Sir John Hayes
MP for South Holland and The Deepings · Conservative · United Kingdom
“A similar campaign before 2015 provoked a similar debate in this place. I was the Minister responsible at the time, speaking from the Dispatch Box. I can tell the hon.”
House of Commons26 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Gentleman always makes such a valuable contribution to our considerations, as I told him just the other day. The guidance that I announced in this Chamber must exist. That could be made statutory, and a mechanism could be found to apply it beyond the trunk roads, as I mentioned earlier.”
House of Commons26 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Before I call Fleur Anderson to wind up the debate, let me say that the Minister has stepped in for the Aviation Minister, who I appreciate is on other ministerial business and has committed to writing to a number of colleagues to deal with specific issues.”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Gentleman should familiarise himself with “Erskine May”, page 488, which makes it clear that when you have not been present for the bulk of the debate, it is not polite to intervene. The right hon. Gentleman who has the floor now needs to bring his remarks to a conclusion to give maximum time to the Minister.”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will call Melanie Onn to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for a 30-minute debate.”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will now call the Front-Bench spokesman for each party. I suggest that the Liberal Democrats and the Opposition speak for eight or nine minutes and the Minister speaks for 10 minutes or so, and then there will be time for Fleur Anderson to speak for a few minutes at the end, and for me to put the question.”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“The previous Government said that they were going to do it, committed to the principle and welcomed the work that we were doing. However, we then, of course, had the inconvenience of an election—one of the aspects of democracy that sometimes gets in the way of these sorts of things. Therefore, the work was not brought to a conclusion. Earlier this year, the current Government announced their intention to develop an “action-oriented, and accountable” ABI action plan “with input from NHS England and other Government departments”. It was due to be published “this year”—well, the year is running out, Minister. However, there are still a couple of sitting weeks left: a statement could be brought to the House and perhaps a document could be published that responds to the calls that we have made.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That led to the establishment—you may remember it, Dame Siobhain—of trauma networks, with a centralised and specialised approach to trauma care and service across the country. The excellent work of the APPG for acquired brain injury, which was reformed in 2017, showed that there was a strong case for a cross-party commitment to action. I have already spoken about the 2018 report, which called for a national reconsideration of rehabilitation and the collation of reliable statistics, given the problems with data collection and analysis that prevail. To be fair to the previous Government, our report was well received by Ministers. Indeed, they responded to what we had called for by committing to publish a strategy on acquired head injury in 2021. The following year, there was a call for evidence to inform the development of such a strategy.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I served in the Cabinet Office and its purpose, in a sense, is to deal with those issues that could otherwise fall between the cracks and departmental silos. However it is done, we need a national strategy. As far back as 2001, the Health Committee published a report on head injury, issuing 28 recommendations that included, as a matter of urgency, finding ways of improving methods of data collection on incidence, prevalence and severity. In 2005, the national service framework for long-term neurological conditions was launched; it contained many good ideas, but had no mandate and no funding. In 2010, the National Audit Office published a report, “Major Trauma Care in England”, which highlighted the need for improvement in major trauma care.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Given the number of people affected by brain injury, the comparatively low cost of effective interventions, such as rehabilitation and community support, and the ongoing lack of support services, there continues to be a strong need for a proper strategy to be put in place. I spoke earlier about a lateral approach. We are calling for a national strategy on brain injury. Around 60% of prisoners report having an acquired brain injury. We discussed that at a recent APPG meeting, where we heard from experts in the field. I have served as a Minister in multiple Departments—I will not list them all—and I know that cross-departmental working is tough, and the Minister will know that too, but it can be done. It requires structures to be created that facilitate Ministers to come together. The Cabinet Office might be able to play a part.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have every confidence that the Minister will rise to her feet at the summation of this debate and tell us that she has not only thoroughly studied the all-party group’s report—daily, perhaps—but that she is ready to respond in the way that we invite. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant), who chaired the APPG before I did—I was his vice-chairman for many years. He drove the original version of the report, which was republished more recently. It is an outstanding piece of work. We all know that APPGs vary, but this one is focused on the subject for which it is responsible and is determined to make its voice heard, because of the all-party support it attracts and because of the salience and significance of this subject.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The same approach is being piloted by the National Rehabilitation Centre, where every £43,000 invested in rehab yields savings of up to £680,000. That is a remarkable 16:1 return on investment. Now is the time to extend the entitlement adopted by the MOD much more widely. We must establish a national neuro-rehabilitation framework that guarantees that access to specialist care is not a lottery, but a certain path to recovery. In doing so, money would certainly be saved, but life chances would be improved immeasurably, too. High-quality rehabilitation reduces the risk of homelessness, addiction and a drift into lawlessness. It allows people to contribute, return to work and rebuild lives and relationships—to begin to stand tall again. Now is the time for the Government to act.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“A report from earlier this year, commissioned by the APPG, urged the Government to invest in specialist neuro-rehabilitation to save long-term societal costs. The report called for brain injury to be treated on a par with cancer and dementia. A statutory right to rehab in every region means that specialist neuro-rehabilitation services after an acquired brain injury would be put in place. None of the failures that we see today in response to brain injuries is inevitable. The Ministry of Defence already guarantees the right to rehabilitation for military personnel, so we have a precedent. We want to build on that precedent, across Government, for those affected by brain injury. We know from the MOD the results of having that right for rehabilitation—shorter recovery times, better outcomes, restored lives and improved prospects.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We have argued for what we call a right to rehab. Putting aside the substantial financial cost, the physical and emotional costs are still higher. The estimates do not include many of the costs associated with homelessness, addiction, mental health services and psychiatric stays. The cost to the NHS and welfare of lengthy treatment and recovery is huge and rises quickly during spells in hospital before one even receives community support and longer-term social care provision. Much of this could be prevented, and many of the costs could be reduced, if we had the right to rehab. Much work has been done on this subject, including by Headway, which I mentioned earlier, and the United Kingdom Acquired Brain Injury Forum.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The real cost is in lives disrupted, plans abandoned and ambitions jettisoned as a result of brain injury; in parents seeing a child’s personality change overnight and carers stretched to their limits, with little or no respite, because symptoms are dismissed as being mild or imperceptible or attributed to some other cause entirely. Although less obvious, those effects are just as devastating. When those costs are added to the ones I have described, the all-party group estimates that the real cost of acquired brain injury is £91.5 billion. That is about half of what the NHS spends every year. It is extraordinary that this issue is not given greater consideration. I am delighted that this debate gives us a chance to do so, at least for this short time. I thank all colleagues across the House who have been part of these efforts.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Of that, £20 billion is accounted for within the NHS and social care budget for acute long-term care, £21.5 billion is attributed to lost productivity, £1.5 billion is spent in the criminal justice system and the Department for Education—yet another Government Department that needs to be involved in the consideration of this issue in the lateral way I mentioned—and about £1.9 billion is spent on benefits. Leaving aside the human cost and the visceral effects brain injury can have on affected individuals and those who care for them, this has a considerable effect on Government, the Exchequer and the public purse. Those ramifications only scratch the surface of the wider social cost.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I pay tribute to Lincolnshire brain tumour support group, of which I am president, and to Headway, which I will say more about in due course. The end result of those admissions is that about 1.3 million people are living with the consequences of acquired brain injury every day. They and their families, loved ones and friends, and the communities of which they are part, are dealing with the effects. According to our all-party group’s latest report, the cost to the UK economy through healthcare, social care, lost productivity and wider public services is £43 billion annually, which equates to 1.3% of GDP.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s contribution. He makes a valuable point and an interesting suggestion that I will reflect on. He is certainly right that more can be done to affect brain injury in the first place. I have spoken a bit about its effects, but he is right to speak at greater length than I did about its causes. In the area of sport, of course, he is right that we now know that heading a football does all kinds of damage that no one imagined a generation or two ago. His suggestion is well made and worthy of further consideration. Around 350,000 people a year are admitted to hospital with acquired brain injury—that is one every 90 seconds. About 125,000 of those are admitted following a traumatic brain injury, around 43,000 with brain tumours and others following strokes.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is a great deal, a great deal before us.” For everyone, regardless of what they suffer, to be able to glean that happiness, through the care and support that they receive, should be the ambition of every Government Minister and every Member of this House.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That did not alter as a result of my head injury, but it might have done. I have seen those much more seriously affected by the traumatic injury they endured. As I looked at them I thought, “There but for the grace of God go I”, so I was determined thereafter to do all I could to fight for people with serious head injuries who struggle with their effects. I have been determined to champion their cause and to turn my hopes on their behalf, and their hopes too, into reality. I started with Dickens, one of our greatest writers, and I will end with Tolstoy, the great Russian writer. He wrote: “As long as there is life, there is happiness.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I know that other hon. Members want to contribute to the debate and can see their eagerness to do so, so I will draw my remarks to a close. For survivors, a head injury is just the beginning; the real challenge after survival lies in the days, months and years that follow. Individuals and their families struggle to navigate, with minimal support, a fragmented and underfunded system of rehabilitation. I know that because more than 40 years ago, like so many other young people, I suffered a serious head injury. But the key for me is that it did not stop me from doing what I wanted or being what I became. That is fundamental for anyone with an acquired disability. It is a matter of record that I decided to become a Conservative MP when I was seven—I was probably six, actually.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is an area of work and a need that can go unrecognised and unseen. The feeling of isolation and loneliness—this is, as I described, a hidden epidemic—can place immense strain on families as survivors are no longer able to access, for example, the specialist daycare centres that they might otherwise enjoy. We need to find a way of granting exemptions for charities from things such as the employer national insurance charges. I hope that the Minister will look at that, or even speak about it in this debate. Some 57% of Headway charities say that they have experienced delays in receiving payments from local authorities and integrated care boards. Some charities have even had to employ additional staff members purely to chase the debts that they were owed. These are small organisations with limited budgets; they just need help.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Research by Headway has shown that over three quarters of brain injury survivors encounter daily challenges due to the hidden nature of their injury, and that nine out of 10 people affected by a brain injury cite societal misunderstanding as a major obstacle in navigating life with a hidden disability. Collecting those facts and figures is important because of the nature of acquired brain injury. I will not say too much more about the costs to the sector, except that over the past three years several local Headway charities have permanently closed, including one in the last month. Three local volunteer branches have also shut down. That is because of rising costs of all kinds, which I do not need to list here. Closures really do risk brain injury survivors feeling lost.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Given that brain injury is no less than a hidden epidemic, it is imperative that the Government take further action to collect statistics about it, so that we can accurately ascertain the numbers impacted. We need a UK-wide consensus on which conditions are classified and coded as brain injury, and to make that data freely available. Access to hospital admission data on brain injuries must be free; currently, charities face significant costs. The charity Headway, which has done so much in this field, is not an immensely wealthy organisation and so those costs are significant to it. I hope that we get some reassurance on that point.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have talked about the subtlety of the effects that ABI can have, including the changed personality that many people experience as a result of a brain injury. Addressing such subtle changes requires a level of understanding and expertise, so national training could be really important and of immense value. I hope that the plan will also include funding for community-based specialist brain injury services. Staggeringly, the vital research by Dr Alyson Norman found that a third of serious case reviews in social services involved someone with a brain injury. Dr Norman lost her own brother to suicide after he suffered a lifetime of untreated brain injuries sustained in childhood.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Following representations from myself and others, the Minister, who has responsibility for public health and prevention, kindly responded to say that the Government will publish an action plan in 2026. I hope that it will be published as early as possible—if not before Christmas, perhaps as an early new year’s resolution. After years of campaigning by charities and MPs, the excellent news is that there now seems to be momentum on this issue, which is what sufferers and their families deserve; it is what they warrant and certainly what they need. The plan needs to include a focus on better community rehabilitation and on how that will help to achieve real change for people with ABI. It could also include national training for local authority and integrated care board commissioners, and for social workers, on the complexities of ABI.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“All the Minister has said so far is incredibly welcome. On ministerial engagement, given what she said about the cross-departmental working, which I called for earlier, is she engaged with the Ministers in those Departments in drawing up the plan and, if so, how?”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), and from Members across the House that the plight of those with ABI is our cause and their needs are our mission. Let us do all we can to ease their plight and meet their needs. Question put and agreed to. Resolved , That this House has considered the potential merits of a comprehensive acquired brain injury action plan.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This has been an extremely good debate. Contributions from across the Chamber have illustrated how strongly Members feel about the need for exactly the kind of strategy that the Minister has confirmed the Government will introduce. It is welcome that the Minister has recommitted to that plan. I offer thanks and a warning. The thanks are because she clearly understands and takes this seriously. The warning is that if we do not see the plan, we will be back, and next time we will be altogether more fierce. While we have been debating these matters, tens of people, scores of people, have been admitted to hospital with an acquired brain injury—extraordinary. I can tell from all the contributions, including from my great friend on the Front Bench of my party, my hon.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As the Leader of the House will know, I have long championed a cause supported by other Members of this House, notably the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey): nuclear test veterans. These were the young men who were sent to the other side of the world to witness the tests of Britain’s first nuclear weapons. In welcoming the engagement we have had with the Secretary of State for Defence and the Minister for Veterans and People, may I press the Leader of the House for a meeting with the Prime Minister? It has been promised. They did meet Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister. We have ongoing issues about access to their medical records. I understand that the meeting with the PM has been delayed. The PM has said he supports them.”
House of Commons4 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The demeanour of a good Chancellor should be somewhere between an undertaker and an oncologist—a reassuring presence and no words wasted—not a party entertainer trialling a few tricks before they go on stage, which is what this Chancellor did before the Budget. In seizing back control from the OBR—which is unaccountable and unelected, and should never have been set up in the first place—will the Minister recognise that, unless the Treasury and Ministers are straight with the public, no one will be trusted?”
House of Commons1 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I endorse the point about automatic cars and Motability, and the very important point about banking hubs and the extension. Does my right hon. Friend recognise that when we add costs to businesses such as the retailer in my constituency that I visited recently, we pay the price in terms of the jobs that they might create, or otherwise? These are lost opportunities for constituents to get jobs in meaningful businesses, because business costs are rising as a result of this Government.”
House of Commons1 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Budgets are often about what is not in them, as well as what is; no doubt we will debate that later. A glaring omission from this Budget was a settlement for the women of the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign. We had a statement in which the Government, presumably fearful of the court case that they are about to lose, said that they would do more, but will the Leader of the House recognise that these women, whom the ombudsman has acknowledged were so badly treated, deserve better? Will he arrange for a statement on when there will be further Government action?”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My right hon. Friend did a service to the House a week or two ago when he drew what he is describing now to the attention of this Chamber. He told the Government that these leaks were not only doing damage to the economy, in the way he has just described, but were a discourtesy to this House. Many times, Madam Deputy Speaker, you and Mr Speaker have said that announcements should be made to this House first. It is fundamental to this place that what the Government announce is brought here for scrutiny, not the public realm.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am very interested in that part of the Budget and I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for setting it out in more detail. One part of the youth guarantee is the boost for apprenticeships, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises, but looking at the fine print, is that not already supplied by the apprenticeship levy? What small and medium-sized enterprises need, as I learned when I was the apprenticeships Minister, is some grant funding to get them started in the process. Does the Government have that in mind or is this simply a rehash of the apprenticeship levy?”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“A detailed study of the impact of tariffs during the President’s first term found that once the pre-existing decline in manufacturing employment was accounted for, tariffs contributed to rising employment in areas with a large presence of protected industries. Neither did consumer prices surge in the United States, despite the predictions of liberal economists. Just imagine the potential benefits of a consistent and coherent trade policy that puts the needs of British industry first.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Here in Britain, and across the western world, living standards are stagnating, productivity growth has all but disappeared, and the state grows ever bigger in the face of rising poverty and worklessness. Why, then, does the political class continue to profess a blind faith in an economic model that has delivered record levels of state dependency? The assumption that little can be done to reverse the inevitable process of industrial decline is simply wrong, as the experience of the United States suggests. Once we tune out the noise surrounding President Trump’s on-and-off tariffs, we can hear the faint stirrings of industrial revival.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We cannot continue to proselytise for unbridled free trade when the two biggest economies in the world, China and America, have given up on it. We have to protect those industries that are critical to our national economic interests, building greater economic resilience by reindustrialising and by manufacturing again, so ensuring that more of what we consume is made here in Britain, with the jobs, skills and reassurance that provides. An economy can nourish communal health, but it cannot do so in a world that is wedded to globalised, multinational, corporate companies that are careless of the difference they make to communities such as mine in Lincolnshire and those across the country.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The old, comforting bourgeois assumptions about the benign nature of globalisation and the faith in technological change risk endangering many of the jobs I have described, and the purpose and pride they fuel. The US President was right to impose tariffs on cheap goods that were destroying vital US industries. In response, China is dumping surplus goods in Europe, and it has been estimated that 3 million industrial jobs in the EU are at risk from that surge of subsidised imported goods. In response to these existential threats, the Government seem frozen in time. Too much of the establishment remains wedded to dysfunctional orthodoxies. We are playing by the rules of the game when the important players have left the table.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As the global liberal order decays, we face global economic challenges on a scale we have not seen for 100 years. Artificial intelligence risks transforming the jobs market. A recent study by the National Foundation for Educational Research forecast that up to 3 million jobs could disappear by 2035. Employment in sales and customer service occupations has fallen by more than 10% since 2021, and around 12 million people in England currently work in occupations deemed to be in decline. That requires Government to play a role. Government can be a force for good. This House took far too long to recognise the damage that would be done by the internet, and finally, when those horrors were obvious, it legislated. We need to restrict AI where it does similar damage, rather than indulging this naive faith in technological change at all costs.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“G. K. Chesterton said: “It is human to err; and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred.” Yesterday’s Budget brought into stark relief the fact that the Chancellor and this Government have erred and, worse, are in denial about their error. The UK faces a twin-pronged fiscal crisis. Public debt is at around 100% of GDP and rising, with debt interest making up about three quarters of the deficit. Public spending, at close to 45% of GDP, is near to a high in the post-war years. Much of that failure is systemic—Governments of all colours have failed to address some fundamental macroeconomic challenges—but yesterday’s Budget not only failed to fix that entrenched mess, but did not even acknowledge that it is happening.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Mutuals and co-operatives sustain communal and economic health in localities. We can do this, but it requires a radical rethink of the economic orthodoxy. The Budget does not suggest that rethink. All parties must step up to the mark and understand that we live in a post-liberal age where a new order is possible. Let us together build that new order, to deliver the common good by sustaining our national interest.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We need a fundamental rethink of our economic model, breaking from the failed orthodoxy that currently prevails and moving towards what Hilaire Belloc and GK Chesterton called “distributism”, where local economies —introspective, feeding communal health, with shorter supply chains—mean that we can make more of what we need here in the UK, fuelling skills and nourishing communities. What Chesterton and Belloc intuitively understood was that the excessive concentration of economic power harms society and fuels the discontent that many people in Britain feel today. Real wages have stagnated, while those at the top—large corporations in particular, often based overseas—accumulate huge wealth and power. We can build that new order. Small family businesses enrich the places in which we all live.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. Both Governments and these big corporates welcome a regulatory system that disadvantages small and innovative companies. Big organisations quite like regulation, for they can cope with it because of their scale; small organisations struggle with it, because they simply do not have the resources to deal with it. In 1979, manufacturing accounted for 30% of GDP in Britain; today that figure is just 8.5%. Manufacturing employed 21% of the workforce in 1982; by 2023 it employed just 8%. By some measure this is the greatest deindustrialisation of any major nation. We can and should build a different economic model—a new order.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Food production in this country is critical to my constituency, my hon. Friend’s and others’, yet public procurement still does not prioritise British goods. Might he invite the Government to look at that again? It is absolutely right that this House, the Government and the public sector should support British-made goods, and British-made food in particular.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I support the minimum wage. It is important that working people, particularly less well-off working people, are adequately rewarded. Does my hon. Friend agree that the real impact will be on small and medium-sized businesses? Those businesses are already dealing with increasing cost burdens. When the Minister sums up, he might want to reflect on the effect that that may have on the creation of employment in those kind of businesses.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I notice that the Minister is wearing a William Morris—or William Morris-esque—tie, and what Morris understood was the importance of craft and skills. The Government addressed apprenticeships in the Budget in a minor way, but does the Minister know that simultaneously the skills White Paper envisages downgrading apprenticeships by diluting the competencies they confer, thereby undermining their reputation with learners and employers?”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is a welcome statement from the Security Minister, whom I hold in high regard, as does the House. He will be familiar with the report on China produced by the ISC—of which I was and remain a member—which dealt with exactly the matters that he has described: the widespread penetration of our universities, the theft of intellectual property and the attempt to compromise our democratic institutions. Will he add to his list a review of contracts with China—public sector contracts, Government contracts and so on—particularly those relating to sensitive matters? He said that he was a plain-speaking man, so, mindful of the collapse of the recent trial, will he do the simple task of saying from the Dispatch Box that China is a threat to our national security?”
House of Commons18 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The truth is, the Secretary of State has said there is no equivalence between those who fought us and those who defended us, but his Bill says the very opposite. Every investigation has a view to criminal prosecution. Everyone pursued will feel hounded, because they will be hounded.”
House of Commons18 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Order. I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called in the debate. I ask the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) to forgive me; I should have recognised that the hon. Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) is nowhere near as glamorous or youthful as him. The hon. Gentleman can put that on his leaflets if he likes.”
House of Commons12 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Before I call the shadow Minister, I point out to the hon. Lady the courtesies and behaviour in the House. If you are going to name another Member, you should notify them in advance. Did you do that?”
House of Commons12 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Right. I suggest you drop the hon. Member for Clacton a note to say that you raised him in the House and copy it to me. That would be wonderful.”
House of Commons12 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will call Valerie Vaz to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. Other Members may intervene only with the permission of the Member in charge. As is the convention with these half-hour debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.”
House of Commons12 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Order. I see that quite a lot of people want to speak. I will not set a time limit, but if you can be disciplined in how long your contributions last, that would be very helpful.”
House of Commons12 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Order. There is a Division in the House. We will suspend for 15 minutes, and when we return Ellie will draw her speech to its conclusion reasonably speedily.”
House of Commons12 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“About six people want to contribute, so they each have about four minutes. I will not make it formal, but I know I can rely on you not to let me down.”
House of Commons12 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗