Sir Jeremy Hunt
MP for Godalming and Ash · Conservative · United Kingdom
“It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I speak today as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for financial markets and services. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which states that I accept speaking engagements from financial services companies.”
“Chief executives of banks made very ill-judged decisions to continue paying themselves large bonuses at a time when the rest of the country was suffering, and the country suffered a longer and deeper recession at that time as a result of our exposure to the financial services sector, which was much greater than that of our peers.”
“We are in a much, much better state than we were in 2008.” But I do think that it has gone slightly too far in the other direction. Sometimes we can over-correct.”
“What further action will the Government take to improve access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises and scale-ups, which has been a particular issue in the period since the financial crisis?”
“I thank the hon. Lady for her role in helping to salvage Barings. I did not know that before. She is absolutely right to raise that issue. I do not say this in a party political way, because my party pretty much supported it at the time, but there is no doubt that, in the run-up to the financial crisis, regulation was not as tight as it n…”
“To their credit, this Government have built on those reforms with the Leeds reforms, the Pension Schemes Act 2026 and the forthcoming Financial Services and Markets Bill, all of which are extremely welcome. But, as the hon. Member for Buckingham and Bletchley said, our competitors are not standing still.”
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“CIL was drafted with very strong teeth to ensure that developers actually pay up, but for ordinary members of the public trying to do an extension, these Orwellian processes can be utterly terrifying. Some councils—not my own Waverley borough council, alas—recognise the inflexibility of the regulations and have taken a soft-touch approach to prevent homeowners from being captured. To its credit, West Berkshire, which as it happens is also a Lib Dem council, implemented a discretionary review and refunded £400,000 to affected householders. Others have not. I recognise that the difference in councils’ approaches makes the Minister’s job more difficult. So how should we fix the issue? First, we need to reform the highly complex CIL legislation to distinguish between commercial developers and householders.”
“I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend, who has much more experience of the housing sector than I do. He will know that countries like France—not very far away—that have been much more successful than us in building more houses also have a flourishing small builder sector. In this country, because of the enormous costs involved in the planning process and often the land, it is much harder for small builders to get involved. Of course, one of the other advantages of small builders is that they are more likely to get consent from local communities, because they are often from those local communities. I agree with my right hon. Friend entirely: that is one of the unintended consequences of the problems we have with the community infrastructure levy regime.”
“Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), because it was directly about my own local authority. He was right to say that a council cannot lawfully cancel a charge after it has become liable, but that does beg the question why there have been countless injustices in some councils, but not in others, and that is because there has been an element of choice in the way local authorities have decided to go about things. To make the point that I am not being party political here, Lib Dem West Berkshire has chosen to be reasonable, do the right thing and make sure there is justice for people unfairly caught in the CIL trap, but Lib Dem Waverley has not. It has been in power for seven years and Waverley residents, a number of whom are watching this debate, have suffered badly.”
“That is quite an unusual thing to be told by the Chair, Mr Turner. I thank you for chairing this important debate and I thank all hon. Members present for some excellent contributions. I particularly want to thank my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) for his tenacious campaigning on this issue on behalf of my former constituents in Farnham and Haslemere. He made an excellent contribution. I also want to thank the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), who typically gave a very thoughtful and clear exposition of the issues we face. I also thank hon. Members from other parties who have spoken and intervened. Before I come on to the Minister’s comments, I want to comment on what was said by the hon.”
“The final thing I will say is that I know someone in the Public Gallery got up at 4 am to attend this debate. I thank that person and all the CIL Injustice Group for their tenacious campaigning to try to right a truly awful wrong.”
“He has been very open with me about the legal complexities involved, and I know from my time as Health Secretary how difficult it is to reopen retrospective cases. The Minister’s Department has enormous influence over local authorities, however, not least through setting their grants, so if the Department chose, it could find a way to put councils under pressure, where there are outstanding CIL cases and injustice, so that those cases get solved. I recognise that what I ask is not easy, but it is absolutely the case that local councils are extremely dependent on the Minister’s Department for large chunks of their financing. I ask him to consider what levers he has at his disposal to make this happen, while at the same time thanking him for his ongoing interest and determination to address the issue.”
“In the options that the Minister consults on—he cannot respond to this, but it is something to take away—could we find a way of removing homeowners from CIL liability altogether? That way we move away from a system that is purely based on the square meterage of a development, to one based on the type of person doing the development. Could we change the regulations so that homeowners can at least always apply for an exemption retrospectively if an error has been made? Not being able to do so offends natural justice, and was an unintended consequence of the complexity of the original regulations. I am grateful to the Minister for confronting head-on the fact that for many people, this is about getting justice for something that has happened, not ensuring that injustice does not continue to happen.”
“The issue of particular complexity relates to householders’ immediate liability from the moment that building starts, which seems entirely reasonable for a professional developer, but entirely unreasonable for a homeowner who may not be aware of that element of the law. It is extremely welcome that the Government are going to consult on the CIL regulations. As a former Government Minister, I feel a tremendous amount of frustration and pain at the need for endless consultations. They can be of value, but they also slow things down. I recognise that the Minister wants to do this fast—I did groan when he said, “as soon as possible,” but then when he said, “before the summer break,” I took some encouragement. I think this is something that is moving forward.”
“It is about 100 families—maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less—so the Minister could easily have decided to focus on other areas, but he has not. He has spent an enormous amount of time trying to address this. That is the right and proper thing for a Minister in a democracy to do; if there is an injustice that even affects one person, it is incredibly important that Ministers take note, and he has really done that. The Minister also clarified the problems with the 2014 exemptions introduced by the coalition Government, which were designed to ensure that householders were not caught up in these regulations, but did so through such a bureaucratic and cumbersome process that many inadvertently have been.”
“I absolutely accept that. Again, in that spirit of being non-tribal, the hon. Gentleman will know the number of times that his party and other parties have talked about the 14 years in which we had opportunities to fix things that we did not fix, so he will appreciate that the Liberal Democrats in Waverley have had seven years to fix the issue and have failed to do so. That is why so many people from Waverley are looking at this debate carefully. But he is correct to say that all councils have to operate within the law. I want to move on to the Minister’s comments. First, I thank him for the interest that he has shown right from the start. I want to put on the record that the number of people affected is relatively small in the grander scheme of things, and it would have been easy for the Minister to decide there were other priorities.”
“Given that national debt is around 95% of GDP and debt interest costs are nearly 4% of GDP, does the Chancellor agree that it would be irresponsible to fund any cost of living support by increasing borrowing? That would further drive up borrowing costs, choke off growth and saddle future generations with totally unfair debt.”
“The Secretary of State and I are equally frustrated that more progress has not been made despite numerous inquiries dating right the way back to the Morecambe Bay inquiry in 2014, which I commissioned. Does he agree that one reform that could make an enormous difference would be full continuity of care for every pregnant mum, so that from the moment someone knows they are pregnant, a team of clinicians led by a named senior clinician would be responsible for that mother and child, from pre-birth to birth to post-birth, and no one would ever be in any doubt about where the buck stopped?”
“In a crisis, Governments have permission to do things that are not possible in normal times, but I am worried that what the Prime Minister is going to bring forward will not meet the measure of the moment. Will he commit to dramatically changing energy policy so that it focuses as much on cheap energy as on clean energy? When it comes to the desperate need to increase defence spending, will he consider serious welfare reform to stop someone who earns the national living wage while working full time sometimes getting only half as much support as someone on the three main benefits?”
“Will she confirm that when she comes to the House to announce targeted support, it will be fully funded in her Budget and not funded by increasing our national debt yet again?”
“Could I gently ask the Chancellor to be less partisan at a time of crisis? If she brings before the House difficult measures that are right for the country, she will have the support of the whole House, but if she is partisan, she will not. I actually rise to support her basic instinct, which is for targeted rather than universal support. Four years ago, energy bills were heading to £4,000. We are at nothing like that now, and we do not know what the oil price will be next week, let alone this winter. Although we gave support to households and families last time by increasing borrowing, with her support, we cannot react to every single economic shock by further increasing our national debt.”
“One of the things that makes our economy less resilient is high levels of debt. The Chancellor and I have both followed fiscal rules that allowed us to claim that debt was falling, when in fact it continued to rise, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of GDP. Does she think it is time to consider a new fiscal rule that actually reduces debt—for example, a rule that public spending will not increase faster than economic growth?”
“Will she unblock the arguments between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence and outline a timetable whereby defence spending increases to 3% of GDP and we are able to defend our interests in the middle east and our allies in Europe, as the whole House would wish?”
“When I was doing the Chancellor’s job, the Treasury rule of thumb was that a 20% increase in energy prices meant 1% more on inflation and 0.5% less on growth. The truth is that it is much too early to know whether the Chancellor will have to find £78 billion to help households with energy bills, as I had to do in 2022, but we do know that the world is much more dangerous and that there are big problems in our defence budget. I welcome the fact that the Government are now committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but nearly two years on from when the previous Government made the same commitment, it is clear that that is not enough.”
“Given what the Chancellor has just said about gas prices going up by nearly 50% in the past week, her Budget promise to reduce household energy bills by £150 will ring hollow for many people. If the cost of living is the real concern, is the biggest mistake not to increase taxes by £66 billion, which is the equivalent of nearly £2,300 per household? If that money is needed for public services, nearly all of that—£54 billion, in fact—could be got by reducing the welfare bill to 2019 levels. Is it sustainable to keep raising taxes on people in work in order to pay ever more benefits to people not in work?”
“British influence in the middle east is directly linked to the strength of our military and our willingness to use it. When he took office, the Prime Minister rightly increased defence spending, but that sum is now widely thought to be too little and taking too long. Will he unblock the argument between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence, so that this House can always have confidence that we will maintain a military formidable enough to defend our borders, interests and values?”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his excellent work as the FORB envoy and the extraordinary effort he is putting into the role. In a world in which geopolitics is becoming increasingly transactional—African Governments are increasingly focused on growth rather than on civil and political rights—and intolerance and bigotry are more widespread than ever, does he agree that it is vital that British foreign policy makes space for those without a voice, such as Christians in Nigeria, and that, however hard that is, we should redouble our efforts to do so?”
“Being able to commute to work easily is vital for economic growth, but my constituents using Ash Vale station have to climb the equivalent of two storeys of stairs, making it virtually impossible for people in wheelchairs, older people or young parents with prams to get up and get on to the main line to London. There is an excellent proposal under Access for All on the Secretary of State’s desk. When will my constituents find out whether there will be a happy new year for them?”
“Most people’s thoughts on Maduro’s capture will be, “Good riddance”, and I would have liked the Government to have been more categorical in supporting US action to remove an illegitimate and evil dictator, but if the new US approach extends to the annexation of Greenland, the sovereign territory of a NATO member, it could mean the end of the alliance, with disastrous consequences. How much planning is going on at the Foreign Office to make sure that such a disaster does not happen? We understand that discussions between allies have to be private, but from the outside, it looks like Europe is weak and divided. Can the Foreign Secretary reassure the House that the right conversations are happening, and that we are not just hoping for the best?”
“That is 1 million more people on universal credit just in the last year. Most of those claimants cite mental ill health, but every doctor I spoke to as Health Secretary said that people with anxiety and depression need social contact. That means being at work, not being at home.”
“Budgets are not easy for Chancellors, because there are so many things beyond their control, but being forced to make trade-offs reveals priorities. I am afraid today’s priority was not economic growth, but political survival. That is because there was one central call the Chancellor had to make today: do we reform welfare, or do we raise tax? Getting our welfare bill down to pre-pandemic levels would save about £47 billion a year within five years. It would not have been easy, but it would have meant no tax rises and plenty of headroom in public finances. Instead, welfare spend is going up, and jobs and growth are going down. In every single day of the Government’s first year, around 2,200 people have been signed off not just work, but from even having to look for work.”
“I absolutely share the hon. Lady’s concern. That standard was introduced when I was Health Secretary. This could have been the Budget in which the Chancellor announced we would speed up treatment for people with mental illness and not park them on welfare. This could have been the Budget that said that we will eliminate fraud by stopping completely benefit applications by phone. It could have been the Budget that said that instead of relying on migration to help firms expand, we will make sure that people at home are fit to join the workforce. Instead, the welfare bill is going up by around £14 billion, not least because of the totally unfair abolition of the two-child cap, which I fear will see more children, not fewer, living in the structural poverty caused when there are no adults in the household at work.”
“The tragedy is that absolute poverty—which, as I said, fell under the previous Conservative Government—is now likely to rise under Labour as jobs vanish and welfare rolls soar.”
“I recognise that the hon. Gentleman’s concern about child poverty is sincere; I just have a totally different view as to how to reduce child poverty in this country. I think financing people to have ever larger families will mean more children growing up in poverty, not fewer. The evidence for that is that under the previous Conservative Government, we had a million fewer children growing up in workless households, and child poverty in absolute terms fell. The hon. Gentleman needs to look at that evidence. The price we are paying for this mushrooming welfare bill is rising taxes which are already starting to destroy growth: 180,000 fewer payroll jobs in the last year; unemployment up, inflation up and interest rates higher than they would have been.”
“Instead, we had a Government arriving in office saying that they wanted “Growth, growth, growth” without knowing how they were going to get there. Growth needs a plan, not a soundbite, and it is that lack of a plan—or even a guiding philosophy—that has resulted today in a Budget that damages growth, damages investment, damages jobs and, most tragically of all, damages opportunities for young people, of whom there will shortly be a million not in employment, education or training.”
“I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I profoundly disagree on the way the Government are choosing to do that. By expanding the welfare bill and expanding the number of large families living in poverty, they are making the root causes of poverty worse and not better. The Chancellor says that there is a growth plan, but it was very difficult to discern it at all in today’s Budget. We know, for example, that raising public sector productivity to private sector levels would add 0.4% to annual GDP growth. We know that proper planning reforms would add 0.4%, that proper welfare reform would add 0.3% and that getting energy bills down properly would add 0.3%. We know that AI could dwarf all that, according to Microsoft and Accenture, potentially adding 1% a year. We got none of that today.”
“Can the Government please not tell us that everything is going to be fine just because they are not the evil Tories? That is what I think is most disappointing of all, because those terrible Tories got inflation down from 11% to 2% and saw 4 million new jobs in the economy, as opposed to nearly 200,000 fewer. They grew the economy faster than France, Germany, Italy or Japan, and they attracted more greenfield foreign direct investment than anywhere in the world apart from China and the United States.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we should look at the facts, which are very clear: the OBR upgraded growth for this year, and then downgraded it for every single year of the forecast thereafter. The overall size of the economy is shrinking as a result of the measures taken by the Chancellor in the previous Budget—and, I am afraid, made much worse in this Budget. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to go further on planning reform, but I do not think we have had any plan from the Government for the really substantive changes that would align incentives between local communities and national Government when it gets to things like planning approval for big infrastructure projects. I would cheer from the rafters if we heard that from the Chancellor, because it is urgently needed.”
“I would be happy to tell the hon. Lady which Government were responsible for 11% inflation: the Russian Government were responsible for 11% inflation. I will happily look in the eye the 200,000 fewer children in absolute poverty after a succession of Conservative Governments because of the 4 million jobs created on our watch. Let me say this. Those dreadful Tories also increased the number of doctors and nurses in the NHS by a third, and those posh Tories increased standards in state schools to have the highest reading standards in the western world. That, Madam Deputy Speaker, is because progressive instincts do not pay the bill for good public services—a strong economy does.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Chancellor makes a great play of fiscal responsibility—incidentally, I hope she will correct the record, because she said that she was reducing debt, when the OBR’s economic and financial outlook says that it is going up from 95% of GDP to 96% of GDP. On my hon. Friend’s point, yes: when the previous Conservative Government came into office, the Government were borrowing nearly £1 in every £4 that we were spending on public services, and we reduced that deficit from 10% to 2%, and Labour opposed us every single step of the way.”
“Labour Members might find that hard to hear from a former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister, but they might want to listen to the Resolution Foundation, which has been saying exactly the same thing on the airwaves today. No one disputes the progressive credentials of the Resolution Foundation. It has been warning against this rise in the minimum wage and all the extra workers’ rights, which it says could lead to a crisis in youth unemployment.”
“Even now, it may not be too late, because a Government who try to do the right thing with the time they have left are more likely to earn the trust of the British people than a Government who have given up. Please do not treat government as an exercise in survival. That would be a betrayal of the Government’s mandate. People with the broadest shoulders, as the Chancellor described them, will be rightly angry today. But it is the people who depend on public services, who are looking for a job and who are on the poverty line, who need a strong economy more than anyone else, and they will finish today feeling more scared than ever about their prospects.”
“I am proud that I dealt with a real black hole of £72 billion, not a fake one of £22 billion, in my fiscal events, and I met the fiscal rules every time. If the hon. Lady is really concerned about that low headroom, why did the shadow Chancellor at the time—now the current Chancellor—not object once to the fact that headroom was reduced to that level? I will tell the House why she did not object: because if I had left headroom any higher, I would have had to cut spending more or increase taxes more, and that would have made the recession we were heading into deeper and worse, with more unemployment, fewer jobs and more poverty. That is why I am proud that I took the right decision.”
“I thank the Minister for Housing and Planning for his constructive meeting last week on the community infrastructure levy. Could he tell the House whether Liberal Democrat-controlled councils such as mine in Waverley should be charging the community infrastructure levy to private householders who do a straightforward extension on their house?”
“My constituents in Cranleigh, Shamley Green, Bramley and Shalford find it very difficult to get to their local hospital in Guildford, and to the community hospital in Milford. There is no direct bus service. A quarter of older people do not have cars. What will the Government do to help them solve that problem, which is becoming more and more difficult?”
“Member for Wells and Mendip Hills said, there are 400,000 people with ME or with long covid symptoms that are like severe ME. For some of them, it is already too late. Maeve Boothby O’Neill and Sarah Lewis tragically lost their lives, and coroners issued prevention of future deaths notices.”
“When all his friends were starting a new life with their first job, he had to stay at home and go through the nightmare of first trying to get a diagnosis and get someone to agree that he had a problem, and then trying to get treatment for it. Tom felt that he was going in circles: doctors were not really persuaded and he was not getting any answers. He was very lucky because he had two remarkable parents, Alex and Denise, who could afford to go to America. In fact, they moved to America and they got him enrolled on clinical trials. This story has a positive ending, because six years on, he is doing incredibly well. He is actually thriving; he has a job and a partner, and his life is back on track—except, sadly, in America rather than here. As the hon.”
“It is a privilege to speak under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) for calling this debate. I would like to use my short time to tell the story of a young man who made me understand the tragedy of ME six years ago. He was a very promising first-year student at Durham University called Tom. He was on track to get a first in maths. He was a big hockey player, but in his second year, he started struggling, first to walk upstairs and to climb hills, and eventually he found that he could not wash himself, eat by himself or even read. Then, to his enormous frustration, he dropped out in his third year.”
“My plea to the Government is this: the last Government started the process by ignoring some of the scepticism in the medical community about whether ME was really a serious condition. It would be fantastic, and it would give so much hope, if this Government could now finish the job and invest in research that will transform the lives of so many people like Tom.”
“I thank the hon. Lady for talking about that very sad case. I actually think that the NHS is better than it was because of long covid. The real cause for hope is Edinburgh University’s DecodeME study, which the chief executive of Action for ME, Sonya Chowdhury, described to me as being like a treasure hunt map with eight crosses where there is a genetic code that matches ME, but where we then have to go and dig up that treasure. That is what is now waiting to happen, and why funding is so important. Ultimately, with the quality of research in this country, there should be no need for anyone to have to go to the United States or Germany for their treatment. During the pandemic, more lives were saved through treatments and vaccines discovered in this country than any other country in the world. We have amazing research happening here.”
“My constituent Steve Dally was charged £70,000 by Liberal Democrat-controlled Waverley borough council for the apparent crime of building a home extension. I met the Housing Minister earlier this year to talk about abuse of the community infrastructure levy. Could he update the House on his plans to stop it?”
“The Minister said categorically and very carefully that the National Security Adviser took no decisions as to the contents of the evidence provided to the CPS. Will he clarify for the House whether the NSA had any influence at all—direct or indirect, and whether about provision or omission—over the contents of that evidence, provided by his own deputy, which led to the collapse of the trial?”
“I will finish by saying this. The NHS was set up on the premise of equality, and the idea that no matter who we are—whether we are rich or poor, young or old, from the north or the south, from the city or the country—everyone should be able to access the healthcare they need. Everyone means every baby, too. We talk about safety more than any other healthcare system in the world. In this very sad week, when we remember all the people who have lost their dear babies and their dear loved ones in the process of having babies, let us redouble our efforts to make the NHS the safest, highest-quality healthcare system in the world.”
“I know they are set up with the best of intentions, but safety and quality is not one of the factors that ensures a move up the list. I know the Secretary of State will take great care in the way that those are implemented, but I think it is really important that there is always a bottom line—a floor—on safety and quality below which the system never goes. What I really want to say to the House, in conclusion, is that we must not lose hope. If we had the same levels of maternity safety as Sweden, one fewer baby would die every day; if we got to the same levels as Japan, two fewer babies would die every day. If we could get the NHS back on the trajectory it was on in the years leading up to the pandemic, we would be able to get to care as safe as Sweden’s in the next five or six years, so it really is something within our grasp.”
“People having their own GP would make an enormous difference, because at the moment there is no one inside the NHS to turn to when these things go wrong, and going back to the system of everyone having their own GP could make a really big difference to that. We need to support the work of brilliant charities such as Tommy’s, Sands, the Clinical Human Factors Group and Baby Lifeline in their contribution to making maternity care safer. We also need to tackle the dangerous culture of “normal” births, which still sees too many mothers steered away from getting a surgical intervention when that would be the safest route for them and their baby. Those are all important changes. I would like to say one final thing, which is that we must not return to a targets culture. I have some concerns about the new NHS league tables.”
“We must return to the one-word ratings so that parents and families know absolutely whether the care in their local hospital or NHS organisation is safe. That is really important. Secondly, we have a litigation culture. At the moment we spend about £3.5 billion annually in maternity awards for where maternity care has gone wrong, which is not far off the £4 billion total cost of all NHS maternity units. It has gone so badly wrong that many parents think that when something goes wrong, their only friend is not a doctor but a lawyer—that cannot be right. We need to have much better accountability. The Government are rightly absolutely committed to bringing back family doctors.”