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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“Obviously farmers in low-lying areas of Lincolnshire are suffering from flooding, so any update on the support that they can be given would be very helpful. I have a specific question for the Secretary of State: will the Government update us on when they will announce the long-term funding solution that they promised for internal drainage boards, to address the pressure on local authorities through special levies?”
“T2. In response to my earlier question, the Secretary of State said that food security was of urgent national concern. Has any Agriculture Minister ever met a farmer who has denied that 3b land is just as good for growing arable crops as 3a land?”
“Q4. When it comes to small boat crossings, there is a lot of talk of human rights, but surely the only human right and life that matters is the life of children who are being taken across the channel. In that respect, will the Government now do the only thing that will actually be a real deterrent and arrest and detain all those who land illegally on our shores and then offshore them promptly so that, once and for all, we can save lives and end this cruel and callous trade?”
“Will the excellent, first-class Minister before us today now ensure that his attention is laser-focused on working with us and doing what we have argued for from the beginning: releasing the entire site to Scampton Holdings so that we can get the biggest and best levelling up we have ever had on a former RAF base?”
“Fifteen months after the Government announced that they were taking over the whole of RAF Scampton and putting 2,000 migrants there, not a single one has arrived. We have fought the Home Office to a complete standstill and everything we have said has been proved correct; the costs are rising exponentially from £5 million to £27 million, and the buildings are decaying, as is the runway. The Labour party has now joined me in my early-day motion against this proposal. We have involved the Levelling Up Secretary, who is now imposing all sorts of conditions on the Home Office.”
“That was a perfectly valid intervention, but surely one way to approach this problem is for us to get much better palliative care in place throughout the country. Everybody should be entitled to a dignified death. On this point, under the law of double effect, it is perfectly proper for a qualified doctor to relieve pain with very large amounts of morphine as long as his or her primary purpose is not to kill the patient.”
“For 14 long, weary years I have been arguing for an end of the faith cap, which is preventing the opening of new Catholic schools and has no proper effect. Does the Secretary of State think that I should keep campaigning and be patient for a bit longer?”
“In the 1930s, a wise Government ensured that RAF airfields were upgraded and improved, and that saved us from extinction in 1940. If we are to be on a war footing, will the Secretary of State remind the Home Office that it is its duty to maintain the best runway in Europe, the 10,000-ft runway at RAF Scampton, instead of letting it rot, as it is at present? If the Home Office is incapable of doing that, will it hand it over to Scampton Holdings as soon as possible—as we have argued for 15 months—so that it can be used, improved and available for a future emergency?”
“I know that there is a problem in detaining illegal migrants at the moment under habeas corpus, but when the Bill comes into force, will it be the legal position that we can then detain people before offshoring them, because that is the only real deterrent?”
“In the unlikely event that we have a Labour Government, would the shadow Minister be happy if future Opposition parties, which necessarily and usually dominate the House of Lords, frustrated them? Will he advise his friends up there to respect the will of the elected House?”
“I end by mentioning that in the civil war, on the margins of my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who is no longer in his place, there was the battle of Riby Gap, where the pesky parliamentarians tried to displace the noble royalists from that part of Lincolnshire. The royalists fought and they won, and in Lincolnshire, we will fight and we will win.”
“It is very simple: the Minister must say, “You cannot build these things on grade 3b land.” Any farmer in Lincolnshire would say that there is absolutely no difference between 3a and 3b in terms of production, but we want that to be independently verified. As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) said, we do not want dodgy agronomists going around pretending that this land is grade 3a. There is virtually no difference, so we should not build solar panels on 3b land and it should be independently verified. We want to have planning guidance available to the inspector to ensure that, although we can cope with some solar panel development, it cannot be on the scale of 10,000 acres within six miles. Those are the simple steps that the Minister urgently needs to take.”
“These proposals are taking up too much land for their energy output, and they are taking out thousands and thousands of acres of land that is good for agriculture, which undermines farming and food security. They will erect eyesores that will lessen the beauty of our natural landscapes and undermine local tourism. They are cheating the system by skipping the normal planning scrutiny provided by democratically accountable local decision-makers. The primary benefit will be to faceless international companies rather than to locals. These vulture firms are attempting to gobble up our countryside. The Government must say no. I emphasise that, as has been said, we do not need legislation.”
“I have attended the public inquiries for West Burton and Cottam, and I have argued my case. In the vicinity of the small town of Gainsborough, within a radius of just six miles, the proposal is for solar farms to cover 10,000 acres of agricultural land. The local authority and local people have absolutely no say. That is entirely wrong and when I have gone in person to argue on behalf of my constituents, the highly paid barristers and solicitors hired by these entrepreneurs from London say, “Well, we’re sorry. We’re only doing what the Government want.” It is now for the Minister, in the time available, to step in and save our people. This energy will go straight into the national grid. It will have no local benefit and will not reduce energy costs for local people.”
“Solar and wind can top that up, but they cannot replace it. It is astonishing how scant the large-scale proposals are in terms of local community gain; they offer virtually nothing—almost no benefit—to my constituents. The arrogance is extraordinary. I suspect that that is because the solar firms are skipping the normal planning process, as has been said many times already, by applying for them as nationally significant infrastructure projects, instead of them being determined locally by our district councils. They have also divided the applications into many smaller ones, even though each one is useless unless it is part of a major offering. I have argued before the Planning Inspectorate that the collective impact of these proposals is colossal. Each individual application can be evaluated accurately only as a part of a whole.”
“When the oil crisis hit Europe in 1973, the Prime Minister of France, Pierre Messmer, was determined that a great nation like France must be able to look after its energy needs. At the time, most of France’s electricity was generated thanks to foreign oil. Messmer rolled out a massive programme of building nuclear power stations to provide cheap, clean energy. France is now much more globally competitive for business because of nuclear power. The regulated unit price of electricity in France last year was 53% of that of the UK. Messmer said, “In France, we do not have oil, but we do have ideas.” Let us have some good ideas, Minister, and not just build over our countryside. Here in the UK, we have North sea oil and gas, so let us have ideas that use cheap, reliable energy from nuclear and gas.”
“We need greater prosperity spread around the United Kingdom, but these proposals are backed by faceless global investment firms relying on us to sign them a blank cheque. It is not the Government’s job to do that. We must be the custodians of this land, its people and its history, which includes our countryside, farming sector, environment and landscapes. Land-intensive low-output solar installations are not the solution. In fact, they only create more problems. Solar undoubtedly has a part to play in energy production; we need a diverse energy set-up in this country. The Government also need to build more power plants and replace ones that are coming offline. We need more nuclear; we have been dragging our heels while France has been a marvel on that front.”
“They are accused of being nimbys, but they are simply good people defending often quite modest lifestyles in our rural economy. The beautiful landscapes of England—not to mention the holiday let industry, which has grown immensely across the country and is currently surviving—are under threat. The net effect on tourism in Lincolnshire and across England will be negative. We should foster and encourage that sector across the counties of England, not stifle it. The inspiration behind solar panel installations is not environmental altruism but naked profit. There is nothing wrong with people wanting to be entrepreneurs or to make profit, but that should not be at the expense of the British countryside.”
“One of the green arguments against tearing down Richmond House while the Palace of Westminster is renovated is that we would be demolishing not just a listed building, but one that is perfectly useable. It is just decades old and has decades left of its natural cycle, so that is not a green thing to do. There is no clear evidence that the embodied energy involved in constructing these massive solar panel projects will ever be made back during their 15-year lifecycle, before they are replaced or removed. When embodied energy is taken into account, it is doubtful that these huge proposals are in fact sustainable or green. Massive solar panel installations have the potential to send property values plunging. As my hon. Friends have argued, homeowners have put their life savings into their homes and should have the right to defend them.”
“In a summer heatwave with temperatures of 30°C or more, the amount of energy that solar panels contribute decreases—how bizarre. Everybody assumes that these things are wonderful when the sun is shining, but that is not necessarily true on the hottest days when we need them most. Solar is useful, but it simply cannot be relied on. Keeping a massive gas-powered infrastructure on hand is a necessary component of this solar-powered system. Solar on its own is hugely expensive. A point that has not been made yet is that ecologists have become more aware of the importance of embodied energy: the usage that goes into the building or manufacture of something.”
“Somebody on the living wage in a terraced house in Gainsborough pays through their energy bills, and it goes into the pockets of entrepreneurs and huge landowners earning £100,000 a year on just 100 acres. That is not green, not fair and not right. Meanwhile, our typically wet British weather means that we have occasionally had to fire up the coal plants to meet the country’s energy needs, not just when it is rainy and cloudy, but sometimes even when the sun is shining. We all know that solar panels do not work when it is dark, but people assume they work fantastically well in the summer—not necessarily. Last summer, we had a sweltering week that led to an uptick in energy demand as people turned on their air conditioning and plugged in their fans. Solar panels tend to be optimised for 25°C.”
“Britain is and always will be a maritime power, a trading nation and an agricultural producer. We cannot produce everything we consume, but the more we do, the better off we are and the greater our food security is. Do we really think that turfing out tenant farmers and their families—good, solid people who may have been there for 200 years—to build solar panels on thousands and thousands of acres of arable land at the behest of entrepreneurs from London is a good idea? Those farmers have no rights, by the way. What is so unfair about that is that the rewards to some very large landowners are absolutely staggering: £100,000 on 100 acres. Is it any surprise that all those people are being bought off? People say that solar farms are not subsidised, but of course they are subsidised through green levies.”
“As Matt Ridley pointed out in The Daily Telegraph this month, the UK is currently vying with the intensive agriculture of New Zealand in terms of wheat yield. Britain’s combination of moist soil and long summer days is perfect for growing wheat, as we well know in Lincolnshire. How will that be affected if we shift from useful and nourishing food to unreliable energy production? People say that solar energy is green, but what is more green than converting sunlight into food? That is what our farms do. How will that be affected if we shift from useful and nourishing food to unreliable energy production? The quantity of land involved is staggering. The journalist Robert Bryce has discovered that solar panels typically need about 200 times the amount of land as gas to generate the equivalent energy output.”
“Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings and I met the Prime Minister yesterday and asked him to extend that protection to 3b. At Energy questions this week, I made the same point and got a reassurance on the Floor of the House that it was never the intention of the Government to build on good agricultural land. I know that the Minister is very limited in what he can say, but as my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) said, in the remaining months available to him as a Minister in this Government, we just have to act to end this scandal of solar panels being put on 3b land. It is simply not acceptable. Food distribution networks worldwide still face disruption thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
“Friend said, there are perhaps 600,000 acres of south-facing roofs that we could put solar panels on. Of course, there are also manufacturing and brownfield sites. Taking a vast amount of good land out of agricultural production is incredibly short-sighted. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) argued in a debate on this subject two years ago, we should not build a single solar panel on good farmland until we have solar panels on every large building. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham has made clear, Lincolnshire is the breadbasket of England: we produce 12% of the food we eat. In Lincolnshire, we want to safeguard that living tradition. As we all know, the planning framework has a presumption against building panels on land graded 1, 2 or 3a. My right hon.”
“I congratulate my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) on her comprehensive introduction to the debate. These proposals for huge solar “farms”—they are not farms at all, of course; that is a misnomer—are unwise and unwelcome and will undermine our countryside. The opposition to them in my constituency, and increasingly up and down the country, is as widespread as it is deeply felt. I know that many friends and colleagues will have had the same experience. As we have said again and again, we are not opposed to solar energy; offshore wind and rooftop solar are entirely welcome. As I travel up and down between Westminster and West Lindsey, I see the motorways and the A1 lined with giant logistics and distribution centres with flat rooftops that are perfect for solar panels. As my hon.”
“Those of us who are good friends of Israel need to call out the violent activities of the settler movement. The Armenian Christians have enjoyed the best part of 2,000 years in their part of the old city in tranquillity. The appalling incident on 3 April was led not just by thugs but by an Israeli officer called Assaf Harel. Frankly, there was downright intimidation and an attempt to force out Armenian Christians. The Christian population in the old city has declined from 25% a century ago to just 1%. Will the Church of England stand up for Christians in the old city?”
“Surely it is not an adequate justification for building solar farms on 10,000 acres within a six-mile radius that Gainsborough is close to the national grid serving the old power stations. Is that not gross overdevelopment on good arable land, and should the inspector not take account of this overdevelopment?”
“I am a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and I am not aware that I am a foreigner, but it has many difficulties and we are missing the essential point. For what it is worth, I support this Bill, but I am concerned that, in the absence of these people who land here being detained, if they are threatened with being deported to Rwanda at some stage in the future, they are simply going to bugger off into the community.”
“One of the problems with the decline of Christianity and of faith in general—we have to accept that this is now one of the most secular countries in the world—is that if there is a vacuum, other movements step in and the whole country becomes unhappier and more difficult to govern. In a place like India, even though there are villages with levels of unimaginable poverty, they are not necessarily less happy than we are. In many ways they are happier, because they have that spiritual grounding that so many people in this country do not have. There is so much of importance in what my hon. Friend says. I do not really want to inject a negative note, but—”
“We should be very proud to be one of the very few countries in the world that has an established Church. Above all, we should keep the established Church as established and we should keep bishops in the House of Lords. The Church of England leadership—I make no criticism of the people who are working on the ground—are wonderful people, and I quite understand where they are coming from, but sometimes, dare I say it, they feel that they have to wade in on politics. They have a right to do that, just as I have a right to wade in on religion, but perhaps they need to remember that in this country and in any country there is a tremendous yearning for spirituality.”
“During their services, they do not necessarily talk about our secular world and how we can make it a happy place, but they root themselves in the Bible. I come from a Christian tradition very different from that of my hon. Friend. I am not an evangelical; I do not talk about Jesus in the way he does. I am a Catholic. But it is interesting that the successful Catholic churches in this country are those that are increasingly rooted in our ancient Catholic traditions. Many young people are flocking to the Catholic churches that are resurrecting the beautiful ancient mass. They seem to be self-confident. I am not a member of the Church of England, so I suppose it is not for me to offer it advice or even criticise it, but I think that there is a message there for our established Church.”
“I know that Alastair Campbell once said, “We don’t do God,” and most politicians—certainly those who want to get to the top of politics—are very wary of the subject, but I think it is important that just occasionally there are people of courage such as my hon. Friend who are prepared to speak up. There is such a rich and different tradition in Christianity. Only yesterday, my hon. Friend was telling me about the evangelical church he goes to in Doncaster, where there is a tremendous spirit. Some people might call it happy-clappy; I would not say that. He told me that his church is extraordinarily successful. The churches that are successful and growing are the ones that are self-confident and, as he says, rooted firmly in the Bible.”
“It is no accident that the great religions of the world—whether that is Islam, Judaism or Christianity—all have the same kind of moral code. In promoting Christianity, he was not trying to downplay the importance and the wonder of all of the other religions. Our forebears who made this building—I think a lot about this, because I serve on the restoration and renewal board—knew this. When we walk around this building, we see Christian iconography scattered all over it. Only this morning I was showing some visitors around the Robing Room in the House of Lords. The paintings on the walls depict compassion, mercy and forgiveness, all of which are Christian concepts. My hon. Friend is very courageous.”
“Friend expressed himself in such a humble, forgiving and self-deprecatory way that nobody could accuse him of putting himself on a pedestal. He was simply trying to make the very powerful point, which too few of us have the courage to make, that Christianity is at the very heart of our nation and its history. So much of what has made us such a great nation and a wonderful place to live is embedded in Christianity. So many of our freedoms relate to Christianity. Of course, people will criticise the history of Christianity and the way Christians treated and persecuted one another in the past. We all know that, but undoubtedly what has made this nation is the Christian faith. That is not to belittle other faiths; one thing I liked about my hon. Friend’s speech was that he was complimentary about people of all faiths.”
“I have to start by congratulating my hon. Friend the wonderful Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher). In the short time he has been in the House, he has proved himself a superb Member of Parliament and has become embedded in his community in Doncaster. I salute his courage in applying for this debate, the third such debate that he has secured. I am not aware of anyone else, in the many years I have been in the House, who has had the courage to promote such debates. Politicians are naturally averse to talking about their faith. I suppose they think that if they talk about their faith, they may be putting themselves on some kind of pedestal and that, being sinners as we all are, they will eventually be brought down and mocked. But my hon.”
“The important thing to remember about those buildings, whether they are great cathedrals or the tiniest gospel hall, is not the stones, bricks and mortar. As the First Epistle of Peter tells us, we Christians are to be living stones upon which a spiritual house is built. What we have to offer this country is not just an architectural heritage or a service of care and relief for the poor. The resurrection, and the faith built upon it, is the reason for all that. Without that, our history and our heritage is meaningless.”
“I know myself from my decade serving on Lincoln cathedral’s council how pressed for resources the great churches of England are. I believe it is vital that the Government, whether through direct heritage funding or via agencies such as the national lottery, support our churches to protect their architectural heritage. Last year we celebrated the 39 different projects in Catholic churches that were funded thanks to Historic England’s heritage stimulus fund, part of the Government’s culture recovery fund. I was pleased to see Lord Parkinson, the Heritage Minister, there alongside the Lord Speaker and our own Mr Deputy Speaker. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales produced a splendid booklet called “Living Stones: A Celebration of Achievement”, detailing all the works completed thanks to that funding.”
“He co-founded Heritage in Danger in 1974. He was one of the central figures who prevented Hereford cathedral from selling off its magnificent mappa mundi in 1988 to pay for repairs. Lord Cormack was a warden at Parliament’s own parish church, St Margaret’s, across Palace Yard. He served for a decade on the Church of England’s General Synod. His compassion and service were not limited to the Church of England; he was a leading campaigner for Soviet Jews in the 1970s and 1980s, and was granted an honorary doctorate by the Catholic University of America. Next Monday, we will gather at Lincoln cathedral to bid Lord Cormack farewell for the final time, and there could be no more appropriate setting for that great parliamentarian.”
“I have mentioned one example from the diocese of York, but I am sure that a search of the vacancies posted on the websites of other Anglican dioceses would find many such cases. I am sorry to make that point; I do not mean to criticise the Church of England, which is a superb institution that is doing wonderful work all over the country. There is, however, a slight tendency at the centre of the Church of England to move in the direction that I have been talking about, which I do not think is central to its purpose of making us a more spiritual nation. Before I sit down, may I pay tribute to the late Lord Cormack? Christianity, culture and heritage, in any combination, were his lifeblood. He was the founder of the all-party parliamentary arts and heritage group. In the real world, he was a valiant fighter.”
“Its report highlighted that “there is currently no evidence that this training changes behaviour in the long term or improves workplace equality in terms of representation of women, ethnic minorities or other minority groups”. It further pointed out that there is emerging evidence of unintended negative consequences of that training. I know that the Minister cannot answer on behalf of the Church of England, but perhaps the Government have a role here. We see the Church, quangos, charities, civil society groups and corporations adopting this training. Perhaps the Government can take a lead in enlightening them not only that is it nonsense, but that it can often lead to the opposite of the intended result. Indeed, it may lead to something perverse.”
“There is some criticism that in the Church of England, resources are being diverted away from the parishes and into the centre, and too many people are being hired at the centre. To give one example, the diocese of York is advertising for a racial justice education adviser. The job specification elaborates that the role will cover unconscious bias and diversity training. The concept of “unconscious bias” has no evidential basis in scientific, psychological or medical research. It has been years since the Government dropped it from the civil service. In 2020, the Government Equalities Office commissioned the behavioural insights team to summarise the evidence on unconscious bias and diversity training.”
“I think that even this wonderful Minister may find it difficult to recreate this country as a faith-loving community, but one thing that the Government can do is to help and enable the Church of England to preserve that amazing heritage. In France, for instance, all churches built before 1900 are funded by the state. The Church of England is on its own, which is a tremendous burden. It is to be commended for keeping this wonderful architectural heritage going. I will, again, make a gentle criticism of the Church of England. I am very much on the side of the Save the Parish movement and on the side of the Church of England putting whatever resources it has into the parish ministry.”
“Yes, we have to recognise that there is a sense of drift and pessimism in society. However, this debate is about Easter, which is the great feast of the Resurrection—the great feast of hope. It is wonderful that my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley has expressed himself in such a positive way. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), I represent the most beautiful and wonderful county in England, namely Lincolnshire. We have the finest medieval churches in the country: in every single village in my constituency there are wonderful expressions of piety, faith and hope, built hundreds of years ago. I sympathise with the Church of England, which has to maintain that huge structure. My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley has asked the Government to do many things.”
“My hon. Friend makes a very important point, which I wanted to raise earlier. It is very important that we should defend the right of people to speak their mind freely about religion. So, we should defend the right of Richard Dawkins, atheist, to attack religious people or religions in general. We have got to also defend the right of religious people to have their space, whether it is Orthodox Jews, or devout Muslims, or evangelical Christians. We must also defend the right of people, not just to attack religion or religious people in general, but also to criticise particular religions. There is a sort of dumbing down of debate and people are afraid, increasingly, to express their viewpoint, but in a vigorous democracy there must be this freedom of expression.”
“My intervention is on precisely that point. I do not expect the Minister to give an answer now, but I have had various meetings on this subject. We have had meetings with the Secretary of State for Education, and I know the decision is now in Downing Street. There has been a long campaign to abolish the so-called faith cap, which serves no purpose apart from limiting the ability of Catholic schools and academies to attract new pupils. As I said, I do not expect my hon. Friend to answer now, but can she promise to raise this matter with Downing Street and with the Secretary of State for Education, who I know believes the faith cap should be removed?”
“4. Noting the National Audit Office report today on the spiralling costs of using ex-military bases for migrants, and noting that the Home Office has announced this week that it is to reduce the projected numbers at RAF Scampton down to 800, will the Prime Minister ensure that an immigration Minister meets West Lindsey District Council and me urgently, so that we can release most of this iconic RAF base— the home of the Red Arrows and the Dambusters—for regeneration?”
“I am worried about this. Will my right hon. Friend reassure me that nothing in this statement will add to the increasing culture, in what should be a free country, of the intolerance of the right to offend? I might be offended if people make extreme attacks on Christianity, but they have an absolute right to do so. People have a right to criticise religious people or particular religions. Equally, Orthodox Jews, devout evangelical Christians with a particular view of the Bible and devout traditional Muslims have an absolute right to say what they believe in a free society, even if it is very unfashionable.”
“As a general election is not merely an expression of opinion but a serious choice, does my right hon. Friend agree that there is only one potential party of government that has the will, the inclination and the determination to stop mass illegal and legal migration, and that is the Conservative party? Let us unite our movement and do that.”
“On tax cutting, there has always been a social contract in this country by which people pay national insurance until they become of pensionable age, and then they do not pay national insurance. Therefore, cuts in national insurance do not help pensioners, and in particular aspiring pensioners, who have put something aside. What I would like to know from the Secretary of State—I see alongside her the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, who said this change might take decades—is what is the long-term plan to protect pensioners? National insurance cannot just be abolished and replaced with nothing. It can only be replaced with higher tax, from which pensioners do not benefit.”