Sir Bernard Jenkin
MP for Harwich and North Essex · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I do not think that the Minister mentioned Essex in his statement, but he made a point about funding which I think is much appreciated—that areas have incurred costs in good faith. Does that apply to Essex?”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Another £2.2 billion of new taxes on business is by far its biggest effect, and the impact of the two previous, absolutely catastrophic Budgets remains embedded in Government policy. They hammered sectors such as hospitality, and businesses that used to enjoy employing a lot of young people can no longer afford to do so.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No, I will not give away. Only 5.9% of the UK economy is goods exports to the EU. A much larger proportion goes outside the EU. Incidentally, during our period of membership, the proportion of GDP that we exported to the EU was in steady decline from 1992 to 2021. Other factors have led to the decline in our exports with the EU.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Their very large majority was a bit of an electoral accident, so many of them will lose their seats, but they can trust the Prime Minister, because he said on 25 September, “Don’t worry, the election will be in 2029”—just as he said, “We’re not going to reopen all the arguments about rejoining the EU” and, “We’re not going to reopen the a…”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The OBR says that debt rises from 95.5% of GDP this year to 97.3% in 2028-29. The headroom is just £15 billion in 2029-30, which is £7 billion less than at the last Budget. The OBR says there is only a 56% chance of meeting the rule. As the bond markets digest this Budget, I am not sure they will be quite as sanguine as they have been.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If the hon. Gentleman is saying, “If only we were not doing this later retirement thing, there would be more jobs for young people,” I have to say that managing the economy in that way is not very successful. It does not work. On the forecast, the Government set great store by what the IMF says about the UK’s deficit reduction programme.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
The complete record
4,629 held · 4,625 searchable for Sir Bernard Jenkin. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 1 of 10.
This is not an official version of UK Parliament proceedings. It reproduces the published record and links to it; the official version is the one UK Parliament publishes.
“I do not think that the Minister mentioned Essex in his statement, but he made a point about funding which I think is much appreciated—that areas have incurred costs in good faith. Does that apply to Essex? On the basis of £450,000 per new unitary previously announced, we would be due £2.25 million for the inconvenience and disruption to local government in Essex.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
““This would be 1.3 per cent of GDP higher than its pre-pandemic level of 10.1 per cent of GDP in 2019-20, with 0.5 per cent of GDP of this increase occurring between 2025-26 and 2031-32.” The Government are still spending on welfare, and they are not committing to spend on defence. That is the reality of this Budget.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On the question of the real public expenditure outlook, let us look at the section in the OBR’s outlook that deals with welfare spending—the Chancellor is announcing £100 million here, £200 million here or £10 million here, but this is the real problem. Paragraph 5.21 says: “Welfare spending is forecast to rise…by £19 billion (5.7 per cent) to £353 billion or 11.1 per cent of GDP… It is then forecast to rise in nominal terms by an average of £16 billion (4.4 per cent) a year over the rest of the forecast period”. That utterly dwarfs any other figures that the Government have been talking about.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am very pleased that they have responded to the Conservative campaign to increase the exemption, but as we have just heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), it is a very slight change. As has also been pointed out, all of these 59 micro-measures are minute. What the OBR actually says about national insurance contributions is that “Sharper falls in employment among lower-paid sectors are consistent with our judgement that these firms would be most affected by the” increase in national insurance contributions. That is the truth, and the Government have not faced up to it.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Another £2.2 billion of new taxes on business is by far its biggest effect, and the impact of the two previous, absolutely catastrophic Budgets remains embedded in Government policy. They hammered sectors such as hospitality, and businesses that used to enjoy employing a lot of young people can no longer afford to do so. Take Rix, a farm business in my constituency that is the leading supplier of potatoes and onions to Tesco. It employs mostly low-paid workers—a lot of young people—and its costs have rocketed as a result of the change to national insurance contributions. Take the Cricketers in Eight Ash Green, a pub that has been virtually driven out of business by the increase in national insurance costs and business rates. By the way, there has been no cut in business rates—this Government put them up.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Their very large majority was a bit of an electoral accident, so many of them will lose their seats, but they can trust the Prime Minister, because he said on 25 September, “Don’t worry, the election will be in 2029”—just as he said, “We’re not going to reopen all the arguments about rejoining the EU” and, “We’re not going to reopen the argument about free movement.” Hon. Ladies and Gentlemen in difficult seats facing a difficult election next spring can absolutely trust the Prime Minister; he is not going to do that to them. Trust is rather important in a political party. I hope it is not getting too bad within Labour. Let me say what I really think about this Budget. It is a non-Budget, exactly as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and others have said. It is a breathing space.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is the same target as when the then Prime Minister appeared before the Liaison Committee. The Chancellor said that “I am getting work under way to get there in a fiscally sustainable way.” That was the reason the now Chancellor resigned from the Government, so what was that all about? It was obviously not about defence, because nobody can make any plans until the Treasury has signed off figures for increased defence spending, and it has not done so. It is still not going to sign them off until the public spending review, which may be after the next general election. I am sure that Labour Members know that the next general election is going to be pretty tough for them.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Let me respond to the hon. Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) in one respect. Harwich and North Essex is a very rural constituency, and any restraints applied to gas or electricity have limited effect, because a lot of my constituents in rural areas are on kerosene and heating oil—I confess that I am on heating oil. The Government have not even removed VAT on domestic heating oil. Why are the Government doing this pre-election council band A to D manoeuvre, which will benefit mostly their voters, but completely ignoring the interests of rural voters? Forgive me if I detain the House a little on defence. We are in exactly the same position that we were in when the previous Defence Secretary resigned under Keir Starmer. In fact, the Chancellor said that he set a target date of 2030 for 3%.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I beg the hon. Gentleman to listen to himself. What he is basically saying is that the reason there will be such gargantuan increases in welfare payments between now and 2031-32 is that it is all our fault—that it is because of what we did. [Hon. Members: “Yes!”] It is not. The Government have not begun to tackle the welfare state problem. We should have done; and they must do so, or we are heading for a fiscal crisis. It is interesting what the Red Book says about the forthcoming fiscal crisis.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The OBR says that debt rises from 95.5% of GDP this year to 97.3% in 2028-29. The headroom is just £15 billion in 2029-30, which is £7 billion less than at the last Budget. The OBR says there is only a 56% chance of meeting the rule. As the bond markets digest this Budget, I am not sure they will be quite as sanguine as they have been. I will end by responding to a point that we heard from the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West). She talked about us getting back into the European Union and said that 60% of the economy is dependent upon trade with Europe. That is rubbish. What proportion of GDP do we export to the EU in goods? The single market is about goods. Incidentally, our record on services exports outside the EU is that there has been a dramatic, massive increase.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If the hon. Gentleman is saying, “If only we were not doing this later retirement thing, there would be more jobs for young people,” I have to say that managing the economy in that way is not very successful. It does not work. On the forecast, the Government set great store by what the IMF says about the UK’s deficit reduction programme. The Red Book states: “The IMF forecasts that the UK’s deficit reduction this year will be bigger than any other G20 country.” I am afraid that there are a lot of lemmings rushing over cliffs in that G20 bloc. It is not a good benchmark for success. In any case, the forecast is based on the forecast that the Government have given to the IMF, and the reduction has not been delivered yet. The Government have not started to deliver the debt reduction programme.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No, I will not give away. Only 5.9% of the UK economy is goods exports to the EU. A much larger proportion goes outside the EU. Incidentally, during our period of membership, the proportion of GDP that we exported to the EU was in steady decline from 1992 to 2021. Other factors have led to the decline in our exports with the EU. Overall—this is the astonishing thing, and I will end on this point—our economy has outgrown France and Germany since 1992. Leaving the EU has not reversed that trend. I wonder whether Government Members do not understand the irony when they say, “We are the fastest-growing economy in the G7.” That has often been the case, because the EU is not a very efficient market and does not add much value to our economy. In fact, we have grown our exports to the rest of the world.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No, I am not giving way; I have given way twice. [ Interruption. ] Members may shout me down, but they do not want to hear the facts. The fact is that our economy is now growing faster outside the EU than it would have done, because of two sectors: financial services, and tech and AI. They are not regulated by the EU. Employment in the City of London has doubled since 2016. All the doom-mongers who told us that the City was finished were wrong.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Thank you for your chairmanship today, Dr Murrison. In passing, I thank the Government for changing their mind about the Health Services Safety Investigation Body and for keeping that body, so that it can continue working as it is. I wonder what it would make of a systemic study of the safety management risks and how they are being managed with prostate cancer and screening, because I see very different experiences across different European countries and a wide variety of methods of gathering data. Blanket screening exists in very few countries. I heard what the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley) said, but my understanding is that an MRI scan followed by a needle biopsy need not necessarily have much in the way of adverse health effects. I had three MRI scans, but no needle biopsy.”
House of Commons26 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Based on the evidence we already have, we are not testing enough people and we are not doing enough MRI scans. We should be doing much more.”
House of Commons26 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Okay, we now have this Transform trial, but its effect will be to put off any further decisions until 2027. Why are we doing that? There is plenty of data and plenty of experience for the Government to make more flexible decisions. One always wonders whether the committees that make these decisions are really independent or whether they are under pressure to control costs, because, of course, if there are more PSA tests, there is a need for more people to scan and to biopsy, and there will be more false positives to deal with, and all of that has a cost. Cost alone should not be the metric; that is not how safety is run in other industries. There needs to be information, and a balanced and independent diagnosis of whether the system is generating the right data.”
House of Commons26 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Many tests for initial diagnosis of many conditions are unreliable. The problem is that the Government are telling people, “You cannot have a PSA test”, unless, of course, they buy a testing kit from some fly-by-night internet company. There is a lot of that going on, which is clogging up the health system. If someone has a doubt about what is happening down there, it should be possible—indeed, it should be encouraged by GPs—for them to have a PSA test as a precaution. If the result is a false positive, let us find out that it is a false positive. That is a much cheaper option. I mean, look at the number of deaths. Each year, 64,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and there are 12,000 deaths from it. This is a very serious health situation and we should not be tolerating it. What I see in the system is an excess of caution.”
House of Commons26 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“May I commend the Government’s decision to stay out of the SAFE—Security Action for Europe—programme? It was going to be horrendously expensive, we would have got less money out than we would have put in, it was going to take the intellectual property of any participating company who offered a programme to it, and it was going to take far too long to build up any capability. Can we concentrate on NATO? Will the Minister advise the Liberal Democrats that defence in the EU is a reserved matter to the member states? Therefore, we are much better off co-operating through NATO, which is also much quicker than trying to do something with some European—”
House of Commons19 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Can the Minister just explain how it would cut electricity bills in Northern Ireland by 20%? The Government keep asserting that but have not explained how it would happen.”
House of Commons14 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“and learned Member for North Antrim: it is not in the review to which the Minister referred. If it is in the review, please can he quote from it? If it is not, what is the justification for doing it? He has not given an explanation, and it is time that he did.”
House of Commons14 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is a peanut in the overall scheme of things. What is holding back the economic activity in this country is excessive regulation and excessive taxation. [ Interruption. ] I note what you are indicating, Mr Efford. My point is that the trade-offs for agreeing to the SPS agreement are not matched. As the Secretary of State for Business and Trade said recently, were we to join the customs union, it would have an adverse effect on the trading arrangements we have agreed with the rest of the world. These regulations seem to embed Northern Ireland further into an undemocratic regulatory process with the EU, by removing the safeguard of section 15C of the 2018 Act. The Minister has not provided an explanation for why that is going to happen. I reinforce the point made by the hon.”
House of Commons14 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Northern Ireland protocol and the Windsor framework are about as undemocratic as one could possibly imagine—that is, there is no direct possibility of intervention by the people of Northern Ireland in the lawmaking process for their own Province. Incidentally, if we have dynamic alignment in the UK as a whole, that will apply in the UK. No Member of Parliament, no majority of the House of Commons and no majority of both Houses will have the power to block or stop a new regulation being applied by the European Union if we cement ourselves into a process of dynamic alignment. The sanitary and phytosanitary agreement is meant to generate an extra £10 billion of economic activity in the UK over the period to 2040—I think I have that correct. Well, that adds up to barely more than £700 million a year.”
House of Commons14 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I want to say a few words, as the Minister did, about the context of these regulations. The history of our relationship with the European Union was that, whenever a Minister brought a proposal to the House to increase the powers of the European Union or to enlarge its activities in our own jurisdiction, it was always, “There’s nothing to see here. This is already being done. This proposal just recognises what is already happening. There is no change.” By increment, we got further and further away from democratic accountability, which led to the British public deciding that they wanted to leave the European Union. This statutory instrument is another chip being taken out of our democratic process.”
House of Commons14 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I was not aware that Germany or France had left the EU and that their economies had been damaged by their leaving, but that is the basis on which we are being told that we have damaged our economy.”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Today, over 680,000 people are employed in the City. The financial services sector is booming outside the EU because we have scrapped MiFID II, the bonus cap and regulations on derivatives trading, and all the people who left because of the fear campaign are coming back. What is the basis for saying the EU has damaged our economy except for these two forecasts, which are conjectural projections and not things that have happened? They are not facts. They are quoted by the OBR and the Treasury and the Prime Minister believes them, and I am sure there is sincere belief in those figures across Westminster Hall today, but they are not facts. The only facts are that the UK economy has grown by 7.9% over that period, while France’s economy has grown by 6.8% and Germany’s economy has grown by only 1.1%.”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Listening to this debate is amusing, but rather depressing in other ways. There is a heartfelt hope among a great many people here that rejoining the EU would somehow be transformative for the British economy, which they think has done much worse as a result of being outside the EU. [ Interruption. ] That is the thesis, isn’t it? Let’s look at the facts. The UK economy has outgrown France and Germany since we left the EU in 2021. In fact, some of our economic growth is a direct result of leaving the EU. We have not over-regulated our tech sector in the way that the EU has, so we are getting the lion’s share of inward investment and far greater gross value added in that sector than France or Germany. Interestingly, the tech sector has been excluded from the EU reset talks. Before covid, the City of London employed some 500,000 people.”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is because its economy is much less regulated, it has much lower taxes, it rewards enterprise and risk, and it is not mired in the Code Napoléon and the way of cautiously regulating everything that the EU is. If the EU could deregulate, it would possibly be in our economic interests to join it, but it is incapable of deregulating. Therefore, the case for joining the single market has collapsed in the few minutes in which I have been speaking.”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Our trade with the rest of the world has expanded much more in comparison with our period in the single market. For example, between 1997 and 2019, when we were in the single market, goods exports to non-EU countries grew by 85%, but goods exports to the EU fell from 10% to 7.8%. Our exports to the EU were already declining. Why was that? It was because the internal market is a failure. The countries that form the internal market today represented 30% of global GDP when we joined the single market in 1992. These are Library figures that I am citing, by the way; Members can go and check them out. Today, the EU represents 17.3% of global GDP. It is declining; it is losing global share. The United States had 25% of global GDP in 1992 and it still has 25% of global GDP. Why is that?”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No, I will not give way; I am going to be very brief. Services exports to the EU have rocketed, because there is no single market in services and we export a huge amount to the EU, as we do to the rest of the world. Overall, our trade has boomed since Brexit; our trade with the EU and the rest of the world combined has grown very substantially. Does anybody know what proportion of GDP is represented by goods exports to the EU? Hon. Members are quoting all these businesses from their constituencies, but how representative are they of the economy as a whole? The EU may be our single biggest export market, but it represents only 6% of our GDP. Hon. Members are looking very puzzled, because people have brainwashed themselves. They think that trade is the entire economy, but it is not; trade is only a proportion of the economy.”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That reporting was from a self-selecting group of businesses. The doppelganger model included the United States, which is not a comparable economy to the United Kingdom. It also included eastern European states like Estonia that are growing very fast, which is not a sensible comparison. But in any case, those figures were just projections. The facts show that we have grown faster than our two main competitors in the European Union and the hon. Gentleman cannot accept that. He thinks that our economy would have been between 4% and 8% bigger by 2025 than it would have been without Brexit, so we would have been growing even faster than we have grown—that is what he is saying—and very considerably faster than we did when we were in the European Union.”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the polls. When people are asked about whether particular areas of policy in the United Kingdom should be controlled by the EU, the result is always a negative. Farming, trade policy or financial services—whatever the question, it is a negative. When it comes to the money, if we rejoined, we would probably have to join without any of the rebates that Margaret Thatcher negotiated, so our gross contribution would be something like £30 billion a year—about 0.5% of GDP. The British people would never vote to rejoin the European Union if they thought they would have to prop up the EU budget and subsidise other EU countries.”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Yes, we have failed to exploit those opportunities, but that is what the Government should be doing and that is what the next Conservative Government will do.”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On the 6% share of GDP in exports of goods to the EU, what the Government are recommending is that we let the tail wag the dog. For the sake of trying to expand that share of our economic activity, which actually declined while we were in the single market, we are going to regulate the other 94% of the British economy that does not export goods to the EU. Does the Minister not get the point? We expanded our trade with the rest of the world by 85%—that was in the figures I gave earlier—without any free trade deals, or any agreements to abolish tariff barriers or to stop paying tariffs. In share of GDP, the rest of the world is growing and the single market is shrinking. Why are we shackling ourselves to a regulatory regime that crushes innovation and crushes economic growth when the world is our oyster outside the EU?”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The logic of the Government’s position is that because Canada sends 75% of its exports to the United States of America, they had better join the United States and give up their sovereignty in order to get rid of barriers to trade. The idea that Canada will become an associate member of the EU and that the EU is going to be able to get a grip of Canada seems rather fanciful, but can the hon. Gentleman explain why the Carney logic about the UK being in the single market does not apply to his own country?”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Despite long and historic disagreements between successive UK Governments and Israel, it has remained a steadfast ally in counter-terrorist efforts to keep our people safe in this country. We are now embarked, it seems, on a full diplomatic dispute with Israel and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats. What advice was the Foreign Office giving Ministers on this matter, and what advice were the security services giving about our national security interest before this decision was taken?”
House of Commons9 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Question put (Standing Order No. 23) and agreed to. Ordered, That Alex Sobel, Jess Asato, John McDonnell, Afzal Khan, Dr Allison Gardner, Bambos Charalambous, Sir Desmond Swayne, Charlie Maynard, Manuela Perteghella, Ben Lake, Yasmin Qureshi and Wera Hobhouse present the Bill. Alex Sobel accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the first time; to be read a S econd time on Friday 13 November , and to be printed (Bill 142).”
House of Commons8 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am as keen as anybody to get on with discussing the Health Bill, but this topic is too serious an opportunity to miss, given that the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) has raised such important issues. I really commend his speech and his initiative. Everybody should read it. All I want to say is that a kind of unilateral disarmament on AI is not going to solve the international problem. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran: these are not respecters of international treaties or international laws, even if they were to sign such treaties or laws, and we do not want to disable our own industry. The jury is out on whether AI is an extinction-threatening phenomenon, but I really do commend the hon. Member for raising the topic. I hope he will forgive me for opposing the Bill because I want the debate to continue.”
House of Commons8 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On the question of how the CQC leadership becomes conflicted, will my hon. Friend reflect on the fact that, in an Adjournment debate I held in July, the then Patient Safety Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), made it clear that the person responsible for deciding what safe space information might be released would be the chief executive of the CQC? If the chief executive of the CQC is to see all that information, how would he or she not be able to use it, or be tempted to use it, when he or she inspects hospitals for the purposes of the CQC? Would the safe space not then be hopelessly conflicted, and therefore lose public confidence?”
House of Commons8 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I would very much have liked to have discussed the medical devices questions arising from the Bill. The Minister made an incredibly short speech about that important matter. It is quite clear that these provisions are part of the covert dynamic alignment with the EU and the covert rejoin agenda being pursued by the Government. It raises all sorts of constitutional questions, but those are not for today. I will concentrate on HSSIB. I rise to support amendments 1 to 4, which would remove the abolition of HSSIB from the Bill. The Government have singularly failed to make the case for removing this crucial safety investigation function. It did not exist until recently, and now they want to scrub it out. I suspect that is because too many people in the health system do not like being held to account by an independent investigative body.”
House of Commons8 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The chief executive of the CQC is wantonly conflicted in terms of looking after the safe space, so he cannot be the one left in charge of that function. The real point here is that we are missing the opportunity to save so much money. Governments keep having public inquiries. The EPUT—Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust—public inquiry, affecting my constituency, cost in its first year £5 million, and in its second year it is costing another £5 million. The whole budget for HSSIB was only £6.3 million a year, yet it does scores of investigations, not just one inquiry. The Ockenden inquiry cost £14 million. If we could save just a fraction of the cost of medical negligence, which is £3.6 billion a year, HSSIB would pay for itself.”
House of Commons8 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I asked the Minister, in a letter I sent her after the debate in July, to give us the information on how much the transfer of all this would cost. Nothing has arrived. I never had a reply to the letter. Of course, the Government have changed the Minister and the new Minister for patient safety, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), is not in the House today. I rather suspect that she is more sympathetic to this argument than the Minister sitting on the Front Bench today. In our earlier exchanges we discovered and once again exposed how the safe space will be brutally compromised by the fact that it will be housed in a regulator with, inevitably, other ulterior motives.”
House of Commons8 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister shakes her head, but she is yet to give a good reason as to why this measure is in the Bill. When we had an Adjournment debate in July with the then Minister for patient safety, the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), she could not answer the question of who would conduct independent safety investigations in the NHS after the abolition of HSSIB. She said that safety investigations would be conducted by the Care Quality Commission, but she could not actually claim that they would be independent; as my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) demonstrated, they would not be. If, as it seems, it is intended that safety investigations should be carried out by the CQC unaffected by the transfer, why make the transfer at all? How much is this transfer going to cost?”
House of Commons8 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Secretary of State for her announcement, which, however she dresses it up, is in fact a decision about common sense and listening. I put it to her that, in Essex, most of the district councils, the county council and most MPs want to stay with two-tier local government. Is that an option? Will she acknowledge that and listen?”
House of Commons7 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Indeed, there are a few of us, but what we are hearing is a group of aggrieved remain supporters who have never come to terms with their grief and remain ideologically committed to rejoining. To anybody who wants to have another referendum, I do not say, “Bring it on,” because that is the last thing the public want, but I say that we would win again. When it comes down to the crunch, the British public do not want to hand back control of our laws to the European Union, and all the polls show that. If we ask them in a poll, “Do you want Westminster or Brussels to control farming policy?”, or whatever policy it is, people always vote for Westminster to maintain control.”
House of Commons2 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The fact is that since we left the European Union, Wolfgang Münchau, who somewhat reluctantly voted remain, has made it clear that leaving was an economic non-event. We were growing at about the same rate of France and Germany, and we still are. There has been no smashing disaster in the economy. There is a disaster in Scotland, where the SNP is campaigning against reopening the North sea and supports the high energy costs imposed by the ridiculous dash to net zero—the Government are doing that too—but the fact is that we are better off outside the EU in the long term.”
House of Commons2 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Will it come out of defence or welfare, or will there be more taxation to generate the extra revenue needed once we start making increased contributions to the European Union? There is also the myth-making. There is a myth that there were no small boats until Brexit—what rubbish. The small boats started in 2018, before we left, and by 2020 there were more than 8,500 crossings. That is not due to Brexit. The Dublin regulation was useless. It was in place during those years and it was never enforced. I will finish on the question of forecasts, which are all conjectural. They are all based on what the British economy might look like compared with a basket of other economies, including the United States, which has had a huge fiscal stimulus and an AI boom, and has more free enterprise policies.”
House of Commons2 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I totally agree. Defence is a reserved matter for member states in the European Union. The European Union does not have any troops. NATO is the forum through which we operate, and it is NATO to which we should be committed, rather than setting up a rival defence organisation in the European Union. I will also point out the contributions. According to a table from the House of Commons Library, we were making a gross contribution of £16 billion or £17 billion a year, but, with the rebate, the net contribution was £9.4 billion in the last year of membership. Our latest contribution was £103 million. To all those people who advocate for rejoining or for the reset, where will the money come from?”
House of Commons2 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The referendum was in 2016, but all the legalities of membership of the European Union, including the Dublin convention, applied until 2021. The small boat crossings were rocketing before Brexit. They have nothing to do with it.”
House of Commons2 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The question of scrutiny was raised by the Minister’s colleagues. In the absence of a European Scrutiny Committee, how is this stuff going to be scrutinised if he brings in direct applicability and direct effect of European laws?”
House of Commons2 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“May I refer the Secretary of State to Question 20 on the Order Paper? Can she explain when the A120 to Harwich will finally be upgraded? Is she aware that a community of some 20,000 people is served by this dreadful road, and that we dread another winter of subsidence and potholes as the existing road collapses, which is long past its renewal date? Given that this road is vital for growth in the east of England, as it serves the Harwich port and the freeport as well as this deprived community, when will we see some plans to upgrade it?”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗