Sir Edward Leigh
MP for Gainsborough · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Those of us who love the Jewish people and faith know that the reason why they have overcome all the empires that have tried to destroy them is that they are primarily people of the book and not the sword, but what is happening in the west bank is violent and egregious.”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for looking again at Lincolnshire. I made the point to her predecessor that the proposal for a Greater Lincolnshire authority was, in the eyes of many people, just a gerrymander. Will she look again at it and stop dividing West Lindsey and North Kesteven in half?”
“If the centre does not take action, nasty extremes will take over. The fact is that we are in acute danger. These people can now launch from anywhere on the north French coast and are escorted to our shores. Frankly, we are being invaded, and the public are completely fed up.”
“May I congratulate the Prime Minister on what he said about Ukraine and on how he conducted himself there? Our enemies should know that this House is completely and utterly united in standing behind the Ukrainian people.”
“What concerns me is the jobs of my constituents who work at Scunthorpe. That is all I am worried about; I have no ideological objection. If it is what is needed now, fair enough. As long as the blast furnaces are totally uneconomic because of high energy costs, however, it can only be a sticking plaster.”
“One of the poorest wards in the entire country is Gainsborough south-west ward. Why is the Secretary of State splitting West Lindsey in half? Why is he taking Scampton away from Gainsborough? It makes no sense. Why is he cutting away the nuclear fusion site from Lincoln?”
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“I was struck by a very touching email that was sent to me by a constituent, who actually supports the Bill on the grounds that when his wife was dying, and he was begging the doctor in a national health hospital to give her more morphine, the doctor said, “If I did that, I would be breaking the law.” I can see the Health Secretary is sitting here, and I really think that if we are going to have a serious debate about this issue, we need to have something equivalent to a royal commission to determine what doctors can and cannot do. It is essential that we really reassure the public. There is tremendous interest in and huge doubt about this issue.”
“Will the hon. Gentleman forgive me if I do not? I know that many people want to speak. I just want to develop this argument, then I will finish. The law is so unclear. I have talked to a number of palliative care specialists, and they say that we can give as much morphine as we want to a patient and we will not kill them, but there is real doubt in the minds of the public. A lot of the impetus around this debate, and the reason why people in opinion polls are apparently supportive of this measure, is that they are terrified of dying in pain. There is no need for this. When I talk to consultants and practitioners in palliative care, they say that they can manage pain.”
“Members could have watched Look North, our local television news programme, and seen the tributes paid by local people, who said how loved he was in Hull and how hard he worked for the people. He was a great man and he will be sorely missed.”
“Neil Kinnock leaned over and said, “Calm down, John, calm down.” I thought, “Here is a man of real strong opinion.” We have so many anaemic politicians today—I am not looking at anybody in particular—so it was wonderful to have a man like John Prescott on the Opposition Benches. John much mellowed and it was a great joy to serve with him on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. I remember him saying that his children wanted him to go on “Strictly Come Dancing”, but he decided not to. That would have been something for the history books—John Prescott on “Strictly Come Dancing”! As a local Member of Parliament, I pay tribute to John Prescott. I used to take my children to The Deep, and he did a great many things for Hull. I wish hon.”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I served in this place with John Prescott for many years, and I admired him from afar as being a true Labour man and a man of true grit. I am not sure that my admiration of him was reciprocated, but I held him in great affection. My first memory of him was in 1983, when I arrived in this place as a new Member of Parliament. I gave a speech, during which I could see John grunting and looking furious. He probably thought I was an absurd, young, opinionated Thatcherite brat—and he was probably right. Talking of Mrs Thatcher, my next memory of him was when I saw him having a quiet supper in the little Members’ canteen we used to have downstairs. The moment my boss, Mrs Thatcher, came in, I could see John waving his hands in fury at her for all that she had done.”
“Q6. Today is Red Wednesday, when we remember all those worldwide who are persecuted for their belief. A recent report by Aid to the Church in Need shows that in the countries surveyed the persecution of minorities increased by 60%. In the light of that, will the Government commit to reappointing the Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion and belief, a post that has remained vacant since July, as soon as possible and hopefully by Christmas, so that we in the United Kingdom can play our part in defending religious and belief minorities worldwide?”
“Ordered, That Sir Edward Leigh, Rachael Maskell, Sir John Hayes, Danny Kruger, Sir Christopher Chope, Sir Julian Lewis, Lincoln Jopp, Martin Vickers, Dame Meg Hillier, Saqib Bhatti, Helen Grant and Sir Roger Gale present the Bill. Sir Edward Leigh accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 December , and to be printed (Bill 13 6 ).”
“They may believe fundamentally, from a religious point of view, in the right to life; or they may have a libertarian point of view that states that everybody has a right to control their destiny. But when making this decision, probably one of the most important in this Parliament, it is surely important that we do so from a state of knowledge, and that we have a hospice movement and an NHS that are fully funded to care for our old people, so that we can assure all people that in this country—this civilised nation—we will ensure that everyone’s passing is as painless and peaceful as possible. In that spirit, I commend the Bill to the House. Question put and agreed to.”
“For her, and the vast majority of other patients, doctors are there to prolong life and palliate symptoms. Were this to change, then we should not be doctors in the eyes of many but bringers of death, agents of a state which counts the weakest members as expendable and worthy of nothing but an early grave.” In conclusion, I hope that my Bill and this very short debate will inform discussion on this unbelievably moving and delicate matter. I have a dream, as we all have, that in years to come, when our time comes, we will be given the care that we need, but there is so much doubt and uncertainty about that. Many people, quite understandably, take a position from a point of principle.”
“Again, we need much more information about this whole area. I hope that my intervention today, in which I am seeking more knowledge, not just loudly stating my own position, is helpful, and that my Bill is useful. Today I received the following letter from a doctor: “Only recently, I was giving my condolences to a grieving woman who had lost her husband in the early hours. He had been given a few small doses of pain relief and mild sedatives over the last few nights for symptom control and had passed away peacefully at her side. She asked me in all seriousness, ‘Doctor, did the nurses give him something to make him die quicker last night?’ This was an awful lingering doubt that she had. I was able to firmly reassure her that, no, the medication would not have sped up his passing.”
“Should we not start by building up our hospice movement before we are given a binary choice in 10 days’ time? All this is before we even start to consider other issues, such as extending the law to other countries, or pressure being put on old people who feel themselves to be a burden. There is something else that we that must consider. We know that we must provide more funding for the hospice and care home sector, but how can we afford it from general taxation? We need a national debate on a new social contract for a ballooning frail and elderly population with multiple health needs, and I have long argued that we can only do so with social insurance. We have to pay more for our care in old age. What we do not want, however, is pressure for assisted suicide for old people because there are not the resources to pay for them.”
“It was clearly good practice. We, the public, need to be told what the situation is, in respect of ensuring a peaceful death in all conditions. My Bill would be a small step forward in taking up the debate and informing it. The debate in 10 days’ time could be seen as a useful airing of the issues, and then, in a year or two, we could make a measured and well-informed decision. This is an immeasurably complex issue. First, there are deeply held moral and religious concerns about the ethics of assisted suicide; but even if those are of no concern to some people, there are practical issues as well. The hospice movement is one of our most loving and admired services, but we all know that sometimes there is not sufficient experience in some NHS hospitals to match the care given in hospices, so we need to know more.”
“My Bill asks the Secretaries of State for Justice, and for Health and Social Care, to publish a detailed analysis and advice on the law and procedures. For instance, palliative care nurses tell me that if your only motive is to relieve pain, you can give as much morphine as you like to a patient, and you will not kill him or her. However, I also hear that sometimes the pain doubles but the nurse—probably not in a hospice, but in a hospital—is unwilling to double the dose for fear of legal consequences. I hope that if I am dying of terminal cancer, a nurse will not hesitate to give me as much as necessary. I was at the deathbed of a dear friend and former colleague in the House; we were together in a hospice. I could hear the morphine pass, gurgling, into his wrists. He was knocked out, and his death was peaceful.”
“We would like to know more about the passing of people with degenerative diseases. Demand for palliative care is increasing, and will continue to do so. It is estimated that by 2050, one in every four people in England and Wales will be over 65. The charity Marie Curie estimates that by 2048, over 646,000 more people will need palliative care—and, of course, just as individuals and families are feeling the cost of living crisis, our hospices are facing higher expenses. Hospice UK estimates that hospices faced £100 million more in costs in 2023 than in the year before. Research from King’s College London suggests that more than 100,000 people in the UK die each year without receiving the palliative care that they need and deserve.”
“At least one retired judge has questioned the role of judges. Should we not know more? My Bill seeks to gain, and give the public, extra knowledge on one key aspect of this debate. What is the state of palliative care in this country? What are the options available to assist people in their dying? I use that phrase advisedly. All hospices currently assist people in dying as peacefully and painlessly as possible, but they do not do that by administering lethal drugs. So much of the impetus in favour of assisted suicide comes from an understandable fear of dying in pain. Talking to palliative care nurses and doctors, I am told that in nearly every case experienced practitioners can make our passing bearable, but I would like to know more, and I think that the public would.”
“There is simply not enough time to consider the immense complexities of this issue before we will be required to make our decision. That point will be the subject of a joint letter from me and the Mother of the House, the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), to be published in The Guardian tomorrow. A private Member’s Bill may be an appropriate vehicle for an issue that is narrow in scope, or involves a decision that is relatively clearcut, but that is not the case for the assisted suicide Bill. Were it a Government Bill—which it should be—there would be an impact assessment, but there is none. The Bill is much longer than almost any other private Member’s Bill, but it was published only very recently. What will be the impact on the NHS? Do we not need to know?”
“I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to issue guidance about the application of the criminal law in respect of the administration of pain relief by healthcare professionals to people who are terminally ill; and for connected purposes. As we know, a ten-minute rule Bill is a delicate flower; it is almost certainly doomed to oblivion because there is no time for a Second Reading debate, but it can serve a purpose in allowing us to demonstrate a truth or a problem, or even just ask a question. I am deliberately proposing this Bill 10 days before the debate on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill—the “assisted suicide” Bill—because I want to highlight a real problem.”
“As the Government have announced this month that they are putting RAF Scampton back on the market and the luckless Home Office is now—thank God—out of the picture, the excellent MOD and this brilliant cast of Ministers are now very much in the picture. May I have an assurance today that they will work closely with West Lindsey to further our exciting plans to promote defence industries on this historic site and keep the runway open?”
“We all know that a lot of the debate on assisted dying revolves around the lack of hospice places to help people pass in the best way possible. Similarly, much of the debate on the NHS is about the lack of care home spaces. Leaving aside the cross-party name-calling, may I beg the Minister to consider exempting hospices and care homes from this national insurance increase?”
“I am a bit worried about what my hon. Friend is saying. Why do we need a comprehensive plan at all? Why not just leave it alone? As that great conservative, Lord Falkland, once said, “When it is not necessary to do something, it is necessary not to do it.””
“I am sorry to declare an interest, but why is my right hon. Friend so ageist? Some people are wonderful at the age of 80, and others are useless at the age 50.”
“Incidentally, because of our canon law, the Catholic bishops do not want to be Members of the House of Lords anyway, although they are apparently quite willing to support distinguished laymen to help the Catholic cause there—but we all know that. I do not think that we will ever reach an agreement on abolishing the bishops in the House of Lords.”
“We say that that is gerrymandering, that the bulk of these people are hardworking and that by nature they are Conservatives, so this is an excuse to get rid of a large number of Conservative peers. The Government will carry on and do it anyway. That is clearly very controversial. The next proposal, it seems, is to abolish the bishops. I heard what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), but there are all sorts of objections to doing that, not least because this is an established Church. Do we really want to attack a faith community? It is part of our history. Are the bishops really doing much harm in the House of Lords?”
“It is an honour to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), such a well-loved, distinguished and senior Member—even if he has only served 27 years in this House. I have sat through the whole debate and I did not intend to speak, but I just want to reply to a few comments. By its very nature, the debate has been confrontational—that is what we do in this place. We tend to concentrate on what divides us rather than on what unites us, and I want to say something about what might unite us. First of all, on the ideas that divide us, we are debating whether to abolish the hereditaries. The Labour party says that it is in its manifesto and therefore it can do what it wants.”
“They regularly defeat the Government, and they actually have better debates than we do. The House of Lords is full of people who have tremendous experience in the professions, business and charities. I just do not see the point of getting rid of them lock, stock and barrel, but there is a perfectly good consensual argument that the number should be reduced. There are some people in the Lords whom we should remove either because they have not been appointed in an entirely right way or because they do not turn up.”
“That is a very good point. I remember that rebellion very well—it was the start of my many rebellions. I suggest to Labour Members that they should not rebel if they want get on in this place. We had a rebellion and finally won on that issue, and my right hon. Friend makes a very good point about how we won the argument. That underlines how important it is to have a second Chamber that is not composed of elected politicians. I really do not see the point of electing politicians to a second Chamber, because it would just be like this place: full of people who want to become Ministers and who are completely subordinate to the Whips. What is the point of having an elected second Chamber? The whole point of a second Chamber is that it should be independent-minded, and the Lords are independent-minded.”
“I think we can all agree that the other place, for all that it is seemingly undemocratic, works quite well. The Lords actually listen to debates, and they vote according to their conscience. They regularly defeat the Government, and they improve Bills again and again. If it works, why change it? Will the Paymaster General please think about the idea that I have suggested? We could get some sort of compromise by which all parties in the House of Lords are reduced by the same amount. We could reduce the Lords to around 600 Members, give more power to the House of Lords Appointments Commission and, in future, keep the number at about 600.”
“Q8. As a good lawyer, the Prime Minister will want to listen to the evidence, so if evidence mounts from experts and organisations such as the National Farmers Union that smaller family farms of average size—250 acres—will be severely impacted by the tax changes, will he, in a spirit of compromise, listen to that evidence, keep an open mind and perhaps be prepared to raise the threshold in order to preserve our family farms?”
“The previous Government negotiated a scheme by which we can deport Albanian prisoners back to Albania. It is an excellent scheme; Albania is a completely safe country, of course. Given that those crossing the channel are committing an illegal offence, is there anything legally to stop us arresting them and putting them on a flight straight to Albania? We do not even need to lock them up in Albania; they can just start their journey all over again—what a good deterrent.”
“I warmly congratulate the new shadow Chancellor on his appointment. It is richly deserved, given his tremendous work as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in getting people back to work. In opening this debate, the Secretary of State said that she is only attacking wealthy people. My right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) is talking about working people, so will he emphasise that our party stands four-square behind working farmers? These people, with only 250 acres, just want to pass on their business to their son, but they are being cruelly attacked by this Government.”
“I am sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer would claim that she is just being honest, but the Budget is, none the less, a massive expansion of tax and spend. Governments who indulge in massive expansions of tax and spends are Governments who gradually impoverish countries. More and more people—even those just surviving on a state pension—will be dragged into tax. People on higher incomes will be dragged into paying ever higher rates of tax. The right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North made the classic attack on the top earners, but 1% of top earners pay 30% of all tax revenues. If we simply tax people more and more at the top end of the scale, we will get less enterprise, less growth, and those people will leave the country. It is a vicious circle, and it does not work.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne). He said that Alistair Darling was his hero. My hero was Nigel Lawson, because I am personally convinced that the way to create growth and prosperity is to flatten and lower taxes. I think I have sat through 45 Budget statements in this House. They are quite exhausting, and I am quite cynical about the whole process. Normally, large amounts of good news are given out during the Budget statement when we are all sitting in the Chamber, but when we read the Red Book the next day we find that we are probably paying even more tax than we were before—everything has been taken back. However, this time, the pain has been loaded up front, so I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies.”
“Pumping in more billions of pounds this year, next year and the year after that will not solve the fundamental problem of the national health service. This is a huge, inefficient, state-run monopoly that solves its problems with queueing. Somebody of my age knows all about the national health service and having to wait for non-urgent operations—not just for months, but for years, and I can speak about that with personal experience.”
“There are a whole load of reasons why we were not able to solve the fundamental problems, but I believe very strongly that this Budget will not solve them either. My personal belief is that we have to create an entire new social contract. More and more people feel disconnected from the need to work and to take responsibility for their lives. There are four or perhaps five key failures in the state, and I do not think that the Budget has long-term solutions for them. I refer to the national health service, the pension service, benefits, immigration, and probably housing, and they are all interconnected. As successive Governments have not had the courage to go to the root causes of our failure as a state, we are gradually falling behind other countries.”
“The right hon. Gentleman and I could have an argument about history, but I would still defend my mentor and, even more so, the Prime Minister at that time, Margaret Thatcher, until the day I die, and we would just have to disagree on that. That is our philosophical foundation. I could devote my speech to an attack on the Labour Government. There is plenty of ammunition to do so. The leader of my party has just given a brilliant exposé of their weaknesses. However, I want to take the debate a bit further and not be too party political. The British state has fundamental problems. Members can the criticise the previous Government for not having the time or the courage to deal with things, or they could say that we were thrown off course by the pandemic.”
“It is totally unacceptable. Surely everyone in this House can unite around the a principle that those who have paid into the system for years should be treated with dignity and expeditiously.”
“Well, let us see. Of course we can pump more and more money into this broken system and solve some of the short-term problems, but soon we will be not just a country with an NHS, but an NHS with a country attached to it. Is it 44% of total spending that goes on the NHS? It is growing all the time, which means that, as a country, we are gradually becoming poorer and poorer. The long-term result will be that we will have a worse health service. I say to the hon. Lady that, of course, it is totally unacceptable that people wait hours to be treated in A&E, and wait months and years for an operation. In Lincolnshire, 58% of people in A&E now have to wait more than four hours—four hours! I can tell the House horror stories of my constituents waiting up to 24 hours. That is not happening in any other developed country.”
“I must not give way too much, because I will prevent other people from getting in. A study of 18 developed countries shows that the UK is in the bottom three when it comes to survival rates for common cancers, strokes and heart attacks. Lord Darzi’s review found that 14,000 avoidable deaths per year were due to long waits in A&E. This drags our life expectancy statistics down and down. Meanwhile, even before the Budget, the NHS was eating up 44% of day-to-day public spending. We are paying more and more and the results are getting worse and worse. I predict that for the rest of this Parliament, the Government will keep on pumping more of our national wealth into this failed system and we will still fail to catch up with other countries.”
“The situation is out of control. Work should always pay more than benefits. I would have liked to have heard more from the Chancellor about how she is going to attack the benefits system and incapacity, which is gradually reducing the Government into penury.”
“This situation simply cannot go on and on, otherwise people will start talking about charging or giving tax relief for private health insurance. We have to have a fundamental debate about the whole structure of health, and the Health Secretary has the good will of people across the House and across the country to start thinking big and thinking of new ideas. If he can find a way forward and improve health outcomes, he will go down in history as one of the greatest Health Secretaries we have ever had. The second fundamental problem we have is the ballooning benefits system, particularly when it comes to incapacity. It is trapping more and more people in dependence. We need a culture of the necessity of work. We have 4 million people on incapacity benefit, and two thirds of them—recent joiners—are claiming mental illness.”
“It is not perfect, of course, and not everything can be imported from other countries, but Australia’s system shows that there are other models. We must have a national debate about how, with an ageing population, we can produce the kind of health outcomes that people desire. There is a cumulative effect: in 2022, the Australian Government debt was 70% of GDP. In other words, it is running a tight, well-run ship. That is a country much like us—but the UK has already, even before this Budget, reached a staggering 104% debt in the same year. We are going broke because we do not have the courage, on either side of the aisle, to think from first principles. I am making this argument as much to those on my own Benches as I am to the Government.”
“For instance, the average cost of a treatment-only plan for a 20-year-old in Australia is just £23.14 a month, and comprehensive cover starts at £31 a month. That cost rises to £109 per month for a 70-year-old. People earning less than £119,000 can claim rebates to reduce the cost of health insurance, and higher earners without insurance pay a surcharge of between 1% and 1.5%. Research commissioned by Australia’s Department of Health shows that the cost to the taxpayer would be greater without the rebates, because there would be increased stress on the public system. The health outcomes are noticeable. Australia has one of the lowest rates of avoidable mortality among the developed nations. Its cancer survival rates are several percentage points higher than the UK’s, and stroke and heart attack mortality rates are several points lower.”
“Well, it is followed by France, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands, and all those other countries produce much better health outcomes. Australia slowly developed a hybrid system of state and private health insurance. Everyone has universal public health insurance, but workers are encouraged to purchase private health insurance on top of that. My point is that, with a ballooning, ageing population, yes, we have to spend more on health, but we have to get people to put more of their own money into health; and they must be assured that, having put their money in, they will not just end up at the back of a queue, because they have personal rights and are committed to this health service.”
“No; I have to keep going. I accept that some issues, such as hospital capacity, can only be dealt with by spending, but we do not need to reinvent the wheel; we need to learn from other countries. The Health Secretary, who I admire for his apparent radical zeal—although we have not seen much evidence of it—studied Australia, for instance. Let me break the national taboo on “our NHS”, our religion. There are other countries that are like ourselves but which deliver much better—incomparably superior—health outcomes. It is my personal belief, and I think I am about the only person who has said this year after year, that we should adopt Australia’s social insurance model. There is nothing wrong with encouraging private provision in health. Is that some great heresy? Is it some sort of right-wing philosophy?”
“People were encouraged to put more into their pensions and plan for their old age. That is the only way, with an ageing population, that we can solve our problems. In addition to all this, I am afraid that wokery and human rights legislation are gradually eating away into our— [ Laughter. ] Government Members may all laugh, but it is true. Many people feel that they are not part of the way in which this country is run. These are just lessons that the Government have to learn.”
“We are all committed to keeping the triple lock, and I would get into awful deep water if I said that doing so is becoming increasingly unaffordable, but of course if the portion of the state spending devoted to pensions increases every year in real terms, we will gradually ensure that the country cannot pay its way. This is a difficult truth that nobody yet has had the courage to address: we have to do more to encourage private pensions, and not—I say this to the Chancellor—seeing private pension pots as a convenient thing to raise taxes on. Many years ago, I served on the Social Security Committee under the late, great Frank Field, a man immensely respected on both sides of the aisle. We studied countries like Chile that were making explicit the creation of contributory pension systems.”
“It is gradually destroying the social contract and people’s belief in the system, and the Government must have a plan to deal with it, which basically means arresting people when they land illegally on these shores, and offshoring them. The other great problem in our national psyche that we have not really addressed is the whole pension system. I have to declare an interest: I am of pensionable age. [Hon. Members: “Never!”] Some Members will be very happy when I retire from this House, but I do try to tell the truth according to my own lights and to state difficult truths. The fact is that we have more and more elderly people, more and more sick people, and more and more people with multiple health problems.”
“It is that health and social care simply cannot get enough workers for the salaries they are paying. There are too many people on benefits, and we are dragging more and more people from all over the world into our system. We need to insist that anyone entering the country earns at least average UK earnings. We cannot go on undercutting our native workers with cheap foreign labour. We have to pay decent wages in our care service, and reform the whole benefits structure so that people actually want to work. We cannot solve our problems with mass immigration, and mass illegal immigration is part of the problem.”
“The hon. Lady has made her point, although I was talking about incapacity benefit, so I am not sure how her point has addressed mine. The culture of people living off the state for years, when they are capable of doing some work, needs to be stamped out. We have to work together in the House to get people off benefits and help them. It is about not just reducing benefits, but having innovative schemes, like those that the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), was trying to bring about to encourage people back into work, making their whole lives better and more productive. Thirdly, tackling benefits is a vital ingredient of curbing immigration. What is the spur for mass immigration?”
“[Hon. Members: “More!”] No doubt these difficult words about the national health service or the triple lock will be used by Labour party spokesmen for years to come, if anybody is interested. However, I hope that we have the intellectual courage to try to solve the real problems in our society. How are we going to get a decent health service that is on a par with what we find in France, Australia and the Netherlands? How are we going to get a decent housing programme? How are we going to get people to contribute more towards their old age? Unless we address the fundamental deep-seated problems in the British state we will just gradually become a poorer and poorer nation.”