Sir John Hayes
MP for South Holland and The Deepings · Conservative · United Kingdom
“On the subject of keeping land habitable, the hon. Lady will be familiar with the fact that the Lincolnshire fens, and particularly South Holland and The Deepings, are entirely flat, without even the undulation equivalent to the Mendip hills.”
“They have shown by their example that carelessness, and only when they have been prevented from doing harm have they ceased to do so. I am delighted that the Government are now taking steps to prevent children from accessing social media and mobile telephones; I would like to go much further, actually, and I hope the Government will.”
“What has occurred is the distortion of public discourse, the enabling of widespread fraud and the provision of the means for every imaginable form of harm, from hardcore pornography being available to children, to internet gambling addiction, suicide sites and much more. Now, the prospect of AI will make all that still more chilling.”
“I absolutely agree. That is why I began by describing what has occurred over the last quarter of a century and the misunderstanding—a pervasive one that affected all political parties and Governments of all kinds—that a dangerous fascination with novelty was more important than the certainty that I have just outlined. The hon.”
“Gentleman is right, and of course it is true that there will be the advantages that he describes, particularly in the research field. My fear is that they will obscure, in the eyes of those who have the power to make a difference, the points that the hon. Member for Poole made.”
“I know from my dealings with the hon. Gentleman that he is a good and effective Member of Parliament who takes a very responsible view of these things, but we must not let the virtues that he describes blind us to the vices. That is what happened with the internet.”
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“It cannot say that we have done a great deal with India because we did not have to kowtow to the EU and that we have done a great deal with the US because we escaped the clutches of the EU, while at the same time saying that we want to creep back in and for them to have more say in any future deals we might do. Let me end with the words of one of my political heroes, Joseph Chamberlain, who understood that to protect our economy we need to protect the jobs, industry and enterprise that are part of it and not to give in to the free trade liberals. He said: “a democratic Government, resting on the confidence and support of the whole nation, and not on the favour of any limited class, would be very strong.”
“I invite the hon. Gentleman to look at it through this prism: for all intents and purposes, I am Brexit, I stand for Brexit: I am a patriot, proud of my working-class origins; I am determined to do my best for my constituents and my country; and I am driven by a combination of the national interest and the common good. That was the spirit that inspired Brexit. It inspired those of us who campaigned for it, and those who voted for it, which 75% of my constituents in South Holland and the Deepings did. I am a bit resentful that Boston and Skegness next door had an even higher percentage, but it was only by 1%. As I said, C.S. Lewis said that we are what we think we are. I think that we are a proud country who can stand in the world, in collaboration with other nations, of course, but free and sovereign. Labour cannot have it both ways.”
“Is not the truth of the matter that showing humanity means recognising, as the Minister has implied, that some people are coming, perfectly understandably, for entirely economic reasons? If you thought you could get a better deal in Britain for you and your family, you would turn up and say you were claiming asylum on all kinds of grounds. That is the real truth of it. The system is being gamed and it has to stop being gamed.”
“We will move to the winding-up speeches now but, given how much time we have left, I emphasise that Front Benchers should not fall into the Gladstone trap of becoming intoxicated by the exuberance of their own verbosity.”
“My hon. Friend will know Socrates famously said that the only thing worth knowing is that we know very little, but we do know that these marbles are part of western civilisation. They are not exclusively part of Greek civilisation; we all have ownership of them, and the British Museum’s stewardship has been profound and valued. Are we to return every Canaletto to Italy or gain every Hockney back from abroad?”
“There was a belief, on some people’s part, that rather than accepting that young people as they grew might be homosexual, their sex should be altered. That is a chilling perspective, but it did hold sway in a number of cases, with medical intervention to support it. I hope this Government do not perpetuate that distorted view of humankind, and I am immensely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate for giving us the chance to explore just that.”
“That view has been reinforced by the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, which is calling for the Government and NHS to pursue alternative research options to the proposed clinical trial, including evaluating the effects of puberty blockers on children treated by the Tavistock clinic. It seems to me that, after our having made the mistake that led to Tavistock and then having commissioned the Cass review, which led to its closure, the risk is that we now make another mistake, not out of ill will but out of a concern expressed by some of the people I have mentioned going unheeded. I hope the Minister will heed those concerns. They are not only mine, as I have made clear. There was an ideological aspect to this situation that we must not understate.”
“According to The Times , the study will involve monitoring “the well-being of children who attend a network of new NHS gender clinics for children, including those not on” puberty blockers, and “whether puberty blockers affect young people’s thinking and brain development, using various activities and brain scans.” All that is disturbing, it seems to me, and that view has been argued by David Bell, who has suggested that other kinds of research could be adopted, other measures put in place. He refers to long-term follow-up studies of those who have undergone such treatment, qualitative research into the experiences of the growing numbers of detransitioners, and further animal studies to understand the biological impact of these drugs on adolescent brain development.”
“There will be six new regional gender identity clinics for children and young people by 2026. However, alongside the decision to ban the prescription of puberty blockers for under-18s, the National Institute for Health and Care Research is sponsoring a clinical trial, and I have a number of questions for this Minister about that trial. The trial will be run by a team at King’s College London, led by Professor Emily Simonoff.”
“Later, I had an exchange with the current Health Secretary—the previous Government having taken action latterly—in which he assured me that he would be implementing the Cass report in full. It is right that he should, because of the tragic history of the prescription of drugs that even those involved in that process regarded with such concern that they gave up their professional lives. We have altered young people; we have warped them, and that is a result of a policy that was adopted without proper consideration and of clinical practice that did not have its basis in scientific fact. Given that the Health Secretary has seen most of that and acted upon it, it is important to consider what happens next. We know that the Tavistock clinic has been closed and we now know that there is a new series of measures to deal with these matters.”
“That led me, in 2019, to raise the issue of the Tavistock clinic when a number of the professionals there drew attention to the fact that they were “often under pressure to refer young people for life-altering treatment even though they did not believe that it was in the individual’s best…interests…experimental treatment is being done on children who have experienced mental health difficulties, abuse and family trauma.” —[ Official Report , 11 April 2019; Vol. 658, c. 479.] Those kinds of concerns led to the review by Hilary Cass, and Cass was clear, when she published her report, that there was a lack of evidence on the long-term effects of using puberty blockers to treat gender incongruence to know whether they were safe or beneficial.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) for securing this debate. Everyone, regardless of their particularities, deserves dignity, but that open-mindedness has in recent years been supplanted by an ideology-driven series of harrowing episodes involving, in this case, both medical policy and clinical practice.”
“Might my hon. Friend add to her list of questions and ask about the experience of other countries that have looked at these matters? For those countries that have used alternatives to having children in trials, how effective have such alternatives been?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You, like me, have long been a supporter of Britain’s nuclear test veterans, so I wonder whether you could advise me. Given that Government lawyers have finally admitted, after 73 years of denial, that tests may have taken place at the time that those veterans were in the south Atlantic—they say that “information may have been recorded by scientists carrying out radiation monitoring”— surely a statement in the House by a Government Minister is required. How can I facilitate that? [ Official Report , 25 April 2025; Vol. 765, c. 14WC.] (Correction)”
“The chairman of the Sentencing Council has argued that the sentence should be tailored to the offender, but my constituents—and, I suspect, those of the Secretary of State—think that the sentence should be tailored to the offence and its effect on the victim. That is what counts, not the background, circumstances, history or origins of the offender.”
“The right hon. Lady is right about the moving process or trend that she has described, but the trouble is that it is part of a bigger problem, is it not? It is the problem of judicial activism, and it is not new. For some time, judicial activists have sought to do exactly what she has said, and it is they, not people in this House, who endanger the separation of powers.”
“My right hon. Friend deserves great credit for championing the cause of justice and obliging the Government to follow suit, albeit grudgingly. Leaving aside the fundamental injustice that he describes—the two-tier justice system—does he acknowledge that what the Sentencing Council proposes and continues to do undermines popular faith in the rule of law and justice and, as the Lord Chancellor herself says, tears the whole system apart?”
“In an age that falsely divides people into victims and victors, too often people in the west see Christians as victors even where they are being persecuted. I simply ask the Minister: will he prioritise this issue? Will he put on a statutory footing the role of the person designated to defend minority religions? Will he make sure that the Government’s policy in respect of aid and foreign affairs addresses the persecution of Christians worldwide?”
“The response I got was full of broadly drawn liberal platitudes about universality and multilateralism, and it said that the Government were saddened—not outraged, disgusted or determined to do something, but saddened. Well, that quiet sadness is an acquiescence of people who, in G. K. Chesterton’s words, exercise unquestioning tolerance. He said, “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” The truth is that throughout the world Christians face discrimination, largely in the name of the Islamisation of parts of the world that used to be Christian. The middle east is a classic example, where the number of Christians has fallen sharply over my lifetime and where Christians continue to be persecuted—in the birthplace of the son of God, bear in mind.”
“That we live in a strange age is beyond doubt. The guilt-fuelled self-loathing that poisons so many tiny bourgeois minds extends beyond the disowning of where we have come from—our shared history—to being insecure about who we are. To deny the Judeo-Christian roots of western civilisation is to ignore the essence of the values, which by underpinning what we share make us capable of the judgments necessary to know what is right. Widespread insecurity about our Christian heritage neuters the response, by people who should know better, to the persecution of Christians. The hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) spoke about parliamentary questions; I asked one when 70 Christians were found beheaded in the Congo.”
“Of course that is true, but it is not the whole story because the persecution of Christians predates much of that. For example, in the middle east, the Ottoman empire gave licence for persecution on exactly the grounds I described: aggressive Islamism perpetuated by the Ottomans led to the persecution of Christians, particularly in Palestine, Bethlehem and similar places. Conflict matters, but it is not all that matters.”
“To be blunt, we have a lot of influence in Nigeria, so I would go as far as to say, “No trade and no aid until their Government act on this.””
“Economic policy should benefit all regions of Britain, including rural counties such as Lincolnshire, where we grow a disproportionate amount of the food that feeds the nation. Does the Chancellor recognise that, in an age when the two biggest economies in the world are protecting their industries—including agriculture—the time has come to reinvest in manufacturing and to consume more of what we produce here in Britain? To echo the call of the Liberal Democrats’ spokesperson, we should buy British. That means using Government procurement to back British jobs, British projects and British workers.”
“I apologise for not being here in the early part of the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am so moved by what the hon. Lady says. The truth is that the discourse she describes has been brutalised. Complex ideas have been made simple—or at least apparently simple—and malignance has been given licence, exactly as she said. My advice to any new Member of this House is: do not get involved. I am not involved in social media at all, but I have an immense profile in my constituency, because I occupy the real world, not the virtual world. Real-world contact with people is always more valued and more valuable.”
“The very distinction between fact and fiction is being eroded, and I fear that young people’s consciousness of that is being so damaged that we will be unable to navigate the journey to truth that the hon. Gentleman describes. It is about the great internet giants, but it is also about the keyboard warriors. Umberto Eco described the internet as the “empire of imbeciles”; the trouble now is that people cannot tell the difference between imbeciles and experts.”
“The Lord Chancellor is right that equality before the law lies at the heart of popular respect for justice. However, I must say to her that it is not this House that endangers the separation of powers, but judicial activists, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) has made palpably clear, who are more interested in making laws than applying them. Will she, as my right hon. Friend requested, let this House know whether she retains faith in the Sentencing Council and its members or whether, like me, she believes that having been exposed, they should now do the honest and right thing and resign?”
“On that specific point, further to the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), that presumably means that the Government will press for recognition of UK standards where they prevail and where we think we are doing the job better. There will absolutely be occasions where we can learn from others, and other occasions where they can learn from us. Is that the Government’s intention? Will the Secretary of State make that clear now?”
“I wish to give the Secretary of State time to read the clause. He owes me now, Madam Deputy Speaker. The key thing is that we must not use EU standards as the default. The hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) is right that we have the authority to make our own standards, and we often do so very well. But the risk is that where we have not yet done that, the EU standard will become the default position. The Minister can make it crystal clear to us today that that is not the case.”
“On that note, the point is the one I made to the Secretary of State: where, as the impact assessment suggests, regulations are moving at pace—the Secretary of State repeated that—we will default to a European set of standards. That is the problem, and that is certainly implied in the Bill’s impact assessment. I sought the Secretary of State’s assurance that that will not happen. If it does not happen, will there be no rules or regulations? How will that work in practice?”
“Our role in this place is to defend the national interest. I know that a kind of heady internationalism permeates particular parts of this Chamber—I look to my left towards the Liberal Democrats—but I have always thought that it was more important to stand up for the British people, to represent my constituents to the best of my ability and to be, as I described earlier, sensitive to the particularities of the locale that I represent and the country that I love. Is that too much to ask of Members of this House? So, I do not regard my fears about this Bill as irrational, contrary to the hon. Member for Walthamstow’s assertion; they are deeply rooted in a rational fear of the worst this Bill could bring.”
“However, we must always do so with care, because when that regulation becomes burdensome, when it frustrates innovation and when it tempers the ability to produce goods that meet popular demand, rather than becoming helpful to either customers or those that supply them, it inhibits the very things that support those businesses and aid those customers. I simply invite the Minister when he sums up to re-emphasise that the Government believe, as I do, in light-touch regulation and in regulation that only applies when there has been appropriate discussion with those affected by it, that there will be a proper dialogue between business and business representatives before new measures are introduced, and that all that is introduced will have the character that I have set out: tailored, specific and in the British interest.”
“With that constitutional problem of the balance between the Executive and Parliament; with that lack of scrutiny and oversight that comes from not having a body that can look at these things on a one-by-one basis; and with that tendency to produce broad-brush measures emanating from the European Union, as implied both in the Bill and in supporting documents, I have grave doubts about this legislation. It is true that we should regulate where necessary, of course; it is right in the public interest that we do so.”
“They say, and the Secretary of State repeated this in his opening remarks, that there are all kinds of changes—new rules, new regulations and new restrictions—happening at a pace that require the attention of Government, and that pace is so great that it is hard for the Government to keep up. My fear is, therefore, that they will adopt very broad measures rather than ones that are sufficiently tailored and sufficiently refined to meet domestic needs.”
“That term is often used and one should always be terribly fearful when it is, because it’s usually not about creating harmony but about accepting control from elsewhere. I worry that that process will snuff out some of the measures that might more usefully be adopted by Government and impose on businesses and others blunt measures that are insensitive to the particularities that prevail in our country. I do not say that is with intent, as it seems to me that the Secretary of State made clear it was not his intention, but I just fear that it will. The regulatory impact assessment and the explanatory notes that we already had seem to imply that.”
“So, given the second issue is about how the measure is scrutinised, I invite the Government to reinvent some kind of European Scrutiny Committee or similar. Perhaps we can call it a regulatory scrutiny Committee; perhaps it may be a body that allows the full consideration of each of the measures that the Government introduce under this umbrella Bill to ensure the House was happy with them and felt they were appropriate and had been tailored in the right way. That might be an amendment that the Government will accept, given that the Secretary of State said he was open-minded about improving the legislation during its passage. The third problem that this Bill has at its heart is the assumption about harmonisation.”
“I acknowledge that it was often gold-plated here, but none the less it was every kind of rule and regulation, some of which were entirely superfluous to our needs because they were introduced on a pan-European basis. I learned long ago that power is best exercised when it is exercised closest to its effect. When decisions are made, they need to be sensitive to the difference they make to those affected by them. One of the reasons I was a passionate supporter of Brexit is that I want power to return to the place where it has its effect. I fear, therefore, entirely rationally, that if the default position as a result of the Bill is that we end up with European regulation, it will not be sensitive to its effect but instead will be decided upon far from where the businesses that it affects are located.”
“The Executive should be held to account on the Floor of the House or by a Committee designed for the purpose. That brings me to my second point about the Bill. We once had a European Scrutiny Committee whose task was to look closely at all kinds of things that emanated from the European Union. The hon. Lady who spoke immediately before me described those of us in the House who are sceptical about the European Union as not being rational; she said these were irrational fears about the European Union. Were that to be true, she would probably have a point, but actually our fears are entirely rational. We know what emanated from the European Union during our membership, and it was endless bureaucracy.”
“There are three fundamental points to be made about the Bill, and I will make them more briefly than the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), although I am delighted to follow her. First, there is a constitutional issue at the heart of the legislation about the power of this House and this Parliament, and the power of the Executive. The Bill creates a permissive power for the Executive to introduce by regulation, through statutory instrument, all kinds of measures. Those who have been in the House for a long time, and perhaps those of us who have been in the House for a rather shorter time, will know what that means in practice: a brief debate in a room upstairs that will take a few minutes or perhaps a little longer. It will be thinly populated and the measure will be given scant scrutiny.”
“The hon. Gentleman may not know this, but I collect ceramics, by the way, so I am extremely interested in them. He is right that we should support and, indeed, revere the British ceramic industry, but many laws already prevent the kind of counterfeiting he describes and other laws prevent illegal substances from being used and sold in the manufacture of goods. There is a lot of existing statute that protects consumers from the kind of practices he describes.”
“I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time—it is very generous of him. I think that we should jointly sponsor a Bill, Madam Deputy Speaker—the hon. Gentleman and I, not you and I, although we would love for you to be involved. He and I could jointly sponsor a “Made in Britain” Bill that would do exactly what he describes. I am not sure that this piece of legislation is necessary to do that, for we have that power in this House as it stands. Let us get little crowns printed on eggs again, let us have “Made in Britain” printed on everything, and let us go back to “Foreign made”, which was formerly widely used. I would love to see “Foreign made” stamped on imported goods—then people would not buy them!”
“I am listening with intent to the right hon. Gentleman’s contribution. It may be that the Government are more innocent than he suggests and that there is not this hidden agenda he is describing, but in the words of a Northern Irishman, C. S. Lewis, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” Even if there is not a hidden agenda, in the end, in the name of the victims—the customers—this will end up being regulatory, bureaucratic and costly.”
“I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, because he is making a wonderful contribution to our affairs, which is indicative of the beauty of science, about which we hear too little. Before he rushes—hurtles, one might say—into the future, can he say a word about the peculiarly British measurements that informed my childhood? I mean things such as pecks, perches, rods and bushels, for each of those was rooted in the way that he described.”
“My experience in this place—I am mindful of what my hon. Friend has said already—is that there are two types of Bill to beware of. The first is the Bill whose provisions are so permissive, so broad, lacking the tailored approach that I described earlier, as to allow law to be applied in a way that is not expected by those who debate it as it passes through the House. The second is the Bill that makes specific provision for delegated legislation—for subsequent action by the Government. Those two types of legislation are legislation to beware of, and I say that to Members on both sides of the House, having seen Governments of all kinds introduce such Bills which became, in the end, bad laws.”
“I am interested in the Attorney General’s view, and we should take it seriously. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman recognise that primary legislation in this place metamorphosises in its passage through scrutiny? I have been involved in many Bills, as shadow Minister, Minister and Back Bencher, and that is precisely what happens. Ministers listen to argument, and as Bills return to the House, they reflect that argument both from here and in the Lords. Secondary legislation does not go through that process. That is why it is so important that the Bills we pass here do not contain the kind of permissive powers that facilitate so much secondary legislation.”
“As a Minister, I was partly involved in the introduction of a Groceries Code Adjudicator. The aim of that supermarket ombudsman was to ensure a fair food chain, yet years later, farm-gate prices bear little relation to the prices that consumers pay, and farmers and growers still struggle to get a fair deal. The Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), has suggested that the powers of the ombudsman be increased. Can we have a debate about that in Government time? My farmers, growers and food firms in Lincolnshire deserve a fair deal. They deserve to be protected from these greedy corporate behemoths.”
“However, it is absolutely right, when we legislate in this House, that we do so with the greatest care, with clear and desirable purposes of the kind I mentioned a moment or two ago, appropriate means and measurable effects.”
“It is probably true that every Bill we debate ought to have something like this attached to it, because it is a good idea—once a Bill has been published, debated, considered and passed into law—that it should be regularly reviewed in such a way. I understand that the movers of this Bill, its advocates and its enthusiasts believe that they are doing the right thing, and I am not unsympathetic to some of their ambitions. I do sometimes—often indeed—wish that this House was coloured by common sense as liberally as it is peppered with piety. None the less, let me be generous and say that I know that the Minister and others feel that they are doing something noble.”
“Headteachers and teachers tell me that it is something that they have to be religious in scrutinising, because these things can find their way into schools so easily—in someone’s bag, for instance. Rather as with mobile phones, we must enforce a ban on vapes in schools with rigour. I think that the measures being introduced in the Bill will reinforce that, so I share the Government’s ambition in that respect. On new clause 12, which stands in my name, I again find it hard to believe that the Government will not accept it willingly, because it simply says that we should review how effective the legislation is.”
“The key thing about tobacco—as the hon. Member for Worthing West, the expert on public health who is sitting next to the hon. Gentleman, will no doubt confirm—is that people tend to acquire the habit early and, as the hon. Lady said, cannot break it. Not many people are non-smokers at 30 and become smokers at 40. The vast majority of smokers acquire the habit early in their lives. My father probably started smoking at 13. He gave up overnight when he was 75, because the price of Golden Virginia went up. I said to him, “Do you feel any better,” and he replied, “I didn’t feel ill when I smoked and I don’t feel ill now”—but that is another matter. This issue really relates to young people and children in particular, and that brings me to vapes. I support much of what is in the Bill about them. Schools have an immense problem with vaping.”
“Parliament’s history is littered with unforeseen consequences. I foresee, and I hope others might too, that with the improvements the amendments would bring to this Bill, we can avoid some of the worst of those unforeseen consequences.”