Graham Stuart
MP for Beverley and Holderness · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, but he will be aware that there is no plan to ensure that that 2030 target is met. At a time when we have short-term cuts in operational spending, the Secretary of State must feel a certain amount of disappointment that we do not have a firm plan in place, because if the Treasury do…”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Look, we are we are taking 70,000 businesses out of business rates.” Of course I welcome that, but it is inadequate in a high street that is falling and losing.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“And yet he comes forward with something this timid, this pallid and this lacking in inspiration, and gives a speech that entirely aligns with those qualities, and he is met with a near rapturous reception from Labour Members who have had to put up with the two previous Budgets, with their disastrous impact on the UK economy.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. Coastal communities are losing out, and savers are being hit by a £500 million increase in tax—again, I do not think that has come through clearly. Some Members talk about this being good for pensioners, but it is not.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Business taxes have not gone up by another £60 billion—praise the Lord—but they have gone up by over £2 billion through fiddly measures. On top of that, there is the ever-popular call of, “Let’s attack the banks to feed the Labour Back Benchers,” who are so divorced from economic reality.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will not give way if the hon. Member will allow me. What is happening to business investment next year? According to the Government’s own figures, it is falling. What is happening to the debt of the nation as a result of today’s Budget, compared with the position earlier in the year?”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“Labour Governments have done this before. I never want to question anyone’s honesty, but some Labour Members have been very selective in the data that they have given. They have talked relentlessly about the 14 years, but not one of them has given youth unemployment figures for those 14 years, which anyone fair-minded would surely do rather than picking some three-year period around covid. The hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) did make a fair statistical point. He said, “OK, youth unemployment has gone up under Labour.” He conceded that: how refreshing. However, he also said that it was going up when we came to power and we should deal with that. It was a fair point and a point well made, but in 1997 youth unemployment stood at 14%, and by 2010, under the socialists—the Labour party—it had climbed to 20%.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In that time, she, like me, will have visited hundreds of schools—I certainly have, from Holderness academy to Withernsea high school—and asked thousands of students the same question: “What do you want to be when you leave school?” Not once has a child replied, “Unemployed”, and for good reason. Young people are ambitious. They want the dignity of work, about which my right hon. Friend spoke so passionately just now, over the indignity of welfare. They want to climb a ladder of opportunity, not fall into the trap of dependency. However, as was reflected in the Minister’s speech, study after study tells us the same hard truth. Young people who experience long-term unemployment are more likely to end up poor, sick and more isolated than their peers, with no options and no hope. No way should we be consigning our young people to that fate.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. How do we, as so many colleagues have asked this afternoon—certainly on the Opposition Benches—persuade an employer? How do we create the incentives for an employer to take a chance on a young person who may have no work experience—they may be full of ambition, fresh ideas and curiosity, but with little or no experience to offer—when that same employer could choose an older candidate who is proven, reliable and familiar with the workplace? If we can answer that question, we will help more than one person; we will help ensure that we provide the door to opportunity for people to have that dignity of work, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) has just talked about. I have been a Member of Parliament for nearly 21 years, along with the Minister.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If we understand that behaviour is driven by incentives and we make it much more expensive to employ a young person than to employ someone older, what happens? Well, it is not a surprise: the rate of youth unemployment has gone up. Let me now give way to the hon. Gentleman.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I know that Opposition Members lack experience of running businesses—so few of them have ever had to make that huge decision, that risk-filled decision, to employ someone and then to employ more people, having to find the money to pay them at the end of the month as well as paying all the taxes—but the answer is that we do it by changing incentives. As any good economist knows, the single biggest cost for almost any business is its workforce, yet this Chancellor has chosen to increase the minimum wage and so many other costs on business. In turn, the cost of employing 18 to 20 year-olds—just since July 2024—has risen not by £2,000, not by £3,000, but by a staggering £4,095, in less than two years.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will make a little more progress, and then I will happily give way. Given that I have referred to the hon. Gentleman, it is the very least I can do. By 2024, the level had been brought back to below 14%. Again and again, Conservatives have brought youth unemployment down. I have mentioned—as have others, including the Minister—just how damaging it is for young people to be unemployed. It has not just a short-term horrific impact, but a lifelong impact. I do not quite know why that is the case, but study after study shows that it is. Now, less than two years in, the figure is 16% and rising. We have seen this film before, and unless we change course—unless the Government change course—we know how it ends. So how do we change course? I think that Conservative Members have tried to indicate to Opposition Members what the answer might be.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They are developing skills, confidence, discipline and the ability to work productively alongside more experienced colleagues. Employers were explicitly permitted to pay less in order to reflect an economic reality.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We showed fiscal responsibility, because we know that if Governments spend money that they do not generate, they impose a burden on the very young people on whom unemployment is now being imposed. I will deal with the minimum wage, which Labour Members have touched on. They asked whether we want to tell young people that they are not worth higher pay. Well, if they do not have the experience, and if they lose out on getting a job against an older person because they do not even have cost competitiveness, they are in trouble. Since the introduction of the development rate in 1998, there has been a lower wage for younger workers. That is deliberate, for a very sensible reason: when young people enter the workplace, they are doing exactly that—they are developing.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Gentleman makes a fair and reasonable point, but if he goes back and looks through the data, he will see that youth unemployment stayed stubbornly high under the last quasi-socialist Government, and it was not just because of the 2008 crash. The truth is that, throughout that period, we had a much higher level of youth unemployment than we should have done. He says that we had austerity, but the then Government overspent. We inherited a massive deficit and slowly brought it down throughout the 2010s, but we overspent in each and every year, so the idea that we had austerity is a myth. “Austerity” means living within our means, but we did not live within our means. We overspent each and every year, but by the time we got to covid, we had managed to get our deficit right down.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We will repeal Labour’s job-destroying Employment Rights Act, because we cannot regulate our way to prosperity. The Act introduced 28 major reforms—count them—placing significant new requirements on businesses. By the Government’s own estimate, it will lead to £5 billion in costs. The planned changes to zero-hours contracts are perhaps the most damaging to young people, because employees will require guaranteed hours and compensation for cancelled shifts. I fully accept that these measures are well-intentioned, but they will reduce the flexibility that employers value, and that young people also value because they can balance their studies with gaining experience. Businesses will hire fewer young workers, leaving a generation without the chance to learn, earn and prove themselves.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When those jobs disappear, the ladder does not get longer; it just gets shorter and steeper. A Conservative Government will abolish business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure—not 10% of them, but 100%. Those are the sectors in which so many young people take their first step. Cutting costs gives businesses the freedom to grow and hire, and we do not need a vast number of people to administer a scheme. When we simply lower the costs for employers, they get on with it. That will create real opportunities for young people to learn, earn and prove themselves. Under Labour, businesses face another three years of higher and higher costs, heavier regulation and constant uncertainty, leaving young people blocked, frustrated and struggling to get a foothold in the job market.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If the Chancellor changes nothing, we need to change the Chancellor. What would the Conservatives do differently? We would start with a simple truth: jobs are created by employers—by not Ministers, schemes or programmes. Private employers are the ones who generate wealth. The ladder of opportunity is not built by ministerial good intentions; it is built by creating incentives for the behaviours we want. The behaviour we want from employers is for them to take a risk, and to feel that it is worth their while for their family to invest in and give an opportunity to a young person. But under this Government, the first rung of the ladder is being sawn off. Young people do not begin at the top; they begin with a Saturday job or a summer shift, and their first payslip. That is where confidence is built, habits are formed and futures are forged.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The effect that the Chancellor has had is the opposite of what she desired, and she is not helping young people. Many have received a short-term pay rise, but hundreds of thousands have received the ultimate kick in the teeth. They have received not a pay cut, but no pay at all, because the jobs they should have been offered have disappeared in a puff of the Chancellor’s smoke. After the Government’s first Budget, a survey by the Beverley and District chamber of trade found that 88% of its members said they would be less likely to employ young people because of the rise in the minimum wage. Despite that warning, the Chancellor returned with a second Budget and destroyed even more opportunities with another £26 billion tax raid. We can but pray that she is out the door before she completes her tax-taking trilogy.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not doubt the good intentions of the Labour party, the Cabinet and the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham), who I may allow to intervene in a moment, but good intentions do not disguise the truth. They have not run businesses, and it shows. They do not understand how employers make decisions or how behaviour is incentivised. By abolishing the development rate, the Chancellor wanted to signal that she is on the side of young people in order to put in place a political divide: “You Tories don’t want to pay young people a fair and decent wage!” Of course we do, but we want them to have jobs. This is the insider-outsider issue that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) touched on earlier.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I hope the hon. Lady will say now on the Floor of the House that if the youth unemployment rate continues to go up, as it did under previous Labour Governments, from the 14% inherited from the Conservatives to 20%—if that were to be the terrible outcome, with its scarring impact on young people—she would not seek to stand for the Labour party at the next election, because she would recognise that she had failed us.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Conservatives will align incentives, cut costs and free businesses to hire—to get the balance right—and in doing so, we will give them the freedom to give young people a chance to prove themselves, because Conservative Governments stand for work, not welfare, and for opportunity, not dependency.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The differential has been eroded, but the hon. Lady is quite right to mention that. What we are talking about is balance. None of us is talking about a total free-for-all for employers. We are looking at getting balance, and it looks as though that balance has gone wrong, as the hon. Lady must know. What have been the great external economic shocks over the last year and a half? There have not really been any. There is no reason, other than the policies of this Government, for this increase in youth unemployment, with the loss of nearly 100,000 jobs in hospitality. This is about getting the balance right, and this Government have not done so.”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend is picking out remarkable contributions to this debate. Was she particularly struck by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), who is not in his seat, saying that the Conservatives should apologise for not having any mention in their motion of transport to help young people get to work, when the much longer Liberal Democrat amendment, ironically, has no mention of transport either?”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does my hon. Friend look forward to the Minister’s reply, as I do? Youth unemployment has already gone up from 14% to 16%. Does she want to hear from the Minister at the Dispatch Box a commitment that this Government will reduce it back down, so that they can for once end their time in power—in 2029—however short-lived it may have been, with a lower rate of youth unemployment than they started with?”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister knows that youth unemployment was at 20% when the Conservatives came into power, and at 14% when we left. Can he commit that his Government, with their vast array of programmes, will bring youth unemployment back below the level that his Government inherited? Previous Labour Governments have failed to do that, and shoved up youth unemployment, with all the damage that goes with that. Will his Government ensure that the numbers come down, and if they do not, will the Government put their hands up and admit their failure?”
House of Commons28 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In meaningful consultations, the Government set out what they are minded to do and set out a model. This consultation does not define social media or set out an enforcement model. It does not say anything about how age verification should be done. If they do not set out their model and what they intend to do, how at the end of the consultation will they have a practical guide or model to implement? They will not. If we are to follow this up with another consultation, I fear that parents and grandparents in Beverley and Holderness will be deeply disappointed with the dithering and delay displayed by the Secretary of State today.”
House of Commons20 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister mentions the United States’ wishes, and he appears to be presenting the case that the United States remains in the position that it was in previously, despite what President Trump said last night. The Deputy Prime Minister said in February: “If President Trump doesn’t like the deal, the deal will not go forward”. Last night, President Trump said that he did not like the deal. Is it still going forward, or is the Minister suggesting that President Trump did not mean what he said last night?”
House of Commons20 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does my right hon. Friend, like me, feel some sympathy for the Minister? He has rested his whole case on the support of the United States of America. The Deputy Prime Minister said that the Bill would not go ahead if the American President did not support it. We all remember the great mystery about who shot J.R., but there is no mystery about who shot the Minister’s fox—it was the President of the United States last night, and the Minister’s whole case has crumbled.”
House of Commons20 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Gentleman is talking about the costs of the deal. Can he just set them out for the House? I do not think anyone has done so in today’s debate so far, and he is speaking with such expertise. It would be great to hear from him exactly what this deal is costing.”
House of Commons20 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I fear the Minister may have inadvertently misled the House. The only public statement by the Chinese Government on this subject was on 29 May last year when they welcomed the Chagos deal.”
House of Commons20 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Blind and partially sighted children in the East Riding of Yorkshire receive lower funding through the higher needs block than anywhere else in the country, yet in the settlement the East Riding will receive the smallest increase in the country at just 2%, compared with an average of over 6%. How can it possibly be justified that children in the rural, coastal East Riding of Yorkshire, who are already the worst funded in the country, are going to see the gap widen? Minister, please explain.”
House of Commons19 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will call Graham Leadbitter to move the motion, and then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may only make a speech with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister—you need both. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates. We are trying to bring this debate swiftly to a close in order to allow the proposer to reach Scottish questions.”
House of Commons14 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To come to the rescue of the Chancellor, it turns out that she simply did not understand the impact, according to the Business Secretary. Perhaps the Minister, in her winding-up speech, will be able to confirm that the Chancellor literally did not know what the impact of her own policies would be on hospitality businesses. The Minister may be able to tell us whether the Business Secretary was right to identify that failing of understanding by the Chancellor.”
House of Commons13 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The local government settlement strips £27 million from East Riding of Yorkshire council. I learned today that there will be an additional £21 million cost over the next three years from the minimum wage and the jobs tax. Does the Minister really think it is acceptable that local residents should have sky-high council tax rises and falling quality of services?”
House of Commons12 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister says that there will be no cut to capital budgets, but of course he is talking only about the public sector. Has he seen the CBI Economics research that suggests that there will be severe capital budget reductions in the private sector—the very sector that creates the wealth on which everything else depends?”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister is always both gracious and generous. Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) about the impact of BPR, imagine a company that is worth £11 million. It will have a £2 million BPR tax payment to make. The person who inherits the shares will not have that £2 million, so they will have to extract that money from the business. Am I right in thinking that that would require £3.3 million to be deducted and taken out of the company in order to pay that £2 million in tax? Is that in the right order?”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does my right hon. Friend worry, like me, about the background of those on the Government Front Bench? I do not want to disrespect either of the individuals sitting there now, because they are both fine people, but neither has ever, so far as I am aware, been involved in running a private business. They do not understand how private business works, and they equate the inheritance of money—for example, from a father to a daughter—with a family business. A family business needs to continue, because of all the employment that arises from it. Equating the two and saying that it is half the normal inheritance tax is to show a complete failure of understanding of the economy of this country and the economy of a family business.”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There are businesses that are prepared to do that—unlike any other business sector I can think of or have ever experienced, or would certainly ever have entertained being part of myself. There are businesses that would take such low returns, work all the hours God gives and bring brilliant food to the tables of people up and down this country at low cost. Why on earth would the Government want to drive the people running those businesses out so that the people they say they want to attack—namely, huge billionaires and vast trust-based businesses—can gobble up those very farms, which are currently run by decent people in our communities who do all that good and ask for very little in return?”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“But should they not increase the profitability of farmers before imposing a tax that, mathematically, arithmetically—whatever other word you want to use—they cannot pay? The truth is that farmers cannot pay it. More than half of farmers literally do not have the profits to allow them to pay that tax. That simple truth sits at the heart of this. These businesses are prepared to do it because of their lifestyle, personal commitment and love of farming. They do it in order to put food on our plates that is among the highest quality in the world and at costs that are among the lowest in Europe. The Government could think about this from a public policy point of view too.”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Even if Treasury Ministers do not have any business experience—sadly, Labour Treasury Ministers typically do not—they should at least practice numeracy. If they are numerate, they can work out that if someone makes just 1% return annually on the capital value of their business, it would take 20 years of earnings to pay a 20% tax—and a third of farmers do not make anything at all. How is someone who makes 1% profit going to pay a 20% tax? This is not some freak thing that has just happened; it is consistent. The Government, to be fair to them, seem to have woken up in one sense. They said, “We must have a new initiative”—I forget what it is called—“to increase the profitability of farmers”. Well, yippidy-doo, well done for that.”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and follow the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours), who is rare, as a Member on the Labour Benches, in feeling such commitment to maintaining and fulfilling the promises he made, not least to his farmers. I will begin by focusing on the farming issue. Too often we look at it in an overall, structural way and make comparisons with other types of inheritance, rather than looking at the specifics of the farming industry. A third of farmers do not make any profit at all, and those who do make profit make very little. Although we do not have exact data, it would appear that well over half of farmers make a 1% return on capital employed or less.”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“But as far as I am aware, the sons and daughters of most entrepreneurs in Beverley and Holderness do not have £2 million tucked away down the back of the sofa. To pay that bill, which is a tax not on the business but on the people who inherit the business, as they are outside the business—I am not sure whether people have focused on this enough—they will be forced to extract that money from the business itself, usually in the form of dividends, and those dividends are taxed at rates approaching 40%. So a £2 million inheritance tax bill becomes a £3.3 million hit on the business, with £2 million to pay the Chancellor and another £1.3 million to pay—oh yes—the Chancellor, simply because the money was invested in jobs, equipment or the business overall rather than left idle.”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“He was unable to respond off the top of his head to my specific numbers, which is entirely understandable, but I hope that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, armed and perhaps refreshed by the brilliant people in the Box behind her, will be able in summing up to address the specifics of the tax reality for a business faced by the double tax bill that thousands of sons and daughters will receive when their entrepreneurial mum or dad passes away. From April, the 100% inheritance tax relief that family businesses rely on will be capped at just £1 million; anything above that will be taxed at 20%. Take a small company worth £11 million: the inheritance tax bill alone will be £2 million.”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think they—and, I hope, the Minister—are realising just how counterproductive this is. The one thought I will try to implant above all is those numbers, which mean that it is absurd. Madam Deputy Speaker, imagine generally being a business owner today, and not necessarily in farming. You hike your way up the mountain to get to success, wading through an eternal shower of tax rises and hacking your way through a jungle of red tape. Then, on your death bed, you are met not first by the grim reaper but by the Chancellor, armed with one final sting: a double tax bill for your children. This is the reality facing family businesses: if the Government cut business property relief next year, that will lead to a double tax bill. I asked the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, who opened the debate, to comment on how that double taxation works.”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Yes, indeed—and they did. We have seen it. All the evidence is there, and it is happening now, regardless of the argument from Ministers as to what percentage of farms will be affected. We can see it in all the stats. Those stats are available—particularly, I would have hoped, to Treasury Ministers to find out what the real-world impact of this policy is. The real-world impact is that we have seen a drop in investment in the farming industry. That is a disaster. It may be that the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway is standing alone, but let us look at the enthusiasm on the Labour Benches for the Second Reading of this major Finance Bill that is supposed to be doing such good for the country. There are more than 400 Labour Members, but they are not exactly here to cheer it on.”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is yet another example of this innumerate Government having the exact opposite outcome from the one they wished, as investment falls, businesses restructure and growth is choked off. Instead of supporting the Government’s claim to be pro-business and pro-worker, this change could cost more than 200,000 jobs, on top of the 200,000 that the Chancellor has already cost the country. That is money sucked out of the economy and into Labour’s bottomless black hole. The impact will be felt directly in Beverley and Holderness, where it is expected to put 237 local jobs at risk, according to the CBI. Those are apprentices—”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As so often, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Again, the talk is of hitting the fat cats and big businesses, but it is the huge corporates that will benefit. They will snap up the farmland and the small business. This is not fair taxation; it is irrational double taxation. The consequences of this policy are real. If the hon. Member for Angus and Perthshire Glens (Dave Doogan)—I will call him my hon. Friend, if I may—is right about the Treasury being obsessed with the bottom right-hand corner, I hope that if no other argument weighs with the Minister, this might. A report by the CBI suggests that far from raising the welcome £1.4 billion forecast by the Treasury, the changes are likely to reduce tax revenues from family-owned businesses by £1.8 billion by 2030.”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I had better not. That means apprentices not taken on, machinery not upgraded and businesses downsizing. The changes will leave us all poorer, so I ask the Minister and the Chancellor a simple and constructive question: if the Chancellor will not reverse these changes to business property relief, will she at least consider a targeted mechanism so that when these dividends are necessarily extracted, solely to pay the inheritance tax bill, those dividends are not taxed again?”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way while he is on the subject of energy. Of course, what should have been in the Bill was an end to the additional tax levy, because there are no sky-high profits any more, there are no excess taxes that need to be paid, and 1,000 people a month are losing their job in the oil and gas industry.”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I wonder when the people of this country will catch up with the hon. Gentleman and start to express the appropriate gratitude for all that has been bestowed on them by this Government.”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If we look at employment over time, we see that employment was growing every month until a certain thing happened in July last year: Labour came to power. As of this morning, unemployment has officially gone up 5.1%. As it stands today, there is a 25% increase in the number of people who are not in employment. How can that possibly correspond with a mission for growth?”
House of Commons16 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My constituent Katie has served in the RAF for 25 years. In preparation for her return to civilian life, she secured an MOD rentals tenancy to provide housing stability before she receives her pension next year and can buy a house of her own. At short notice, that tenancy was withdrawn, leaving her and her family facing potential homelessness, in clear violation of the armed forces covenant. Despite repeated appeals and over 28 days of silence from the Ministry of Defence, no resolution has yet been offered. Will the Minister please review this case urgently and the letter I sent to Ministers on 5 December to ensure that female veterans like Katie are properly supported during their transition back to civilian life?”
House of Commons15 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am extremely grateful. My hon. Friend is setting out a powerful case. We are puzzled, because a system designed for ordinary workers that has a sensible cap is now being opened up to the very CEOs who, as has been highlighted, would not have previously used it. We have a Labour party in hock to the unions yet strangely proposing a measure that was not included their manifesto which can only help the rich. What happened to the Labour party?”
House of Commons15 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On that very point, does the hon. Member believe that it is totally pragmatic to have disregarded her objections to the removal of the cap in return for additional places for the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords?”
House of Commons15 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Labour colleagues shake their heads as my hon. Friend lays out the blindingly obvious. That goes to show why introducing a measure at the last minute during ping-pong is inappropriate and precisely why the House of Lords is right to say that we must consider this fully. It is quite obvious that Labour Members do not want to understand it; they obviously do not understand the implications.”
House of Commons15 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗