George Freeman
MP for Mid Norfolk · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I am calling in this speech for, first, real honesty of a 1979 scale about the extent of the emergency; secondly, bold devolution to the people, cities and mayors who know how to do it better—frankly, they could not do worse than Whitehall—thirdly, serious Whitehall reforms, so that we end the juvenile process of His Majesty’s Treasury pl…”
“The normal deficit is when a Government do not earn as much as they are spending; because the economy has taken a downturn, they borrow a bit to keep spending and then pay it back. The structural deficit is that bit of the deficit that goes up every year even when the economy is growing, and it is driven by four things.”
“Convenient though it may be for my party politically, the idea that the answer is a regicidal political infighting crisis and a leadership contest in office is for the birds. Take it from me: my party has tested that idea to destruction, and we have all paid the price. We do not need a Labour party beauty contest.”
“My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I will make a slightly different point, which is that there are huge opportunities for good growth in this country.”
“I was doing my work as the Minister for Life Sciences, for agritech and for Science and Technology following in the footsteps of Paul Drayson and David Sainsbury. In life science, fusion, AI and quantum, we have built an unbelievably competitive economy, but other countries are moving fast. Our competitors are more agile.”
“My right hon. Friend makes an important point. The King’s speech that my constituents loved was the King’s speech in Washington, in which he spoke for the very best of this country. My point is that it is in all our interests—I say this as a friend of mainstream politics and democracy—that we tackle this challenge more boldly.”
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“I add my voice to those congratulating the Prime Minister on the way he has conducted the last week and on the policy, which I think enjoys if not unanimous then largely unanimous support in this House. I gently point out to the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) that our enemies watch this Chamber, and that speaking with one voice is very important. I also congratulate the Leader of the Opposition. Does the Prime Minister agree that, as well as willing the ends, we need to will the means? At what point does he think he will bring forward a business plan for how we fund what is likely to be £60 billion or possibly £70 billion over the next five to 10 years, so that our military threat is credible, serious and something we can actually afford?”
“The villages and towns of Mid Norfolk are reeling from the cost of living crisis and the Government’s taxes attack on jobs and small businesses. Rather than taxing rural areas and spending the money in the cities, may I suggest that Ministers allow rural councils to keep the proceeds of their growth and incentivise them to support businesses out in our rural communities, rather than allowing the Government to milk rural areas to spend the money in cities?”
“The impact of the policy is clear; we only have to read the CLA and NFU briefings. I have met Gavin Lane, Phil and Sophie Ellis, Oliver Munday and Nigel Stangroom. Most of our average family farms will have to pay tax bills of £400,000, £500,000 or £600,000. Where will they get the money, when the businesses do not generate the profits to pay those bills? They will all have to sell land, but who will buy it? It will not be their neighbour, because they will be selling land, too. I fear that this policy was designed in the Treasury with the support of bits of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and DEFRA. The people hanging over Mid Norfolk waiting to buy the land are the big solar developers and the big mass housing developers.”
“If they had said, “We want to support new entrants to the industry to promote diversified, regenerative agriculture, to increase investment and to promote the vibrant rural economy,” I probably would have supported them. That, however, is not the aim of this policy. The truth is that we do not know its aim, because the policy was never in the Government’s manifesto and it is not from DEFRA. It is a Treasury policy that has been landed on unwitting Ministers, who are now having to carry the can. We know it is anti-small business, anti-family business and anti the rural economy. The former Labour adviser, John McTernan, let the cat out of the bag. He said that Labour has waited a long time to seek revenge for the Tory attacks on the miners, and it was going to attack the farming community now— [ Interruption. ] That is exactly what he said.”
“It is about stewardship, and it makes it all the more remarkable that this Government have decided to attack that very bit of the agricultural economy. What are the aims of this policy? What is the impact of this policy? How should this House and those MPs who understand the rural economy respond? If the Government had said, “Our aim is to close the loophole of land asset speculators enjoying the legitimate family tax relief that the Conservatives put in place in 1984,” I probably would have supported them. If they had said, “We want to stop international hedge funds enjoying a tax relief designed to protect family farms,” I suspect many of us would have supported them.”
“All of those are achieved in the most extraordinary way, in an industry not dominated by big companies. This industry is made up of millions of small businesses. Moreover, they exist in the most extraordinary business climate. They operate on incredibly expensive assets—the land—which they never seek to monetise, as colleagues have pointed out, in an industry in which their costs are fixed. They invest in all their costs up front and wait hopefully for a price for their product, which is subject to the vagaries of the weather and of climate change. Most business people looking at that business model would say, “That is not a business I want to be in.” Why do our family farmers do it? They do it because it is a way of life and because it is deeply embedded in the values of their families, their countryside and their communities.”
“It is key to our food security—now, gratifyingly, a Government priority—and it is completely key to the world’s ability to feed 9 billion mouths. We are a great agricultural research and technology economy, and the world is hungry for our innovations. Agriculture is also completely key to net zero. Agriculture and transport are the two dirtiest industries, and agriculture is moving more quickly than any, pioneering regenerative systems of agriculture and carbon-capturing systems. Those innovations are being driven by a new generation of young UK farmers, who are different from the post-war generation. They take their responsibilities to the broader planet and regenerative agriculture seriously. At the same time as agriculture being a key strategic industry, farmers look after our countryside and keep our rural economy healthy.”
“I rise to speak on behalf of Mid Norfolk, a rural, agricultural, food-processing constituency that is reeling from this surprise and savage attack that was not in the Labour manifesto. I have no direct interest in farming, but I am the child of a farming family—my stepbrother runs that business. I worked on farms from the age of 15 to 21. I was going to go into farm management, and I think I still have a place at Harper Adams agricultural college if this career does not work out. My first job was with the NFU, working here in Parliament. I was a director of Elsoms Seeds and I was proud as a Minister to lead the agritech industrial strategy. I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on science and technology in agriculture. This is a hugely important strategic industry to the UK.”
“I will not, as time is short and colleagues want to speak. This policy is a prescription for the industrialisation of the countryside, cooked up in the Treasury in the summer when nobody was looking. It will lead to family farms being broken up and sold, farm investment falling and young farmers leaving, with a major economic impact and tertiary impacts in my part of the world. Those industries that support farming are already seeing the effects. The response of rural MPs should be to move fast behind the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours) and make it clear to the Treasury that it needs to adjust the mechanisms, change the thresholds and change this policy, unless Labour wants to be the party of rural devastation.”
“As well as listening to her officials, who I know will have 101 reasons to take it gently and to be cautious and steady, I urge the Minister to listen to colleagues across this House. I think she will be a hero—there will be culverts named after her for decades to come. I hesitate to suggest this, but it will be one of the biggest issues of this Parliament for our constituents, and the Minister has the chance to grip it right at the beginning and put right something that has been neglected for several decades.”
“Clause 2 looks at funding and says that some of that £2 billion-odd with the Environment Agency has to cascade down, and we have to support the IDBs and the local flood authorities properly. Controversially, clause 3 looks at liabilities. I want to suggest that, when house builders dump large quantities of housing on the outskirts of villages, it is not good enough just to pipe the drains into the old Victorian architecture. They have to upgrade it, and I think the only way they will do so is if they are on the hook for any downstream flooding that might occur. Clause 4 looks at data monitoring and accountability. I close by sincerely welcoming the Minister’s very quickly committing to reviewing this issue properly.”
“Of course, people who have suffered flooding then hit the next problems: how do they insure their houses? How will we compensate people who cannot sell their houses? How will we ensure that, as others have said, the Flood Re scheme is fit for purpose? This is a huge issue and I know the Minister has gripped it. My Bill sets out four main clauses and four main reforms—I believe I have sent the Minister an early draft, but I will send her a better one. I thank all those colleagues who are helping with it. Clause 1 sets out responsibilities and makes clear that we need to cascade them down to the ground, as well as making it clearer who is actually responsible for prevention and mitigation.”
“Anglian Water handed over its riparian rights when no one was looking about 12 or 15 years ago, and no one was aware that those rights now sat locally in the town. The land-use practice upstream meant that the water was not being captured properly on the farm, and with a whole lot of new housing and climate change, there was then a big problem. It has taken a huge amount of work to set up the local Mill lane flood prevention group, and the community has cleaned out the ditches and dredged the river, with 70 tonnes of stuff taken out. It has been a huge project, for which I pay tribute to the local councillor, Taila Taylor, and others. We cannot afford to do that in every single place around the country; far better to invest in prevention in the first place.”
“Ninthly, there is a huge lack of proper monitoring: one of the things that we will find at the first Norfolk flood summit is that we do not have a map—or certainly no live digital map. Where are the flood hotspots in our county? We are not properly capturing the data, which means that the Minister will not have proper data to support her policy making and the Cabinet Office resilience unit does not have proper data on where that growing inland flood risk is. There is then flooding on the ground, as we had last year; I will cite one example, at Mill lane in Attleborough. Four people who live next to a culvert have been flooded every year for the past 10 years, and their lives are misery. Last year, for the first time, 100 other houses were flooded because the culvert has been allowed to silt up gradually.”
“As is so often the way in modern Governments, powers go upstream, to higher and higher levels, with less and less real, practical support on the ground. Those 15 or 16 areas—district councils that are most on the frontline of flooding—are now having massively to support internal drainage board infrastructure investments. We are charging taxpayers hugely in the high flood areas to pay for infrastructure that we are all funding. An Association of District Councils special interest group has been set up to tackle that, and it is helping me with my Bill. Eighthly, the IDBs are funded by precepts, which is not appropriate for the scale of infrastructure that we need today.”
“I am talking about organisational responsibility at the top, in an agency that has many other responsibilities, some of which directly go against the interests of getting water off the land and down rivers fast. I am also talking about the situation on the ground. Responsibility for dealing with, mitigating and handling flooding is unfunded, so the local flood authority really has no budget in Norfolk. It has a few powers, which it cannot enforce, and no budget to do it properly. Seventhly, the real heroes of flood management in this country are the internal drainage boards, who—as you will know, Sir Christopher—have been successfully doing proper local watercourse management since about the 15th century. They have seen their powers reduced and their funding removed.”
“We need to make sure that our water companies are investing in the problem in the latter half of the year, as well as dealing with the shortages in the summer. Of course, catchment geography, habitat, and water maintenance and retention link those two issues. Sixthly, there is huge confusion about responsibilities. Nationally, the responsibility sits with the Environment Agency, and I think its budget is just over £2 billion a year. However, try ringing the Environment Agency about a problem in Norfolk—or, I dare say, in Suffolk; it is lovely to see the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) sneaking into a Norfolk debate to support us.”
“When there is intense rain, it all merges and sewage starts rising through people’s gardens and lavatories. Thirdly, I mention riparian rights: we have seen huge confusion about who is actually responsible for maintaining ditches. Fourthly, there is contract farming, or an increase in outsourcing farming to contractors. In the old days on our family farm, in quiet months we would clear the ditches and mend the fences. These days, that kind of stuff is not always in the contract. Ditches are being neglected because of the reality of modern contract farming. Fifthly, Anglian Water has been focusing—and I will be kind—on supplying water to the east and on mitigating leakage. It is investing billions. Ten years ago, the problem was loss of water, and that is still the case in the summer months. However, in winter, we have a massive problem.”
“I will speak in a moment about what that Bill sets out to do but, as with so many public policy problems, it is worth being clear about what the problem is and what is causing it. First, I want to suggest climate change. Earlier this year, we had the wettest seven months on record, and we have had the wettest past few years on record. That is what is driving the problem. Secondly, in my part of the world, that problem is compounded by a huge amount of housing. The boundaries changed because about 10,000 extra houses have been built in Mid Norfolk in the past 14 years. Many of them are built on the outskirts of villages, without proper drainage infrastructure, which has meant plugging modern drains into Victorian village drain infrastructure.”
“There are 36 organisations in Norfolk alone tasked with and sharing responsibility for dealing with flooding. None of them are able to take responsibility properly. I will be kind, but the buck gets passed. People have had enough. We need a summit in which we, the representatives of the people of Norfolk, can gather with those agencies and get on top of where the flooding is happening, where it is becoming more intense, what is being done about it and prioritised for our county, and the short, medium and long-term plan. I have prepared a private Member’s Bill to support the Minister; I will be introducing it shortly and I hope it will contribute to the reforms that she is considering. I hope it will be good enough that she decides to incorporate it into her reforms.”
“For me, this began in the inland constituency of Mid Norfolk—the clue is in the name. It has no coast and is largely Breckland; it should be dry. So why am I leading the charge on flooding? It is because in 2020, I and many of my constituents spent the Christmas period using mops and buckets in our houses as great rains swept through. In so many parts of the country, areas that have not traditionally been affected by flooding suddenly are. We set up the Mid Norfolk Flood Partnership with 13 villages, and we set up the Norfolk Strategic Flooding Alliance. I pay tribute to Lord Dannatt, who set up the alliance, and Henry Cator, who now runs it very well. We were in the process of convening Norfolk’s first inland flood summit, which was postponed because of the election. It is very important.”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) on bringing this debate to the House. It is great to see so many colleagues from all parties. If ever there was an issue that unites us all, it is this. At the beginning of my fifth Parliament, I have never seen so many all-party parliamentary groups set up or seen them so well attended—most struggle to find enough Members to be quorate. I have been to four, each with about 30 people from all parties in the room. I welcome what the Minister has said about properly reviewing and getting to grips with this issue and wish her well. She will find a lot of parliamentary support for bold reforming action, which is long overdue.”
“The hon. and learned Member is making a powerful and coherent argument. I think what he is saying is that this may or may not be a good law, but that he would have liked its impact to have been assessed properly and the people of Northern Ireland to have had a say on it—the say that he has in the Committee today. Does he think, overall, that this is a good law, albeit one that, constitutionally, he would have preferred to have been passed a different way?”
“Q4. After 14 years shaping the UK’s long-term strategies for life sciences, agritech, fusion and space, I welcome the Government’s industrial strategy. However, too many of our great companies are being bought out by our competitors. To build the industries of tomorrow here, we need to unlock some of the hundreds of billions of pounds in UK pension funds in the City, only 3% of which are now investing in UK equities. With the new Lord Mayor making that a priority, and the Mansion House speech imminent, will the new Government commit to seeing through the previous Government’s reforms to unlock British capital for British research and development growth?”
“I speak as a card-carrying supporter of industrial strategy, of increased R&D spending and of getting the country out of its current spiral and into a higher-growth model. I want to cheer much of this Budget, and perhaps there will be more to cheer when we read the Red Book tomorrow, but I am worried.”
“The structural cost of healthcare in our ageing economy, with increasingly expensive medicines and an NHS designed for the 1940s rather than the 21st century, is in danger of bankrupting itself and the public finances. I am on record as saying, and I will repeat it, that the Health Secretary’s honesty is a breath of fresh air. The NHS has not been broken by a lack of Tory funding—we have all poured money into the NHS—but the problem is that the model is not fit for the 21st century. Much more in sorrow than in anger, I suggest that we need to start this debate by being profoundly honest about the real nature of the problem. The truth is that we cannot cut, borrow, tax or spend our way out of a debt crisis, and successive Governments have tried and failed.”
“The lecture I received in 2010 from Robert Chote and Paul Johnson is just as relevant today. Four things drive the structural deficit. The first is debt interest. There was an inflation surge because of the war in Ukraine, but we have been lucky that the markets have generally not punished us for borrowing too much. Second is welfare bills. The coalition implemented very painful reforms to stop the rise of the welfare bill. We did not cut the welfare budget; we just stopped its rise. Third is public sector pensions. Again, there were some very painful reforms, not to cut the costs but to prevent them from booming and bankrupting the public finances. Those are all significant issues, but the biggest one, by far, is healthcare.”
“That should worry all of us involved in public policy, and I have a sneaking feeling that the public understand this. The people I spoke to on the doorstep during the election were not economists or seasoned political observers but, after observing successive Governments fail, their common sense told them that there is a deep problem in the state. I suggest that much of the political volatility in recent years comes from an inability, including in my own party, to be honest about the scale of the problem. I think the Brexit revolution was driven by deep anger and resentment not just at Brussels, but at the failure of this country’s political economy. People outside the golden triangle felt left behind by their own Government, their own country and their own model of growth.”
“The coalition tried to get us out of that debt with austerity, on which I think the country was with us for the first two or three years before feeling that we had overdone it. Yes, we had that crash, the disruption of Brexit, a terrible once-in-a-century pandemic and a war in Ukraine—we had £700 billion of QE, £400 billion of pandemic relief and £40 billion of cost of living relief—but we have effectively come back to where we were in 2010, facing a structural deficit and flashing red lights in the public finances. I call it the bonfire in the basement of the British economy. Even when the economy is growing, even when we see Canary Wharf on the drive from Norfolk, the unseen bonfire in the basement eats away at the economy’s resilience and sustainability.”
“The structural deficit is that bit of the public finances that means that, even when the economy is growing—even when it is growing at 2% or 3%—we are running a deficit, because there are bits of the economy that are constantly swallowing more money than we are capable of earning. When we took office in 2010, debt interest was effectively the fourth biggest Department of state. We had a serious crisis on our hands. Looking back, if we are honest, new Labour did not pay enough attention to deep reform of our public finances during the “Cool Britannia” years of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. In the 2007-08 crash, that Government unleashed £700 billion of borrowing and quantitative easing. We can argue about whether that was the right thing to do, but it drove huge asset price inflation and left us with huge debts.”
“I remember, when I was newly elected in 2010, having a brilliant briefing from Robert Chote and Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and having the structural deficit properly explained to me. That has stayed with me, and it is worth sharing for the benefit of those listening to this debate. Traditionally, all Governments in this country tax and spend. They earn money every year from tax revenues and then spend it. In some years, the economic cycle turns down, so we do not cut spending; we borrow a bit to maintain our spending and then repay it when the economic cycle turns. Occasionally in the cycle, we run deficits.”
“I want to say three things this afternoon: something about the real nature of the crisis in our public finances; something about why I so deeply believe the innovation economy is the only way to get us out of this doom loop spiral of structural deficit and debt; and something about my poor constituents in Mid Norfolk and the effect of this Budget on them. Tempting though it is to stand up and accuse the Labour Government of causing all the ills of the world, and to take no responsibility for them, I want to do the opposite and suggest that this Parliament and this country have for the last 25 years been failing to grapple seriously enough with the deep nature of structural deficit in our broken public finances.”
“As a former Minister for life science, for fusion, for quantum and for space, I am delighted to have been elected by, I think, the House to the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. I am also chair of the parliamentary and scientific committee—the oldest all-party group—and chair of the APPG on science and technology in agriculture. I am also proudly and gladly pleased to declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am trying to repair my finances—I carry too much debt, like this country—by working with some great British companies to help them to raise money in the international markets and to grow. That is what this country has to do to get itself out of debt as well.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill). It is also an honour and a pleasure, after 14 years, to be able to rise as a free man—free to speak on the Opposition Benches liberated from the tyranny of the Whips’ handouts that are being so beautifully read from the Labour Benches, and from the tyranny of desperate ambition to get on to the Front Bench. I want to speak today, after 14 years on and off the Front Bench, about the state of the public finances. I shall speak much more in sorrow than in anger, not to score party political points but to share reflections on the real depth of the crisis this country faces in our structural deficits and the challenge that this Chancellor, this country and this Parliament face in tackling it.”
“The R&D economy is the best mechanism for driving that levelling up and regeneration, and creating the opportunity society we all need. We cannot have an innovation economy without an opportunity society. I would go as far as saying that we cannot have an opportunity society without an innovation economy. That is key if we want to tackle the problem of debt.”
“We have to get away from that model of growth, and move to a model of growth led by innovation, with higher skilled jobs, much greater efficiency and productivity. Sectors are growing in this country that could attract billions of pounds of investment from all over the world. There is a wall of capital to invest in agritech, clean tech, fusion energy, satellite manufacturing—I could go on—and all the sectors where we are strong. That is the part of the economy that we should focus on, and it is the only bit of the economy that drives genuine regeneration. The sustainable levelling up is happening in Glasgow through the satellite manufacturing economy, in Edinburgh through quantum computing, in Newcastle through data, in Leeds through digital health and in Norwich through agritech.”
“They are the people who turn great science into great businesses that drive growth. Let me talk about why the innovation economy is key. If we want to get out of debt, the innovation economy provides the only model of growth that will deliver the productivity increases we so urgently need. It will reduce our reliance on the low-wage labour that has been completely built into the service economy, which has dominated this country since the 1980s and since the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown years of “Cool Britannia”. That model was based on letting London boom and pulling in cheap labour, which drove an immigration crisis that my party got itself twisted up about and that put huge pressure on our public services.”
“I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and for her chairmanship of our Select Committee. I welcome bits of the Budget, including the £20 billion commitment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), the former Prime Minister, and I secured an historic commitment to raise R&D investment to £20 billion when he was Chancellor, and I heard the Government ringfencing that amount today. I support the notion of an industrial strategy, as long as that does not involve earnest committees of Whitehall mandarins far away from the innovators, entrepreneurs and people on the ground. I support the wealth fund and the Mansion House reforms, but I have sincere concerns about the message that today’s Budget sends about innovators, entrepreneurs, wealth creators and businesses.”
“The agricultural property relief hit will damage the rural economy of Mid Norfolk. I hope that when we read the Red Book we will see some better news, but my fear is that we have a change in Government, but all too little change in our economic orthodoxy. Just like a company, this country is running out of cash. We need to unlock much more innovative and enterprising models of economic growth.”
“We will find that the devil is in the detail when we read the Red Book tomorrow. If we kill the engine that drives the people who create the companies of tomorrow, we will end up with a big science investment and not enough actual innovation in the economy. To close, I want speak briefly about the issues in Mid Norfolk. It is a rural, sparse, disconnected place—it is something of a backwater—in the middle of East Anglia with poor traditional access. I am afraid that today’s Budget will hit the two key groups in my constituency. Many pensioners have been hit by the winter fuel changes, and huge damage has been inflicted on the small businesses on the high street, including the hospitality businesses and the pubs. They were looking for relief—not just a penny off beer duty but real relief for businesses out in rural areas.”
“I hugely support the work that the fantastic Parliamentary Secretary, His Majesty's Treasury, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Emma Reynolds) is doing on taking forward our Mansion House reforms. We must better connect our capital in the City of London to our productive innovation economy. I am not for a minute suggesting that everyone’s pension should go into one biotech company—quite the opposite—but if we connect some of that money with our innovation economy, we will unlock tens of billions of private money—our money—to drive growth in this country. At the moment, we incubate world-class businesses and then watch the Australian and Canadian pension funds buy them, or American investors buy them out and float them. I worry about today’s inheritance tax and capital gains tax announcements.”
“We also need to better connect the City to our science, research, technology and innovation sector. It is shocking to me, and it should be to this House, that, in 1997, 73% of the £3 trillion-odd held in the City—our money that is invested in pensions—went into equities, 53% of which went into UK equities. That figure today is just under 4%. In the past 25 years, we have seen the most extraordinary globalisation, digitalisation and indexation of the City. The City has not been encouraged by successive Governments, and has not itself been investing actively in the productive businesses of this country. We have seen a hollowing out in the City of its commitment to support British industry and British companies, and it is an accelerating model. In every month over the past four years, we have seen a net outflow of investment in UK equities.”
“The Government thought that they were playing a clever political trick of rolling the pitch, so that, on Budget day, the news would not be so politically damaging. However, they have misunderstood how mobile capital and talent are in the global economy. We need people to want to come to this country. Often they want—I did not—to put their children into independent schools. They want to make money here. They want to build businesses here. We need to attract them. We have no right to just assume that they will come. If we are to build an innovation economy, we need a tax regime that is fair. No one wants this to be the home of Russian money-laundering, international criminals and abuse of the non-dom system, but we have to build an economy that is attractive for innovators.”
“We will balance the books by making cuts, taxing existing wealth and chasing harder and harder after growth, but what we will see is growth down, inflation up, borrowing up, mortgages up and taxes up. We need to send a big signal that this country is open for business. The hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) made an interesting point about the global investment summit, which we set up and which is now called the international investment summit. It is good news that that money is coming in, but I have to say that, in 30 years in the innovation economy, I have never seen so many people decide that they are going to sell their businesses and leave the country than I have over the past three or four months.”
“In that context, a Budget is an opportunity, but the Chancellor has missed the fact that to drive the innovation economy, we need entrepreneurs, innovators, and people who will take a risk and create a business. That does not happen in the Treasury or, dare I say it, in my beloved old Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. It does not happen in Whitehall. Our job is to create the conditions for innovation to flourish. I fear that the signal that has gone out from today’s Budget is that although we have had a change of Government, we have not had a change in the core narrative. It feels to me as though Treasury orthodoxy has been reasserted.”
“I completely agree and the hon. Lady makes an important point. I was the Minister that covered that agenda. The science superpower piece is about our being a bigger player in the world, attracting billions into the country and using our science and research to solve global challenges. Our science ecosystem is not yet set up to do that—that is not even what it thinks it is there to do. The innovation economy piece is about using the science engine to drive economic advantage in this country through the catapult network, greater industrial R&D, investment in skills, ensuring we train the workforce for tomorrow’s industries, procurement and regulation, and supporting innovation clusters. Skills are key to that.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, which is well attended for a Thursday. He knows my family’s interest— I am about the only one who is not involved in racing; my father was a national hunt jockey. Does he agree that from the 2,000 Guineas and the Derby down to the small trainers, small tracks, point-to-points—Fakenham is just outside my constituency—the rural economy and pony clubs, there is an equine economy right across this country, but it relies on money trickling down from the top? Does he further agree that racing’s finances are not just unhealthy, but in crisis? The problem goes across a lot of Labour constituencies as well, so I support him in asking the Government—we will hear from the Minister—for a strong steer to prevent the further decline of racing’s finances.”
“My hon. Friend is making a powerful and important point. Does he agree that if we do not support the UK racing industry, including supporting prize money, we will not only drive the betting revenues away but see more and more money going into other racing? Last year’s Hennessy, a big race in the autumn which I watch, had four runners, and on television all the racing that was being shown was from Ireland, where their horses had 20 entries. If we are not careful, we will end up killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Does he agree?”
“The Minister is nodding—I know she understands this—and I ask her to put the needs of rural SEN at the heart of her work.”
“Scarning school, Dereham school, Toftwood school and Yaxham school—all my schools—have reported an increasing surge that is causing chaos. Parents are having to stop work, we see hugely difficult legal processes and the EHCP system is broken. When I talk to teachers, they also highlight that in the past few years we have seen a huge surge in demand caused by the pandemic, by rural poverty and the cost of living crisis, which has hit us hard, by diet—I know the Government have made some announcements about children’s diets—and by the wider challenge of mental health. I particularly want to highlight the rural aspect. I am sure that, at the heart of it, part of the problem is that the formula does not properly compensate for rural costs, or how the cost of living crisis has particularly hit rural families.”