Sir Alec Shelbrooke
MP for Wetherby and Easingwold · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. She has outlined the will of this House, but she may remember that, during the passage of the last Bill, I asked the then Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions to do what has happened with similar Bills in the past—on homosexuality, on abortion and on the death penalty—which…”
“I am okay, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will struggle on, thank you very much. The Minister has outlined that there is an investment programme for technology and upgrades, but with software upgrades, there is always the concern that the premise of the programmes will keep getting changed, and that can bring in delays or bugs to a system.”
“I will call Alex Mayer to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. As is the convention for for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.”
“With digital television, these days someone can just stick up a Squarial, point it in roughly the right direction and get their television channels—my wife and I have taken holidays in a canal boat and in a camper van, and we have been able to do that.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. Universal accessibility is vital in this debate. I agree with much of what has been said so far, but I am concerned about the switch-off of free-to-air as it stands. In the year I was elected, 2010, there were strong proposals to switch off the FM and AM signals.”
“Most of those DAB radios are now in the bin, because DAB+ was brought out and Classic FM stopped broadcasting on DAB; my previous car did not have DAB+, so I had to go back to FM to listen. I am sure we all have certain digital radio sets that now do not pick up many channels at all.”
The complete record
Every one of 602 lines we hold for Sir Alec Shelbrooke, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 7 of 13.
“Many of my constituents in Wetherby and Easingwold use Leeds Bradford airport, and the same will be true of the constituents of the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Wakefield and Rothwell (Simon Lightwood). For years, I have wanted expansion of Heathrow so that morning flights from Yorkshire could come down to Heathrow airport, allowing transatlantic flights to be boarded in Yorkshire. May I urge the Minister, when considering the expansion of Heathrow, to always give firm attention to regional airports, especially Leeds Bradford airport in Yorkshire? It would allow the economy to grow significantly if people could check in at Leeds and get off in New York.”
“I am going to surprise the Minister and say that I think he is right that the armed forces were not big enough when we left Government, and that every Chancellor since the end of the cold war slashed spending because it was the easy thing to do. Once the Ukraine war started, because of Russia’s illegal invasion, we put tens of billions of pounds into the response, so my question to the Minister is simple: if the strategic defence review suggests that we have to spend more money, are we going to spend that money or will it be directed to ensure that the amount does not rise above 2.5%?”
“I welcome the Secretary of State’s candour. It is important that the country understands the threats to the nation. It is estimated that the economy would lose tens of millions of pounds per hour if there were a data loss. These cables are strategically central to our national wellbeing. With that in mind, the Government have to explain to the public why we have to keep increasing defence spending, given what the consequences would be if we did not do so. If we move above 2.5% to 3% or 3.5%, it will not be because President Trump is pushing that narrative, as many Presidents have done before him; it will be because that is the strategic requirement of Europe and NATO to head off clear acts of aggression—close to a declaration of hybrid war on NATO. It is vital that the public understand why defence spending is so important at this time.”
“I welcome the Government’s efforts on the 100-year partnership. President Zelensky has made great strides in cracking down on corruption in his country, but he has a long way to go—he has probably got rid of most of the low-hanging fruit. What extra efforts will the UK Government make in assisting the Ukrainian Government to crack down on corruption, which will aid its ability to get NATO membership? I also push the Foreign Secretary on whether he has further views on how maritime support can work in conjunction with the Montreux convention.”
“We now have some answers that will actually make a difference, and we have to say, “These are the right things to do,” as we do with so many other drugs that help people get through their lives. We do not comment on people using nicotine patches or nicotine gum, yet we do talk about people who are trying to do things to help them lose weight.”
“The use of weight-loss jabs offers the NHS a real advantage, but we have to reduce the stigma and it is right that we ask whether it is moral to use drugs to reduce people’s wight. A lot of people do not have a choice about their weight, and they are now discovering that a small dose of hormonal drugs helps them to control their desire to eat. The long-term effects of obesity on the country’s health, and on the pressure on the NHS, will be reduced. When I become 7 stone lighter than I was back in September, there is no doubt that my health situation will have a far better outlook than it did, and that is the conversation we should be having when it comes to adults. There has been enough commenting on whether somebody is stick thin or really fat, and enough advice about what people should do to lose weight.”
“Again, the use of weight-loss jabs could prevent the NHS from spending much more money later on diabetes care, orthopaedic care and mental health care. We know that people find being inactive depressing, quite frankly, and that their mental health takes a decline when they become inactive. We have to separate the issues of childhood obesity and adult obesity, which are two very different things. For those of us who end up starved of sleep, and those who end up never knowing when they will have a proper meal or where they will get it from, it is easy to fall into the traps. I have often found that people who have never had a problem with their weight are full of all the answers for those who do struggle with their weight, who may well tell others what they are doing and then be told, “No, what you want to be doing is this.” It is nonsense.”
“When my feet hurt, I would not give in to it, because I thought, “If I give in to it, I’m just going to put on even more weight.” I would not stop, because I have always been fairly active and have kept going. I make these points because I recently heard a report that if weight-loss jabs were put out on NHS prescription, it would bankrupt the NHS. I think that is absolute nonsense, because we know just how preventive this sort of action is. That is why we got people to give up smoking. We made a lot of tax from the sale of cigarettes, but it cost the NHS billions of pounds. We know that a lot of the conditions that cigarettes cause are equally caused by obesity, along with many other things.”
“I smoked for most of my adult life, and I have drunk a lot for most of my adult life. I am 49 years old, and I was in my twenties in the 1990s. There was a culture in the ’90s that carried on through. Why did we push forward with getting people off smoking? We did it because of the absolutely obvious and well-proven health consequences of smoking, such as thrombosis, heart attacks and high blood pressure. Since I have lost 5 stone, my blood pressure has come down by 30 millibars; it is now textbook blood pressure. The hon. Member for Stroud is absolutely right. I had pain in my joints and feet, and I would sweat, but I would not give in to it.”
“When I cut out sugar, I cut out crisps, cakes, biscuits and various other things, including alcohol for a while. I am not going teetotal for the rest of my life, and I am not cutting out sugar for the rest of my life. People have to find a balance, but it is easy to cheat and they have to want to lose weight. There is no correlation here, but I think there is an interesting piece of work to be done—I will explain why I am saying this in a moment—on the fact that there has been a huge reduction in smoking in the 21st century and a big rise in obesity. I certainly used cigarettes to help keep my weight down, and I know that many other people do too. If someone feels hungry, they can have a cigarette. I am delighted that I gave up smoking; it took me most of my life to do so.”
“I have consumed less than 600 calories so far today and it is now 7.10 pm. I do not feel great, but it is working. I am engaged in a process in which I am trying to lose the weight in the first six months, and in the next six months I will go back to the normal number of calories, do the exercise and build up my fitness. This is a programme and a regime, and it is working for me. However, I must make the point that if people are not willing to work with these drugs, they will not have the effect. There must be a “brake” in their promotion, because people who think they can just inject themselves at home and lose weight are wrong. It is so easy to cheat. Why do I not feel too great at the moment? There are not enough calories in me. What would give me a boost straight away? Some chocolate, or anything like that.”
“She said, “But isn’t there the question of morality when people use drugs to reduce their weight?” This is where I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of obesity in adults and the issue of weight. What is now emerging is a link, a thread that runs through several aspects of someone’s health, not least related to fatigue, mental health or personality, and what is being discovered is that the drugs have a positive effect in many of those areas. We need to remove the stigma from talking about being on drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. They are certainly helping me, and I know of many friends and many colleagues in the House who are using them, because they do take away that craving. However, it still comes down to willpower. I stand before Members today, and I feel horrific.”
“Member for Stroud said about sugar being a drug. Oh boy, yes, it is a drug. I felt horrific for the first three weeks of cutting out sugar. Having had a little bit of sugar over Christmas, I thought, “It is Christmas; you have to manage the psychology of this.” Well, the first time I had one mince pie, boy, did I know about it! I had to have some grapes later to try to bring about the slow sugar release. There is no doubt that high sugar and salt levels are addictive, but I have a personality that made me do that. A very interesting point was made on Radio 4 last week. Emma Barnett was interviewing someone about this drug—I missed who it was.”
“I have gone from a body mass index of 42 to one of 30, although there are still a couple of stone that I want to lose. But—and this is the big “but”—people have to work with it. These are not miracle drugs. The biggest mistake that the press made in this regard was referring to “fat-dissolving drugs”. There is no such thing as a fat-dissolving drug; that is blatant nonsense. For me, this drug takes away the cravings. It has enabled me to do the intermittent fasting, having a protein-based meal at 1 pm, a banana at 5 pm and a small meal in the evening with a tiny bit of carbohydrate, and I do not eat after 9 pm. That is how I have dropped the weight. I cut out drinking for the first eight weeks, although I did drink over Christmas, and I cut out sugar for 12 weeks. I want to build on something that the hon.”
“Many Members, especially new Members, will learn how exhausting this job becomes. At some points in their career, they will ask themselves, “How do I carry on?” and they will turn to sugar to get them through the rest of the day. I see plenty of Members nodding. They will have chocolate bars, because that is the boost we need and that is where we end up. I have done that. I have what some might describe as an addictive personality: when I cut something out, I replace it with something else. When I cut out cigarettes, I replaced them with food. It has been a difficult journey. I tried to eat healthily and I tried to do things with my weight, but I reached a point at which I could not do it. In the middle of September, I started taking Wegovy, and since then I have lost over 5 stone.”
“We are in danger of getting into the same arguments that some of the nutters who talk about the covid jab have got themselves into—that it is deadly and we are poisoning everyone; and this, that and the other. It is administered to millions of people, and drugs will always have side effects. That is something we must remember. The contraceptive pill, used by millions of people, has side effects. Drugs do have side effects, but that is not a reason to rule them out. I want to expand on this stigma about the jabs. As I said at the outset, I am focusing today on adult obesity, and as I also said, the hon. Member for Stroud made some important points about childhood obesity and the links with food, but much of what he said was based on the idea that people have three meals a day and they are eating too much. That has not been my experience.”
“It does not matter what is working; they will say, “What you need to do is this.” I will come on to the weight loss regime that I am on at the moment, but they will say, for instance, “You shouldn’t be giving up drinking, because you will lose your social life.” Well, going to the small Yorkshire village where I live and having several pints over a few hours means having a lot of empty calories—thousands of them—so that is exactly what someone who is trying to lose weight should do; but people always give that advice. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned 400 incidences, but what that statistic did not say about the damage that the jabs, as we call them, can do is that half a million people are having them.”
“I gave up smoking in May 2022—we do not need to have a debate about smoking and what it does to people—and put on a considerable amount of weight. There is always a lot of stigma surrounding weight. Everything about weight is stigmatised, whether we are too thin or too fat or dieting—and, by the way, everyone has advice for us when we are dieting.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) on securing this important debate. There was a lot in his speech with which I agreed, and a lot with which I disagreed. I do not want to explore the subject of childhood obesity, although I think that many of his points about it are quite important; I want to focus on adult obesity. There are a great many new Members in the Chamber who do not know who I am, so they will not have seen me when I was enormously fat, before I was down to the size I am now. I have struggled with my weight throughout my life, but I have controlled it for several years. Back in 2019 I managed to lose 4 stone through smoking. Cigarettes provided a way for me to diet and keep the weight off.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making some very important points. I would add that adult obesity is not necessarily down to the kinds of food that he has outlined. When people are tired or feeling depressed, just the satiation of eating—even if it is healthy and they are eating more than they should—has the same effect. I used to have cigarettes, which did that, and sometimes people drink to do it, but it could also be done with healthy food. It is about quantities that cannot always be controlled, and there is a bigger link. I totally agree with what the hon. Gentleman is saying about these addictive substances, but they are not the only part of the puzzle.”
“I chuckled to myself when the hon. Gentleman said that, because people ask me if something is seriously wrong. He emphasises the point that weight, whether thin or fat, is a stigmatised subject. Even when people are trying to get themselves healthy, they get criticism. We have to expose that and get on top of it.”
“It is fortuitous that you are in the Chair tonight, Madam Deputy Speaker, given all the work you did on these issues in the last Parliament as Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee. I think that the hon. Lady attended my Westminster Hall last year, and I am grateful to her for securing this Adjournment debate. As a direct consequence of my Westminster Hall debate, Essex police contacted me, saying, “We are looking into doing this. Can you give us advice on the workplace?” It was a great example of the impact of this place, and employers will be listening to her debate. Des she agree that education and sunlight will help a lot of employers make the right decisions?”
“I want to build on what the hon. Lady said about endometriosis in the workplace. The condition often comes with infection of the digestive system, which can make many women incontinent to the point that they suddenly have to run. That is important to consider, as this is not just about appointments and time off but the conditions in which people work and the understanding they need from their colleagues and bosses.”
“There has been a lot of cross-party work on this issue. I led a debate—the last one before the general election was called, I think—on endometriosis education. It is not prescribed that schools should educate about what a bad period is—I still meet women born in this century who do not know. If someone does not know what a disease is, how do they know that they have it? I urge the Minister to ensure that those messages are pushed in the Department for Education, as we need to ensure that people know what diseases they could have.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for securing this debate. I also draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. When a small farm has been in a family for generations, that family knows the local watercourses better than anybody else. Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that as those small farms disappear and move towards development, flooding issues may result because the local knowledge that would prevent flooding will be lost?”
“The Minister has several times mentioned energy security, and has said that the drive to net zero will make us more energy-secure, but now that Europe has learned the lesson of taking fossil fuels from Russia, we will take our renewable resources from China, which manufactures and processes the vast of majority of the materials needed. What contingency plans has the Minister made in case China decides to get into a trade war with the UK on renewables, or to cut off supply? The threats that could come from China are exactly the same as those that came from Russia about fossil fuels.”
“The west certainly learned a lesson about energy supplies and where they come from when Russia invaded. To build on what my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said, I want to press the Minister on solar and renewables. The Government have an agenda to push this country quickly towards renewable energy, yet China manufactures and processes a lot of the materials that we need for it. Before we accelerate towards that goal, will the Minister undertake an assessment of the risk to our energy supply? That is a crucial piece of our national security.”
“This is such an important debate, and many of us in this room have been working on this issue for a very long time. I point the hon. Gentleman to the Government’s review of the NHS. We only have nine centres. We have to emphasise how important it is that the review addresses the need for more surgeons in these areas. The issues that he is outlining are so common, yet we only have nine centres.”
“People turn around and say, “Redress is something we have to assess because there are so many people,” but why is that? There are so many people because the procedure was done willy-nilly and now those involved do not want to take responsibility. Many other Members want to speak, and I will let them have their say. The Minister has my full support and, I am sure, the full support of many Members here—and he is going to need it. I ask him to stay strong, to keep in mind why we are doing this and to remember the victims who have had their lives destroyed in every single aspect. They must have the redress and the ability through the NHS to have the situation rectified so that they are not borrowing £25,000 to go privately to the same surgeon they would see on the NHS.”
“You represent the NHS. When people criticise the NHS, they are criticising you and the Government.” But that is not true: the Minister will have our full support for pushing back in that way. This is the Thalidomide situation again—it is as controversial and, frankly, as scandalous as Thalidomide. We are talking about the “miracle drug” that women took in pregnancy to stop them from getting morning sickness, and it took years before it was banned; in some countries, it was used for several years after that. We pay compensation to victims of Thalidomide for the rest of their lives. I am proud to have been the Member of Parliament who in 2012 got the health grant extended for another 10 years. It is now a lifetime health grant. I am proud of that; it is something we did in this House.”
“That shows how much the issue has not been taken as seriously as it should have been. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), and I were speaking only last week about a constituent who has a similar issue. Where could she find the mesh centres? There are nine mesh centres, but the issue affects the entire country. The hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) mentioned the NHS compensation scheme. We moved on from that because it simply was not working. People were not getting the compensation from the scheme because it was not really accessible, and it was confrontational. That comes back to the point of the NHS doing something but not wanting to take responsibility for it. I am afraid that the Minister will be under pressure from people saying, “You must defend the NHS. That is your job.”
“Many of us on the Conservative side criticised our own Government in debates on this subject, because they were getting the pushback from the Department of Health and Social Care and the Treasury—and we said that it was not good enough. Removing mesh is like taking hair out of chewing gum. It is not a simple operation. It is not just that it breaks up and starts to infect other organs in the body, which is what can cause the incontinence, as it makes its way into the gut; it has now been shown that there are low-level infections within the mesh. My constituent who finally had mesh removed had a period for the first time in 10 years. Think about that for a moment—being told, “Well, we’re not quite sure what is wrong,” and then, when the mesh is removed, suddenly having periods again after a decade.”
“I have said it before and I will say it again: I believe the NHS to be a misogynistic and sexist institution that was too quick to pat women on the head and say, “Oh well, it’s just what women go through,” in so many aspects of gynaecological health, as well as other things. I have known the Minister for a long time. I consider him to be a friend, and I know that he is in the job because he fundamentally believes in people’s rights. He has a hard task ahead of him. That hard task is not because of what the Minister wants to drive into place; it is because of the pushback that he is going to get from the NHS and the Treasury, which will say that it cannot be done. He is going to have a tough time, but we can already see that this is not a party political issue in the House.”
“When my constituent came to see me, she had to do the entire surgery stood up and leant over the table because she could not sit. She was younger than I am now. She eventually managed to take out private loans and have the mesh removed. There lies one of the big injustices: this was something done by the NHS, and the NHS has run away from its responsibility to solve the problem. I accept that it is difficult for someone who has had the procedure to accept that the surgeon who put the mesh in might be the person who will remove it. But we do not have enough experts in this area, which goes back to the intervention I made on the hon. Member for Harlow: as the review of the NHS comes forward, resourcing must be considered.”
“In all honesty, if we were at, say, the dentist’s and they said, “We need to do this to your tooth”, we would say, “Okay.” We would not say, “Can I come back tomorrow?” and then google for any issues. We trust the clinicians and listen to what they say. Let us flip that coin and give the other side: at the time, a lot of those clinicians genuinely thought that vaginal mesh was, for want of a better description, a bit of a miracle cure. As time has gone on, it has become apparent that it was one of the worst procedures that could ever have taken place, and it is the time lag that has created the problem. I have spoken about this topic many times. I have described some of the things that have happened to some of my constituents, including people who were once extremely active now not being able to stand up.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince); it is encouraging that new-intake MPs are already raising this issue. As he said in his opening remarks, constituents have been to see their Members of Parliament because of the pain, suffering and injustice that they have gone through, and they are still not getting anywhere. I am not sure who the lady is, but it is very nice to see her in the Gallery because it is an exceptionally important issue for women. Can we get back to one very important fact about this? We are dealing with people who have had their lives destroyed in the prime of life because of something they were recommended by the NHS.”
“My right hon. Friend has just made an important point. He spoke about the removal of protrusions and seven surgeries. That almost puts a gloss on what has happened. We have all heard from women who have had the surgery and the experience of many of them is that they have been butchered. It is important to make that clear in this debate, especially for new Members, because we have discussed this in Parliament before: when we think of surgery, we think of any other normal surgery, but this surgery leaves huge amounts of scar tissue and has butchered women in ways that I will not go into now. That must be recognised when we describe some of the remedials that have happened, mainly because those carrying them out do not really know what they are doing at this stage.”
“Does my right hon. Friend agree that what is quite frightening about this policy is that perhaps the Government know exactly what they are doing, and that, a bit like “Animal Farm”, they think everything should be collectivised?”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. On 29 November, the House will be asked to consider the Second Reading of one of the most consequential pieces of legislation about the country’s make-up. I am genuinely approaching it with an open mind, but have many concerns. One is the short space of time for debate on that day. Will the Government commit, before 29 November, to two days—16 hours—of protected Government time for the Bill on the Floor of the House, so that we can examine and debate the Bill on Report, which is when much of what we are concerned about can be brought up? Otherwise, people like me may decline it a Second Reading, through fear that we may not be able to debate the issues in full.”
“In the villages where I talk to people, who knows better than anybody else the hydrology of the land? It is the farmers and the people who live there. If all that goes to corporates who have no contact with the local communities, we will lose the knowledge and memory of the people who have worked that land for centuries.”
“When these big developments go in, Yorkshire Water and the Environment Agency should make them do water alleviation work through soakaways and slowing the flow, rather than just saying, “Well, according to our models, it can cope.” Sewage flows down the street in that small, picturesque, beautiful Yorkshire village in my constituency, yet it is claimed that there is nothing wrong. The hon. Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher), who is a sound man, being a West Ham fan, said that nobody knows land better than those who manage it. He is absolutely right. That is why we should be concerned about this inheritance tax raid on farming, which will get rid of tenant farmers—those who have worked the land for generations and understand best the watercourses and what happens there.”
“When we really get out into the countryside, communities can be cut off completely. They are struggling to cope with the watercourses as they are now, and we know that the weather and climate are changing—there is more water. I have had had several meetings in one village, Bishop Monkton, since I became the Member of Parliament. I have spoken to local people, the parish council, local councillor Nick Brown and the flood groups. Again, promises were made, but we are not getting anywhere. Bishop Monkton has been let down by Yorkshire Water and the EA for too long. There is a new planning application for 60 new homes, and they say that the water system can cope with it. It cannot—that is blatantly obvious.”
“I say with this with great disappointment. I have had several meetings on these issues with the Environment Agency, Yorkshire Water and Councillor Kirsty Poskitt—she is an independent councillor, but we are working well together—and Yorkshire Water promised us that the flap valve in Tadcaster that drains the water from the high street would be serviced once a month. That was a lie, and it has now said that it will do so every six months. That is not good enough. We are trying to do what we can for our communities, but we see the people in charge—the people whose responsibility this is—lie to our faces. We will have further meetings about that, because communities need certainty, and so do businesses. There are also issues when housing developments are built in places with existing flood concerns.”
“It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. I congratulate all hon. Members who have made their maiden speech today; they have all been genuinely fascinating and worth listening to. I want to touch on the flooding issues that really cause concern in rural areas. Even in towns such as Tadcaster, which has the River Wharfe running through it, flooding is caused not just by water from the river, but by run-off in the town. The town depends on serviceable drainage, which can often get blocked, and drainage flaps. We are trying to get flood defences built, and are moving forward with money put in place by the last Conservative Government. Tadcaster’s flood alleviation scheme is crucial to the economic regeneration of the town, because people in such towns cannot have faith in the local economy if they are flooded all the time.”
“It is not good enough to say, “You will be protected,” because they know that they will not be. That brings me back to the beginning. If we lose the people who understand the countryside and the hydrology, when in towns such as Tadcaster and rural villages such as Bishop Monkton and many more around my constituency we see housing going up on the land that has to be sold off to pay the inheritance tax bill, the flooding will become greater and greater. Ultimately, that will lead to a far higher cost to the country than the small amount of punitive tax that Labour claims will save the NHS.”
“We will tell you where to get the money from. If you can’t do it, it is your failure. The state knows best how to run it.” Everything we have heard from Labour Front-Bench Members dismisses everything that has come from the NFU and thousands of farmers around the country. I find it hard to believe that anybody has had nothing but positive letters and positive emails in their inbox saying, “Oh, it’s fine. We’re very happy about it. Everything you’re doing is great for the community. It’s all right. We believe you. It was written in big white letters on the barn door that everything will be fine.” That will probably change later on and Labour will say, “No, that’s what it always said.” We have read that book, and the Labour party needs to start listening to the people who till and farm our land.”
“I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend. We know what our rural communities are like, and I am sure we all enjoy a pint, but when I go to the pub at the moment I hear farmers in despair saying, “We were told this wouldn’t happen.” As much as the small family farms, it is the tenant farms who are under real threat. For all the statistics that are pumped out by the Treasury saying this and that, it very much sounded from the Secretary of State’s opening remarks that there is a small cabal at the top of No. 10 making all the decisions and that everybody else has to go out and sell them. We have all read that book, and we know where it comes from. I have to say to the Labour party that “Animal Farm” is not an agricultural playbook. That is what is going on: it is, “We will tell you how to run your farms.”
“My hon. Friend is hitting the nail on the head. In my speech, I mentioned that Tadcaster is unable to get rid of the surface water. That affects a few businesses, but the whole town is destroyed by those businesses not being able to reopen and having insurance problems, despite the fact that there are not enough houses under the Environment Agency’s plan. The point that the Environment Agency has to take notice of is, where does the economy build from?”
“I hope that the Minister will be able to provide some clarity on the questions I posed, and I again congratulate the hon. Member for Tamworth on a very well thought-out speech.”
“Member for Tamworth will not be aware that I sat on the Bill Committee for the Energy Act 2023 in the last Parliament, and that I made the point then that we need a pragmatic approach that takes the public with us. In that spirit, I ask the Minister to reflect on how that can be achieved, communicated and properly undertaken. I ask her to consider how the concerns about the potential costs that might be put on businesses will be addressed through new employment laws, and whether that is one of the unseen consequentials after the Budget that may stop some of the investment. I am requesting that she looks holistically at all the different aspects relating to where small businesses, in particular, may look to invest in this area.”