against our veterans who served in Operation Banner in Northern Ireland. Specifically, the Bill now gives the independent commission extremely wide and latitudinal powers to decide whether a veteran should still be investigated, even despite the Bill’s so-called double-jeopardy provisions. The decision still ultimately lies with the commission. It also has great latitude in deciding whether a veteran has complied with an investigation, which would then allow them immunity.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for that clear answer, but could he just with a couple of sentences pithily explain why he is so confident that he is right?”
“Sinn Féin has always argued that, because in the early years of the troubles fatal shootings by armed forces personnel were investigated by the Royal Military Police, and only after a few years was that transferred to the RUC, those investigations were not article 2 compliant. As the Government have deliberately strengthened the role of article 2, via their own amendments, does that mean in practice that every single fatality prior to 1972 is likely to be reinvestigated in order to be article 2 compliant?”
“I have been waiting patiently for the Secretary of State to answer the question that I asked him earlier about the interrelationship between article 2 and pre-1972 investigations. I am sure he meant to answer the question before he sat down. He has very few bits of paper left. Could he now please give a direct answer to my question about the interrelationship between the two?”
“My right hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. My constituents, almost by historical accident, have the privilege of paying two water bills rather than one—one to Anglian Water and another to Essex & Suffolk Water—for different aspects of their water usage. They have seen those bills increase considerably in the last couple of years. As well as fining water companies for getting it wrong, since she mentions the regulator, can she please put pressure on Ofwat to do everything it can to make sure that those increases are, first, fully justified and, secondly, as low as practically possible?”
“As the hon. Gentleman will know, there is a great deal of debate at the moment not just about the Government’s spending plans but about those of His Majesty’s official Opposition. Everyone knows that preventing any discharges of any kind would involve the investment of hundreds of billions of pounds. As the Secretary of State has already made plain, the Government are committed to spending billions as it is. If Labour thinks that we are not doing enough, how much more money would it spend on this that we are not already committed to? Give us a number.”
“As the House may know, it is not often that my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) and I agree on much, but on this he is absolutely right. Natural England is becoming an over-mighty regulator, and it is referred to directly in the regulation that we are debating. Does my hon. Friend agree that it should stay in its lane, do what it does well, and not keep trying to expand its empire into areas where it is not best qualified to judge?”
“People in Rayleigh and Wickford are just as concerned about this issue as anyone else, and no one wants to see sewage—particularly if it is untreated—being discharged into our rivers, our estuaries or, indeed, the sea. On that, I suspect we could achieve unanimity across the House. However, as I intimated in my intervention, there are already billions of pounds going in from the Government to try to reduce those discharges as far as is practically possible so that they would occur only in periods of the most exceptional rainfall. In fairness, I gave the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), an opportunity to tell the House how much money Labour would spend on this issue above and beyond the billions of pounds that the Government are clearly committed to. [ Interruption.”
“As they are mentioned in the regulations today, I take the opportunity to make that request. Secondly, I notice from the Order Paper that both these statutory instruments—the House has agreed to take them together—have not been cleared by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Before anyone gets overly excited, that is not unknown—there are sometimes good reasons for why they have to be brought to the House before the JCSI has had an opportunity to scrutinise them—but it is slightly unusual. When the Secretary of State replies to the debate, perhaps she could explain to the House why that is the case. I am sure there is a perfectly legitimate reason, but it might be helpful for her to get that on the record. Thirdly, I can report that I have had quite a lot of emails from my constituents about sewage discharges.”
“I want to make only a few brief points. First, the purpose of these regulations is to strengthen the civil sanctions available for environmental regulators in England, including Natural England and the Environment Agency, in order to provide a greater deterrent against environmental offences for operators. A number of colleagues on this side of the House have already expressed concerns about the extent to which those regulators are perhaps expanding their remit—we might call it “remit creep”, for want of a better term—and not necessarily making the best possible decisions as a result. In that context, will the Secretary of State look again at the remits of those regulators, in particular Natural England, and enter into a conversation, perhaps over a cup of tea, about whether they are going beyond the remit that Parliament gave them?”
“I hope that when the Secretary of State replies to the debate, she will try to get elucidation from him on why Labour had this big Opposition day debate, made a big thing of it, briefed the press, told the country and then abstained. There must be some reason. If he is too embarrassed to tell the House of Commons, perhaps she can oblige.”
“No, he did not. Perhaps there is a reason why. On 25 April, the Daily Express reported, “Tories humiliate Labour as they’re forced to abstain on their own anti-sewage debate”. Under the by-line of Christian Calgie, its senior political correspondent, the story stated: “The Labour Party was left humiliated by the Government in the House of Commons this afternoon …Labour MPs ended up refusing to vote in favour of reducing sewage discharge. It’s claimed a senior Labour MP was overheard saying ‘We’ve been made to look like’” twits. I did not want to introduce a partisan element to the debate— [ Interruption. ] No, no, but having heard the shadow Secretary of State’s speech, in which he did that, I thought it was only fair to reply in kind.”
“Labour felt so strongly that it deliberately chose one of its Opposition day debates to raise the issue, and then passionately abstained in person, as someone once famously said. If there is a really good explanation for that, I look forward to hearing it from the Opposition. In fact, I will allow—”
“I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful observation. The passion on the Labour Back Benches has almost doubled in the last 15 minutes. The Whips have obviously been around the Tea Room and said, “It’s looking a bit thin at the back there, boys and girls. You’d better get in there quickly.” So now—I want to be accurate—I count seven Labour MPs in the Chamber. Am I short-changing anybody? No. As for the abstention —[Hon. Members: “They’re coming in now.”] Oh, crikey. Keep going; we could be in double figures in a minute. As for the abstention on 25 April, it is admittedly unusual to table an Opposition day motion and then abstain on it; that is not an everyday thing. Because the shadow Secretary of State said that Labour was so passionate about it, I can only assume that it was a passionate abstention.”
“In the interests of equity, I was allowing the shadow Secretary of State to intervene on me. Perhaps he could connect it? He does not want to intervene to explain why Labour abstained on its own motion. Going, going, gone. In that case, perhaps the Secretary of State could help to elucidate, because the Labour party, clearly, is incapable of explaining its own policy. On that point, so as not to detain us further, I conclude my remarks.”
“This is manipulating the parliamentary process because the Windsor framework is clearly a failure, and it is such a failure that the Whips have to rig Committees to get it through, so they have found a bunch of other Members, at short notice, who perhaps, shall we say, are not quite as inquisitive as the five who were nobbled. You have been here a long while, Mr Pritchard; have you, in your time in this House, ever known anything quite as shameful as this?”
“Secondly, for the record, the Committee of Selection nominated Members to this SI Committee last week in the normal way, including my hon. Friends the Members for Windsor, for Rochford and Southend East, for Devizes, for Dudley North and for Don Valley. I understand that some or all of those people indicated to the Whips in conversations over the weekend that they had what theologians might call “doubts” about the Government’s approach. Some even threatened to vote against the legislation, whereupon they were summarily removed from the Committee by the Whips, using a procedure that is normally used only for last-minute substitutions and very special circumstances—for instance, if a family member is ill. In 22 years in this House, I have never known the Whips, from either side, to do this. This is beyond sixth-form politics.”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Pritchard. I have two quick points. First, I understand that the knife on the Illegal Migration Bill will fall at 6.26 pm. If you were a cynic, you would believe that the Government deliberately timed this debate for this evening, knowing that it would be ripped up by all those votes, bearing in mind we had 18 votes on the Bill last week. If you are a cynic, it is perfectly obvious to see what the Government have done; they have timed the debate now so it will be interrupted by the votes. However, can you confirm, Mr Pritchard, that if these proceedings are interrupted, there will be injury time so the debate will begin again quite a long while later, after the votes have taken place?”
“However, do not force the Committee to go ahead on a basis that is blatantly and obviously rigged.”
“You yourself, sir, admitted that the final membership of this Committee was finalised only 50 minutes before it was due to begin. That is extraordinary. Why? Because so many shenanigans were going on behind the scenes. I offer the Whip on duty, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pendle—who, for the record, I happen to respect—and the Minister some genuine advice: do not move the motion, because everyone can see that this has become a farce. Accept that this has gone wrong—it was a mistake—so do not move it and bring it back another time. That is by far the best thing to do in the circumstances. Do not move the motion, allow the dust to settle and let us discuss the draft regulations, which are not due to come into force until 2024, in the proper way when we have more time.”
“If a family member is ill or there is some other pressing reason why they cannot be there, they basically ask a friend or a colleague to substitute for them. There is a procedure whereby the Whips can facilitate that, without having to reconvene the whole Committee of Selection. Everybody understands that; that is the norm. What is not the norm is for people to be taken off a Committee against their will. That is completely irregular. That is what has happened here—five times over, for the same Committee. That is not in order; that is not a convention; that is the Government trying to rig a Committee and to get rid of people whom they thought might have the moral courage to vote the wrong way. It is bent, and that is what they have done. You, Mr Pritchard, should not be facilitating that.”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Pritchard. As we all know, “Erskine May”, the bible of parliamentary procedure, cannot account for every possible circumstance under the sun. Therefore, Members of Parliament are used to operating within a number of well understood conventions—we might call them our traditions, for want of a better phrase. If Back Benchers see those conventions being deliberately abused, they rightly get very upset, which is exactly what is happening before your eyes. For some years, I served on the Committee of Selection, so I know well how the procedure works. If someone is nominated to the Committee, but unfortunately cannot attend, the convention is that they try to find a substitute.”
“For the avoidance of doubt, I will withdraw it anyway. You and I have known each other for many years, Mr Pritchard; if you think that word was disorderly, out of respect for you and mindful of the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, I will withdraw it. I will replace “bent” with “rigged”.”
“One particularly challenging area of work for teachers is special needs education. There are many who want to work in that field, but in Essex our special needs schools are unfortunately already full to bursting. That is why, today, I am launching a campaign for a new special needs school in south Essex. I met the Minister for Schools, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb) in advance and he was very helpful. Will the Secretary of State and the Schools Minister work with me and Essex County Council to try to get us the additional special needs places in Essex that parents and special needs children so desperately need?”
“I will be brief, Mr Speaker. The members of the Committee were nominated by the Committee of Selection in the normal way last week. So far so good, but when I checked with the Chairman of the Committee of Selection, I learned that he had not been informed of the changes, which had been made by the Whips and not by the Committee. This is basically a sixth-form politics stunt, which came about because the Government feared that the people concerned would vote against that element of the Windsor framework. Why have our Government been reduced to this?”