Sir John Hayes

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

The complete record

625 held · 623 searchable for Sir John Hayes. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 10 of 10.

This is not an official version of UK Parliament proceedings. It reproduces the published record and links to it; the official version is the one UK Parliament publishes.

1. “A report last year by the Royal Life Saving Society found that the number of child drownings in England had doubled over a four-year period. That was 125 lives lost. Two years ago, The Guardian reported that England had lost almost 400 swimming pools since 2010, including local authority and community-owned pools, privately owned leisure facilities, school and sports club pools, and the Deepings leisure centre, which previously hosted the renowned Deepings swimming club. My question to the Minister is straightforward. How can I obtain funding, in tune with the previous Government’s swimming pool support fund, to help that much-loved community facility to reopen, and so make swimming available to children and adults in the community?”

   House of Commons4 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

2. “In order to help the Minister, because I know she does not have much time, would she agree to meet me offline to discuss that? It would be much easier if I could meet her with a community group from the Deepings, and we can take that forward.”

   House of Commons4 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

3. “Indeed, there has been a defence of the fact that most people now are obliged—I emphasise that: obliged—to buy their food from a handful of places, with little or no choice as to whether they do so, because, as I said, everyone has to buy and consume food. The defence offered is that it has driven prices down; but I will contest, in this short debate, that that is not really so. Bulk buying of food, which is now the norm—most people buy their food on a weekly basis; they fill their trolley with any number of goods—does three things. First, it disguises the relationship between cost and value. In the days when people bought as they needed, they had a pretty good idea of what things cost and whether they were providing value for money. When people fill a basket, those details are lost in bulk purchase.”

   House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

4. “It was Napoleon who described Britain as a “nation of shopkeepers”. If only that were still true. In my boyhood, my mother could shop at a variety of places to obtain the food products and other household items that she needed. What has happened during my lifetime is that a monopoly supply, or near-monopoly supply, of food provision has emerged, in the form of the great behemoths, the huge supermarkets, the corporate interests that now dominate the provision of food. That has broken the food chain. Let us be in no doubt about where we are as a nation in respect of the provision and consumption of foodstuffs. The food chain is broken, and Governments of all colours have been reluctant to face that reality.”

   House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

5. “I beg to move, That this House has considered the powers of the Groceries Code Adjudicator. It is a delight to be here and to speak on this subject, which is of great importance to my constituents, both consumers and producers. A free economy works best when those who buy and those who sell can do so in a multiplicity of places. Nowhere is that more important than in the field of food, for food is the most basic of all commodities; we all, after all, need to eat. That variety prevailed for most of time. Indeed, if one thinks of the earliest civilisations, the way we mark them is by their trading capacity, such as those in the Levant who traded food produced there in markets between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago. Yet in my lifetime—in all our lifetimes—the provision of food in this country has changed.”

   House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

6. “As well as the loss leaders that I mentioned, which have the seductive effect on consumers of encouraging them to buy many other things, secondly, that kind of provision of food has led to a great deal of waste. From studies that have been done, we know that these days much of what people buy—as much as 20%, or perhaps a little more—is never consumed. That would have been unthinkable a couple of generations ago. People would not have believed it was possible to stock the pantry or fridge with all kinds of things that ended up on the scrapheap.”

   House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

7. “I am delighted to accept the hon. Lady’s advice on that. She is not, in parliamentary technical terms, my hon. Friend, but she is a friend none the less, and she is right in her assertion, which I shall move to after I entertain the House a little further with my preparation for making exactly that argument. The essence of my call today is that this Government need to take action to deal with the near-monopolistic supply of foodstuffs that our constituents are obliged—I use the word again—to endure. The best way of doing that is through a more regulated market, and she is right to say so; but let me set the scene a little more before I come to the point at which I will call for exactly what she has suggested.”

   House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

8. “I give way to the Select Committee Chairman, to whom I pay tribute on this subject for bravely making the case that I will make today, with less expertise than his.”

   House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

9. “Members present, but certainly in many of our lifetimes—markets existed where farmers would take their produce to auction. Indeed, there was a livestock market in Spalding in the streets until the 1930s and a covered market until the 1990s, where livestock was brought to be traded and auctioned very openly. Producers have also been affected by this distortion. As the food chain breaks, it is not only consumers who struggle, able to go to only one or two places to get not just what they want, but what they need, because, as I said, foodstuffs are fundamental.”

   House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

10. “The right hon. Gentleman is right. That is why, when he and I were in Government together, we introduced the Groceries Code Adjudicator. He will remember that I worked closely with his colleague Vince Cable, then Secretary of State, and was involved in that decision. He is also right to focus on the producers. I have spoken so far about consumers, but I want to go on to talk, thirdly, about the distortion in respect of producers. I began my speech by speaking about how both producers and consumers need a multiplicity of places to buy and sell. In the model that I set out, the one that prevailed for aeons, people who made and grew food, primary and secondary producers, were able to sell to a variety of places. In our lifetimes—I might be overestimating the age of some hon.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

11. “By and large, I favour a capitalist economy, although I am not an unbridled admirer of capitalism. How could I be? I am a Conservative, after all. But on balance, I think it is perhaps the best of a series of faulty options. As I said at the outset, capitalism works when people can buy and sell in a multiplicity of places—circumstances that do not prevail in the UK food sector. By empowering the Groceries Code Adjudicator, which henceforth will be known as the food ombudsman, I think, we may be able to rebalance the provision of food and join again the food chain, which is so badly broken.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

12. “Just before Christmas last year, we had the obscene spectacle of one or two retailers bagging a series of vegetables in a plastic bag and saying, “These can be bought for 12p.” I had farmers and growers in my constituency telling me, “We have toiled hard to produce high-quality produce, only to see it being sold at a price far below the cost of production. Is it any wonder that the consumer does not appreciate the hard work that goes into making food and the quality of food grown in this country?” There has to be some means of reuniting value and cost by looking closely at the price farmers are paid and the price consumers subsequently pay. That is not to encourage food inflation, but simply to ensure that everyone gets a fair share of a bigger cake, rather than see their share be eaten up in the profits of these corporate behemoths.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

13. “It would be a way of delivering the objectives that the Government have set out. They said that they are keen to reinforce food security, so why not use the GCA as the means of doing so? Doing that would allow the adjudicator to develop a strategy and to roll out a set of co-ordinated actions against unfair practices. I would include prices in that because, while all of the techniques I have briefly outlined are used to distort the relationship between buyers and sellers, prices are an issue. How can we ensure that farm-gate and retail prices are brought into closer union?”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

14. “Rather than simply having a narrow remit to enforce the groceries supply code of practice, perhaps the adjudicator could have a slightly broader remit to look at the whole issue of the provision of food and its relationship with food security. When people such as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and I began speaking about food security donkey’s years ago, it was regarded as a rather arcane subject and we were seen as mildly eccentric for worrying about such things. Now, food security is a salient issue and at the top of many nations’ political agenda. More than that, it has become critical to national wellbeing. What a good time this is to think more laterally about the role of the food ombudsman and how it might reinforce the Government’s commitment to food security.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

15. “Lincolnshire, particularly South Holland and The Deepings, has a thriving ornamental sector, employing a large number of people in many smaller, often family-run, businesses. They are currently outside the adjudicator’s scope and should be included. We need the adjudicator to have a role in initiating inquiries and studies, rather than simply waiting for complaints. It would be perfectly reasonable for the adjudicator, on the basis of his or her expertise to initiate inquiries into particular aspects of food provision and retailer behaviour. We want a more proactive role. When the role of Groceries Code Adjudicator was established, it was dubbed the “food ombudsman”. That was never the official title, but perhaps it ought to be.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

16. “We need to find a better way of guaranteeing the anonymity of those who bring their complaints to the adjudicator. Efforts have been made in that respect, and even at the time we set up the system we were mindful of that issue and tried to create some degree of protection for people going to the adjudicator with complaints, but I am not sure that has bedded in as well as it might have done. I know from speaking to farmers and growers in my constituency, whom I meet weekly, that that remains a fear. That is a barrier to the effective application of the adjudicator’s powers. We also need to expand the adjudicator’s remit to include the ornamental sector, which is important in my constituency.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

17. “Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore)—because the previous Government’s record on this is not great either—to step up to the mark, because the present position is unsustainable and cannot continue, for we cannot perpetuate a situation where a handful of corporate giants wield disproportionate power over the provision of food, and by so doing, dictate the food security of this country. If they continue to import food at the rate they are without care, how can we be food secure? Let me deal with the particular measures we would like to see. We need to extend the role of the adjudicator to include more retailers and food service providers, including food manufacturing businesses, because at the moment the scope is narrow.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

18. “Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), with whom I worked in government. Not all Liberals are as bad as they are painted—at least, not as bad as they are painted by me, that is for sure. I know, too, that the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders), is a good and responsible Minister, who will be listening to this debate with care. I implore him and the shadow Minister, my hon.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

19. “It is also partly that the adjudicator’s powers are insufficient, and that is the reason for and purpose of this debate. I am pleased by the reports that the adjudicator is now taking a look at Amazon. As a matter of record, I have never bought anything on Amazon and never will; let me establish that before we go any further. I like to buy my goods in small shops, face to face, and meet real people. I do not want to live in the virtual world—why would we? I want to live in the real world. That investigation is good news, but I fear that, rather like the two previous investigations, it may come to nothing, merely raising false hopes of action that will not in the end be taken. By the way, I hold in high regard the Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

20. “Then, in 2018, the adjudicator said that it did not consider “the nature and seriousness of the breaches by Co-op to merit a financial penalty.” So although the GCA has had the power to investigate and punish retailers who breach the groceries code, for that is what the GCA oversees, it has not done so. Why is that? Where is this reluctance rooted? What has been the reason for it? The reason is partly that those detrimentally affected by the broken food chain are reluctant to report their problems to the adjudicator. They fear they will be identified and later punished—after all, these economic tyrants have little mercy. Those affected can go nowhere else to sell their produce, so what would they do then? They literally have nowhere to go.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

21. “In addition to the decline in income that all types of farm have suffered in the last several years—figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs suggest a sharp decline between 2023 and 2024—there is an issue with the GCA itself. I am proud to have played a part in setting up the Groceries Code Adjudicator in 2013, but since then the GCA has conducted only two major investigations—into Tesco in 2015 and the Co-op in 2018. The GCA’s power to fine retailers came into force in 2015 and applies only to breaches that occurred after that date, so it did not apply to the first of those investigations.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

22. “We need to recognise that the provision of food as locally as possible provides economic security, cements and secures communities, and shortens supply lines and therefore, apart from anything else, has immense environmental benefits by cutting food miles. That is the kind of economy that we can have, because there is nothing inevitable or pre-ordained about fewer and fewer food suppliers dominating the food chain. I have spoken about the impact on consumers of reduced choice and the impact on producers of not being able to trade their goods fairly and freely. Now, I shall talk about the changes we could make.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

23. “We might say, “Well, surely the supermarkets need to obtain their goods to sell them,” but we know where they then go; they import goods from countries that produce those goods at standards we cannot imagine in this country, thereby putting even more pressure on domestic producers. Do we really want that, or do we want a country that cares about food security and becomes more economically resilient because more of what we consume is made here? A Labour Prime Minister once spoke of British jobs for British workers. He was right. We indeed want British jobs for British workers and we want British goods for British consumers, too.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

24. “That might affect their terms of trade and the prices they are offered, which is why the relationship between farm-gate prices and retail prices is, again, distorted in this broken food chain. It often involves sharper practice still, where supermarkets cancel orders quickly; even when a farmer is tooled up ready to provide goods, they will find that in the next season they no longer have a contract to do so. In the past, supermarkets have lumped all kinds of other costs on to the supplier, such as marketing and transport costs. That is unacceptable, and it is ultimately unsustainable, as those businesses make too little profit to reinvest and therefore become less competitive.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

25. “Lincolnshire grows 30% of the UK’s vegetables, 20% of the sugar beet, 18% of the poultry, 20% of the potatoes, and it processes 70% of the kingdom’s fish. In total, my county produces 12% of all the food that fills the shops and shelves, pantries and fridges of our country. Given that, one can understand the particular concerns that farmers and growers in my constituency have about the way those big retailers treat them. The picture I painted, of an open economy where people can sell in a variety of places, has long gone. Most of my primary producers have very few options, and therefore often have a gun put to their head by their customers, the supermarkets.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

26. “Happily, I still have some of those small family businesses selling food in my constituency, and thank goodness for that, but their number has shrunk. The nation of shopkeepers is now a nation of very large shops, and those are corporate entities rather than the kind of shops that I imagine Napoleon had in mind. This huge problem has affected our high streets, where supermarkets have become more ubiquitous and the only grocers one can spot is a Tesco or a Sainsbury’s—or perhaps an Aldi or a Lidl—rather than the variety once seen up and down our constituencies. It has also affected producers, as I will come on to in the second part of my speech, because my constituency is disproportionately responsible for the production of UK food.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

27. “Burke said that tyrants seldom need a pretext; this is a kind of economic tyranny. To have a circumstance in which a near cartel of supermarkets can determine the price of products and then foist them on to a consumer base that has little other option is, in commercial terms, about as tyrannical as can be imagined. You can tell from all that, Dr Allin-Khan, that I am not a great admirer of the large retailers, and not just for the reasons I have given. I doubt, for example, that supermarkets are particularly careful—by that, I mean they are careless—about the circumstances of their customers and employees. I am not confident that a supermarket chain has quite the sensitivity to a locality, to a community or to a group of people who become their customers and employees that a small family business has.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

28. “The hon. Gentleman is right. His endless good will, known in this House for some time, encourages him to emphasise that supermarkets do deal with their waste products, but inevitably, as well as the waste products that over-consumption produces, supermarkets throw away many of the things on their shelves because of sell-by dates. It is hard to get a handle on, because quite a lot of it is disguised, but supermarkets themselves are actually contributing immense amounts of food waste. It is true that some communities have found settlements for that, in the way that the hon. Gentleman described. Some supermarkets have at least paid lip service—I say at least, because it is occasionally more than that—to redistributing some of the waste food from their shelves into communities, but we should not be gulled by that.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

29. “The double lock—in some cases, it is now a triple lock—that we put in place in the IPA holds firm and ensures that this material is available only as needed, and the bar to access it is very high. I am sure that the Minister and the shadow Minister will want to reassure people about that. As they know, the way that this is perceived publicly matters a great deal to the security services, the National Crime Agency and others who might take advantage of these powers.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

30. “Secondly, on the codes that relate to part 7A of the IPA, on bulk personal data, it would be helpful to have a further word about datasets with a low expectation of privacy. That is what the changes to the codes deal with, and it is what the amendments to the original Act addressed. As detailed in the explanatory notes, the public consultation to which the Minister referred was disproportionately focused on exactly that matter. A further word from him about that might be helpful. Finally, how this is understood more widely is critical. There is still a lot of misunderstanding about the original Act, the 2024 Act and, I guess, these codes, too. This is not about collecting everyone’s data and making it widely available. As the Minister and other Committee members will understand, there are strict restrictions on how it can be accessed.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

31. “First, that Act, to which this statutory instrument gives life, as it were, changed the process whereby warrants are issued, inasmuch as it enabled the Prime Minister to appoint five Secretaries of State, the assumption being that they would include the warranting Secretaries of State—the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and, I presume, the Deputy Prime Minister, as well as the Prime Minister himself. Will the Minister say a word about that? It is not that I have an objection to it—it is important that these things are dealt with practically—but it would be good to hear the Minister’s views on that, as it is before us today with these codes.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

32. “I am pleased to be able to contribute briefly to this important Committee. As the Minister suggested when he nodded to me during his brief contribution, the original legislation received Royal Assent when I was the Security Minister, and I was proud to take it through the House with cross-party support. I took a profound interest in it at that time and have continued to do so since it became law. I worked with the last Security Minister in the previous Government, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), on the 2024 Act, partly in my capacity as a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. I have a couple of questions for the Minister.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

33. “I forgot to say what a pleasure it is to see you in the Chair, Dr Allin-Khan. My hon. Friend identifies a fundamental issue. In commercial transactions, there is always risk, and that risk needs to be balanced. At the moment, all the risk is taken by the farmer or grower and none of the risk is absorbed by the retailer. We need to adjust that balance to ensure fairness, in the way that has been articulated by so many Members across the Chamber.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

34. “I am grateful to the Minister for that remark, but the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) is right: the important thing is co-ordination. The previous Government did a good job in establishing the basis for the “fair dealing” obligations, but it is really important that the work being done—outside the Minister’s Department in some cases—is co-ordinated, and the Groceries Code Adjudicator, in exactly the way that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland suggested, has a purview that extends across the whole process. I hope the Minister will give a commitment to that now.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

35. “With that pledge that I can continue to communicate with the Minister, I am delighted to thank all colleagues who contributed to this debate. It is perfectly possible to feed the nation at a fair price without fuelling the excessive profits of greedy plutocrats. To do that, we need to extend the power of the adjudicator in the way that has been set out by a considerable number of Members from across the House. It is vitally important the food chain is relinked, to make sure that all those involved in the production, distribution and sale of food can act in a way that is commercially viable but fair. It is not fair now. Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

36. “As a result of the Division in the House, the debate’s revised end time is 4.44 pm. I will call the shadow Minister and the Minister to wind up at 4.06 pm. I know that we have two speakers to come and that Terry Jermy is coming to the conclusion of his speech.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

37. “We are moving ahead with alacrity, and I am grateful to all hon. Members for allowing us to do so. Without more ado, I call Sarah Dyke, the Liberal Democrat spokesman.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

38. “I will call Susan Murray to move the motion, and then the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with permission from the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

39. “I intend to begin the winding-up speeches at 5.50 pm, and we have two more Back-Bench speakers, so it would be lovely if I could get you both in.”

    House of Commons3 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

40. “I apologise for arriving late, Mr Dowd, and it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. My hon. Friend makes a salient point about the ethical issues around extinguishing the life of the unborn. There is another salient matter: the assumption on the part of the advocates of this move that individual autonomy—we see the same with the debate about the end of life—trumps all else and that personal interests, dressed up as rights, are more important than the obligations to others and society along with duties to the country and those greater duties to God. Would my hon. Friend like to comment on the philosophical rather than the theological aspect of that?”

    House of Commons2 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

41. “Someone once said that the general rule in politics is never to apologise and never to explain, and I am certainly not going to break that rule now. The truth is that the hon. Lady is arguing for co-operation, and we all affirm that. Britain has co-operated with its neighbours, and with countries more widely, over the whole of our history. We began co-operating with Portugal under Edward III, as the Minister will no doubt confirm and speak about in some detail. It is not about co-operation; it is about governance. There is a fundamental difference between collaboration and co-operation, and government from abroad.”

    House of Commons22 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

42. “I can confirm that I have never met an Australian or a Canadian in Boston or in Spalding. Leaving that to one side, is not the real threat even more sinister than the hon. Gentleman suggests? We have, stubbornly, a huge number of young people who are not in education, employment or training—in fact, the trend is slightly up. It is a tragedy that those people are either trapped without jobs or not learning to get them. They will inevitably be competing with people from abroad for their early opportunities to work. We need to back young people. I fear that, unless we get absolute clarity on the length and character of the scheme, it will threaten those young people’s chances.”

    House of Commons22 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

43. “If I may say so generously, I choose to go for my holidays in north Norfolk and Whitby; I do not need a passport to go to there. It is very pleasant. I think the hon. Lady would be enriched by that kind of experience.”

    House of Commons22 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

44. “Edward Heath was so desperate to join the European Union that he was persuaded at the last minute, as we were about to enter it, that he needed to trade off our fishermen’s rights. Fishing is certainly a concern, but so too is this issue of regulation, because—”

    House of Commons22 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

45. “We wait to see the detail, because it may be that the Government share my view; I hope they do, but I can understand entirely the reservations of my neighbouring MP, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness, about it. Indeed, as I have said, they are reservations that I share. I will not speak about fishing, because others already have, except to say that fishing is always a bargaining chip in these negotiations. It was Edward Heath, allegedly a Conservative Prime Minister, who sold out the fishermen when we first joined. You will not remember that personally, Ms McVey, because of course you are a very young person—we are back to talking about young people, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) and others did earlier—but you will know of it, and know that that too was a last-minute deal.”

    House of Commons22 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

46. “That was bound to damage productivity and make us less competitive. What we needed to build was a high-skill, high-tech economy to compete internationally, and free movement damaged that prospect. The fear about the youth mobility scheme or the youth experience scheme—it keeps changing names, which in itself leads to a certain degree of scepticism; I will not put it any more strongly than that—is that it will bring people here who will want to work and to compete with our young people in Lincolnshire and across the constituencies represented in this Chamber today. That may be in seasonal jobs, part-time jobs or first jobs for people getting into the labour market. So I have profound doubts about it.”

    House of Commons22 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

47. “Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), other than on this basis: the exact figures for his constituency show 13,596 people living there who come from eastern Europe, central Europe or further afield—Bulgaria, Romania and so on. The influx of those people over a short period of time has had a dramatic effect on the character of that part of Lincolnshire. On immigration more generally, free movement had a devastating effect on this country. It displaced investment in domestic skills, without doubt, and it also changed workplaces—I think it drove down wages, for example, because many people who came were not unionised and were not able to make their case to their employers with the same confidence that domestic workers rightly do. It also stultified our economy by fixing it in a labour-intensive, low-skill profile.”

    House of Commons22 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

48. “Of course, much of the governance of the European Union was not done by people who had been elected, for the character of the way rules are made there rests on a very different connection between bureaucrats and elected people. The sovereignty secured by the referendum result is something precious, something that should be valued by every single Member of this House, regardless of their party. What does this deal do in respect of that sovereignty? I have reservations about the youth mobility scheme, not because I do not think that there are people in Lincolnshire who want to take advantage of it— [ Interruption. ] I did not say that, by the way; I did not say that. I will not defend the hon.”

    House of Commons22 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

49. “That matters, as we all know, because our legitimacy is afforded to us by the choice that people make to send us here, and the fact that we are answerable to them in a way that those who exercise power in the European Union are not—they have never been directly accountable. It is true that we elected MEPs, but almost no one knew who they were. I did not know who the Tory MEPs were, let alone those from other parties. Former MEPs will often say that they had little contact with the people in their constituencies and that their postbag overall was a fraction of what we receive in a single week, let alone over a longer period. Interaction is at the heart of the legitimacy that I have just described, but with MEPs it just was not there.”

    House of Commons22 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

50. “Joseph Chamberlain, one of my great political heroes, said that in “great deeds, something abides”. Perhaps the greatest deed of my parliamentary lifetime was our decision to leave the European Union, made greater still by the fact that it was a decision taken by the British people against the advice of most of their political leaders from across the spectrum. Suddenly the people spoke—and they spoke clearly—about their intentions, contradicting the long-standing prejudices of most of the British establishment. What endures of that deed is our right to self-government, which lies at the heart of our short debate today. It is the affirmation of parliamentary sovereignty.”

    House of Commons22 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →