Esther McVey
MP for Tatton · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Why did they believe then that people under 18 could not make the decision to marry, but now believe that they can make the decision to vote? The same applies to property ownership and mortgages.”
“Yes, that is right. Things are changing continually. The Bill goes against the age of adulthood, with lawmakers raising the minimum age for many different things. As a country we collectively agree that the age of 18 is adulthood, and with that come rights and responsibilities, and things we can and cannot do.”
“If those in Scotland want to carry on with this vote rigging, they are fully entitled to do so, and I am sure that they will conjure up many other ways in which to do it.”
“I will carry on for a second. We are not saying that 16-year-olds would be sent off to combat, nor would we be saying that the inconsistencies about the age of marriage carry on. In England and Wales, the legal age for marriage and civil partnerships is 18. Arranging a marriage for anyone under 18 is illegal.”
“Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire, which would tie the age at which people can buy alcohol to the age at which they are eligible to vote. The question is simple: why have the Government decided that in respect of voting the age of 16 is adulthood, while in many other areas it does not meet the threshold?”
“I rise to speak to amendments 49 to 55 and amendments 56 to 62 to clause 1, which are in my name, and in support of amendments 6 to 12 to clause 1 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford). Through the Bill, the Government have taken inconsistency to a new level.”
The complete record
Every one of 605 lines we hold for Esther McVey, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 10 of 13.
“From a sedentary position, I get £1 million quoted at me. I remember, although maybe the right hon. Lady does not, that it was over £1 million in 2010 when Labour lost office, and that is quite a long time ago. It is for these reasons that the Government do not currently intend to reform severance pay for departing Ministers, although I am happy to review it, as I mentioned earlier. The current system respects the essential constitutional principle that Ministers serve at the discretion of the Prime Minister and that it is right to provide some protections associated with the loss of ministerial office. The principle has applied, as I said, to all Governments since the Act was passed in 1991, and we need to be careful not to change policy on the basis of exceptions that will occasionally occur under Governments of all forms.”
“I am sad to say no I cannot, because we have said that it is essential that there is due process on the Floor of this House—not like the Opposition, who want to whisk it through in a day. We are completely transparent about the payments of severance, and all such payments are published in departmental annual reports.”
“My noble Friend Lord Cameron introduced a 5% cut to ministerial pay when he came into office in 2010. Since then, Prime Ministers have asked Ministers to waive the increase in their statutory pay entitlement year on year. For example, ministerial salaries are roughly half—that is half—of what they would have been had Lord Cameron not introduced the salary reduction when he became Prime Minister. In April 2010, Ministers of State earned £42,370, which is £63,594 in today’s money, yet a Minister of State today receives £31,680. I appreciate that the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury did not want to reply to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth), but will she confirm today that her party would continue with the ongoing cut in ministerial pay?”
“My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I think that that would be looked at under the review as well, should we review this, but the law that was set out at that time stipulated that age. That is something else that I agree would need to be looked at. I want to be clear that severance pay cannot be looked at as a stand-alone issue. It is part of an overall picture that governs payments made to Ministers. More broadly, the Government have consistently demonstrated restraint and always sought to minimise the cost of government, at the same time as modernising ministerial office to bring it into the 21st century. This is most clearly demonstrated in the Government’s policy on ministerial pay. Ministerial salaries today are lower than they were when this Government took office in 2010, which in real terms constitutes a significant pay cut.”
“Member for Islington South and Finsbury could not say whether her party would maintain our cuts to ministerial salaries, could not apologise for the last Labour Government wasting money on PFI schemes and could not say whether this Bill, because it is such important emergency legislation, would be the first piece of legislation introduced by a Labour Government, so we can safely conclude that the Labour party does not care about taxpayers’ money.”
“I conclude by reaffirming the Government’s commitment to recovering the money paid in error to a small number of former Ministers. I reassure the House that departmental processes have been strengthened to ensure that this error does not happen again. For the reasons I have set out, the Government do not think there should be wholesale legislative reform on this matter during this Parliament. We believe that a Government committed to the principle of integrity in public life is the most effective way to control the cost of government to the taxpayer. In that spirit, we will continue to demonstrate restraint in how we are paid and we will continue to modernise ministerial office to meet the expectations that the public rightly have of us. The right hon.”
“That is well dodged again by the right hon. Lady. She will not confirm that Labour would keep a tight fiscal grip on ministerial pay. Obviously, one of the key things about today’s motion is waste and expenditure. We will see what happens. As always, money runs away with the Labour party. This Government passed the transformative Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Act 2021, which for the first time enabled Ministers to take paid maternity leave and be replaced in their Department. Several Members have now benefited from this legislation when in office, and I am sure it will continue to be of immense value. The Government are committed to returning to Parliament in due course to set out proposals on extending the Act.”
“There is an established process in place for the declaration and management of interests held by Ministers, as set out in the ministerial code. The independent adviser on ministers’ interests publishes a twice-yearly list of Ministers’ interests. Since 2023, interim updates to the list are also issued as needed. The latest list was published in December.”
“As the hon. Member says, integrity is vital in this place and we all adhere to high standards. He will also know that there is an established regime in place for those declarations. The Foreign Secretary has adhered to those and, as he has said, he has just one job now, Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom. He is very proud to have that job and to work with the Prime Minister to try to make sure our country is as safe and prosperous as possible.”
“I repeat that there are established regimes in place for the declaration and management of interests, and they are overseen by an independent adviser, who publishes reports twice a year.”
“I refer the hon. Lady to the latest list of Ministers’ interests, which was published on 14 December 2023 and included the relevant interests of all Ministers forming the Government as of 14 December 2023, including the Foreign Secretary. Our clear-eyed position on China remains unchanged and our approach of engaging directly and robustly with China in the UK national interest is the right one and is firmly in line with that of our G7 and Five Eyes partners.”
“We have made a number of important changes to increase transparency. We have launched a new website and online form to make it easier for anyone to make a nomination. We have brought the recruitment of the independent honours committees, which make the honours recommendations, into line with the governance code for public appointments, and we have bolstered probity checks through new and renewed agreements with vetting bodies.”
“I do agree. Given that my hon. Friend is a former sub-postmaster, I can fully understand why he feels so strongly about this matter; he is absolutely right to do so, and I thank him for all the work he has done for his fellow postmasters and sub-postmasters. It is important that we protect the integrity of the honours system, which is something to which this Government are committed. We have undertaken a range of actions to strengthen checks, including expanding criminal record checks and working closely with regulators and other bodies to ensure full due diligence for all nominees.”
“I will say from the Dispatch Box that the answer has been sent and given. If it needs to be reissued, we will do so, but it has been sent. Baroness Mone has taken leave of absence from the Lords, and there are separate investigations into the allegations against her. In my mind, if she is found guilty of wrongdoing, she needs to resign membership of the Lords—the public would expect no less. The House of Lords Reform Act 2014 ensures that a Member convicted of serious offences will cease to be a Member of the House of the Lords, and that is what we want to see. We do not want people in Parliament who bring either House into disrepute: they need to leave.”
“Ministers without Portfolio contribute to the policy and decision-making process of a Government. It is routine for the chair of the governing party to be made a Minister without Portfolio. As such, they serve as a member of the Cabinet. My role as a Cabinet Office Minister is to provide scrutiny and oversight across all Departments to ensure that we deliver best value for the public.”
“I have seen the reports in the paper describing me as the Minister of common sense. I appreciate that the concept is difficult for Opposition Members to grasp. I am committed to delivering common-sense decisions, such as delaying the ban on petrol and diesel cars, delaying the ban on oil and gas boilers, scrapping High Speed 2 from Birmingham to Manchester and reducing the overseas budget—all common-sense policies that those on the Opposition Benches have voted against. Those on the Government Benches are full of common sense. I am building on all those policies.”
“First of all, I did not hear my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary say the comments that the hon. Member repeated; as far as I am aware, he has denied saying them. As I said, I am building on the success of this Government. Let me give another: the biggest permanent tax cuts in modern British history announced yesterday—cutting taxes, not like the Opposition, who want more borrowing and spending.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this matter, which he has worked extremely hard on, to the attention of the House. I am grateful for that suggestion; I will take it away and come back with further information.”
“It does not surprise me that those on the Labour Benches attack private schools, which lots of parents want to send their children to. For them, that is common sense. For them, that is freedom of choice, which I stand by. Of course, should they close private schools down, the public sector would have to find billions more to fund it: again, not value for money—something that I am here to deliver—from Labour.”
“We must also, as an urgent priority, look after those who have been damaged, or those who have tragically lost loved ones. We may then begin to restore the faith that has undoubtedly been lost in the authorities responsible for protecting and promoting public health. There are many unanswered questions and the repetition by Ministers of those three words—“safe and effective”—is simply not a good enough answer, for all the reasons I have just given, so I am delighted to support the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.”
“This is excessively long, especially when people are injured and potentially unable to work. We were also told that 162 claims were found to have had disablement caused by the vaccine, but it was judged that those people were just not disabled enough to merit a financial reward. In many of those cases, the decision was reached without a doctor meeting or even speaking to the applicant to help with the assessment. In the rare cases that money has been awarded, the payment has not changed since 2007, as my hon. Friend has said, so its value has been eroded by inflation, which simply is not good enough. In conclusion, I will make a plea for transparency and integrity. It is time to be honest with the public about the safety of these vaccines, and we must start by giving them access to information and data without further delay.”
“Some have tragically lost their lives and, as was noted last month at the covid inquiry by Anna Morris KC, victims and their families have been marginalised and “face stigma and abuse for sharing their symptoms…and even been branded as anti-vax for sharing very real and medically proven vaccine injuries.” This is really quite unacceptable. It is way past time that the Government do the right thing and follow the recommendations of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. It has been shocking to hear how slowly the vaccine damage payment scheme has been operating. Applicants are having to wait months. We heard from the solicitor Peter Todd at a recent hearing of my all-party parliamentary group on pandemic response and recovery. He described how 139 applicants have been waiting for more than 18 months for a decision on their case.”
“Dame June Raine, the head of the MHRA, recently said that the covid pandemic “has catalysed the transformation of the regulator from a watchdog to an enabler”, which does not exactly sound like good news for anyone concerned about safety. Ultimately it comes down to this: the Government repeatedly told the public that covid vaccines were safe, and for many—probably the vast majority—they were, but plenty of people have suffered as a result of their decision to follow the Government advice and take this new medical intervention.”
“In July 2020, the Government published the “First Do No Harm” report, which highlighted significant problems. It stated: “The MHRA needs substantial revision, particularly in relation to adverse event reporting and medical device regulation. It needs to ensure that it engages more with patients and their outcomes.” It also stated: “The spontaneous reporting platform for medicines and devices, the Yellow Card system, needs reform”, and that the “system is not good enough at spotting trends in practice and outcomes that give rise to safety concerns.” What has been done since that report was published just over two years ago? Have these concerns been heard and acted on?”
“A safety signal was picked up and acted on—thank goodness—but in Denmark the problem was picked up much sooner. It paused the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on 11 March 2021, after it had vaccinated 734,000 people. At the same time, 24 million people had been vaccinated in the UK, without the MHRA detecting a signal of a problem. Why were we so far behind the curve? Was it because debate had been closed down and people were not allowed even to question what was going on? What about mRNA vaccines? In Florida last year, the state surgeon general recommended against males aged between 18 and 39 receiving mRNA covid-19 vaccines of any brand. My question is: what evidence was Florida reacting to, and is the MHRA urgently looking into whether we should be following suit here?”
“On that basis, and worryingly, both Pfizer and AstraZeneca are guilty by their own industry’s self-regulatory code of breaking their own best practice. They were found to have misled the public both by misrepresenting and overstating the efficacy of the covid vaccines and erroneously describing them as “safe” in press releases and on social media without qualification. How many other organisations and individuals are also guilty of misleading the public in that way? We were told that AstraZeneca vaccines were perfectly “safe”—that word again—and that there was no evidence of blood clots. But the advice was changed on 7 April 2021 so that those under the age of 30 would be offered an alternative brand, due to the now proven link with blood clots. The advice then changed again so that the under-40s would be offered an alternative brand.”
“I come back to the word “safe”, which means free from harm or risk of any kind. It is a word with an absolute definition. It is not to be qualified or diminished, yet we know that, like all medical interventions, the covid-19 vaccines are not 100% free from risk or danger. That is why the blue guide, a document published by the MHRA that gives detailed guidance on them legislation controlling how medicines are advertised in the UK, says: “Advertising which states or implies that a product is ‘safe’ is unacceptable. All medicines have the potential for side-effects and no medicine is completely risk free as individual patients respond differently to treatment.” That principle is replicated in the UK pharmaceutical industry’s own self-regulatory code of practice, which also states that the word “safe” must not be used without qualification.”
“Other people have been concerned that families are losing faith in other vaccines because of the way that they were treated over the covid-19 vaccine. There have been drops in the take-up of the MMR and polio vaccines, which is wrong; people need to take those vaccines. But all Members in this House wanted to do was to question the new vaccine, and to have a debate on it, particularly when the House wanted to mandate it for people and for care workers. My point is this: if we allow language to be corrupted in this way, and definitions of words to be bent out of shape, we lack the tools for nuanced debate. It is only by having a wide and open debate that we get to the central gravity of truth. We have not had anything like a wide and open debate on the topic of the safety and efficacy of the covid-19 vaccines.”
“However, when discussing covid, we no longer appeared to be dealing with science—oh, no, Mr Deputy Speaker—rather, we were dealing with “the science”. To question “the science” was to risk being called and labelled a “covidiot”, or that most poisonous of terms “anti-vaxxer”. People who just wanted to query this new vaccine were closed down and vilified. I looked up the definition of “anti-vaxxer” and was surprised to learn that it is someone who opposes the use of some or all vaccines, regulations mandating vaccination, or usually both. There were 246 of us in this House who, on 13 July 2021, voted against mandating the vaccines for care workers. That is 246 anti-vaxxers in this House, according to the latest definition. That is absolute nonsense. People were not anti-vaxxers.”
“I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for introducing the Bill, for the work and research that has gone into it, and for his reaching out and speaking to people about it. At the tail end of his speech, he talked about the phrase “safe and effective”, and I will start my speech there. “Safe and effective” became the covid vaccine catchphrase—we will call it that—and it was repeated so many times over that couple of years. It cropped up everywhere: in Government communications, in interviews with experts and across a media that was only too happy run with that covid slogan—safe and effective. So ingrained did it become in the national psyche that to ever ask questions about the covid vaccine became very difficult to do indeed. Asking questions is a vital part of scientific and political debate.”
“Is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am that the head of the MHRA has said that the covid pandemic catalysed the transformation of that regulator from watchdog—which it should be—to enabler? It has shifted its purpose significantly.”
“Was my hon. Friend also concerned that, after I had spent quite a long period of time questioning the “safe and effective” covid-19 vaccine mantra, the first thing the Opposition spokesperson said, without any qualification, was “safe and effective”?”
“We have scrutiny to ensure that laws and regulations are the best they can be. Surely this is the only way to proceed without such significant breaches of personal life. Amending the Public Health Act will help us to make better, more confident decisions in the event of any future crisis. I commend what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is doing about an impact assessment to make sure that Ministers truly understand what they are putting in place before they do it—something that was lacking during the covid lockdown.”
“We must make sure that we have debate and scrutiny and that we do this impact assessment before lockdowns happen again, because they cause such disruption to livelihoods, education, healthcare and life itself. We all have constituents with heartbreaking stories of not being able to share the joy of a child being born or not being by the side of a dying loved one; of children who now have severe mental health issues or who have lost education; and of livelihoods and futures that have been ruined. Of course, Parliament must have access to emergency powers in extreme situations, but their use must be limited to when they are truly needed. Surely that is the only way to proceed. We must be able to have scrutiny in the House—it must not be missing; it must not be avoided.”
“The Act should be amended to make sure that any future emergency measures are debated before they come into effect. If the situation is too urgent, measures should be provisional for, say, seven days, with Parliament being recalled if necessary to give the proper approval. We cannot have the threat of such far-reaching measures hanging over society, ready to be imposed by a Minister with no notice, without having to defend their decisions at the Dispatch Box. That threat is made very real by the spectre of the World Health Organisation pandemic treaty and the amendments to the International Health Regulations 2005, both of which the UK will be asked to adopt next May. It seems likely that lockdown will be considered as a public health intervention in future, with the Public Health Act as it stands.”
“He described the way in which Parliament had been effectively rendered impotent under the Public Health Act, which had allowed Ministers to avoid the proper debate and scrutiny that we would previously have expected. For example, the first lockdown order was made on 26 March 2020, but was not considered in this place until 11 May. Is it really appropriate for policies that have such a severe impact on every bit of people’s daily lives to be implemented without such scrutiny, and some sort of scrutiny afterwards? The Public Health Act was designed to authorise bans on mass gatherings, isolate infectious people and close infected premises. There is nothing in it about locking down an entire nation, whether infected or not, in their own homes.”
“Some of us raised concerns at an early stage about the removal of parliamentary oversight, feeling that the Government were using loopholes in the Public Health Act to regulate without being held responsible. There were precious few opportunities to hold Ministers to account. In normal times, if a Minister is unable to present a persuasive case for his or her actions we have a chance to vote down the regulations involved, but that important due process all but collapsed in March 2020. We discussed this topic earlier in the year at a session of the all-party parliamentary group on pandemic response and recovery, during which we heard from Lord Sumption., a former Supreme Court judge.”
“Only this week, the covid inquiry heard evidence from Professor Mark Woolhouse in which he described lockdowns not as a public health policy, but as a failure of public health policy. They were, in fact, a failure that could only have been implemented under the Public Health Act. Do Members really want to risk allowing such a failure of public health policy to occur again in the future by leaving in place an Act that will allow a Government to shut down society without scrutiny or debate—without looking at the impact of the measures being taken—or do they want to take simple precautions that would prevent that? If we are being honest, we must conclude that this was not just a public health policy failure, as Professor Mark Woolhouse said; our entire democratic system failed us, just when we needed it most.”
“Robust benefit and cost-benefit analyses should have been carried out, and should have played a crucial role in getting the balance right when it came to what rules, regulations and laws were to be introduced. Whatever views may be held on such far-reaching measures, it should be completely uncontroversial to want to conduct an analysis of potential policy consequences—and experts did predict that the lockdown measures would have dire consequences. In fact, the Government said themselves, in a report published in July 2020, that more than 200,000 lives could be lost as a result of lockdown. Cost-benefit analyses, impact assessments and benefit-versus-benefit analyses of health and mental health education should have been carried out, and politicians should have carried out a 360° review of the lockdown measures.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) on his Bill. As he suggested, it focuses all our minds, including that of the Minister, on the impact of the rules, regulations and laws that we make in the House. I want to look at the Bill with a view to reforming the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 to provide the democratic checks and balances that would allow better decision making in future emergencies. As my hon. Friend said, there was, from the very start, a failure to weigh up the potential benefits of, for example, lockdowns and closing schools and balance them against the costs, which have proved catastrophic.”
“I do not think there will ever be enough scrutiny of what went on with HS2. Is my right hon. Friend concerned at all that the cost went up from about £36 billion to—if Lord Berkeley, the Labour peer in the other place, is to be believed—£180 billion? Thankfully, it was stopped, but is my right hon. Friend concerned that an impact assessment was not done on those staggering changes of cost?”
“Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that, should the House decant somewhere else, it may be to an inferior Chamber? It may be not as secure or safe. In such an inferior Chamber, everything we are talking about here—full scrutiny, proper debates and being held to account—might be overlooked, just as how we were not holding the Government to account during the lockdown period, when we missed some debates and some votes.”
“Surely, if a cost-benefit analysis came forward in one way or another and was scrutinised on the Floor of the House, people could probe it and point out the failures within it. Without one, there is no opportunity to do even that. Would it not at least be a step in the right direction to make sure there is an impact assessment and cost-benefit analysis, because at least then we could have debated those for lockdown on the Floor of the House?”
“I am not sure whether I could have intervened on the Minister there, but there should have been a cost-benefit analysis of industrial action, so that the public knew exactly how detrimental those strikes were, particularly on the railways, with the drop in productivity of the whole country. I do not agree that there are times when we should not do a cost-benefit analysis.”
“Does the hon. Member agree that we need to change the 1984 Act so that we do not bypass the House and go into lockdowns without full scrutiny by all Members of this House?”
“The hon. Member has just said to the House that he did not have sufficient answers for the rule of six and the 10 pm curfew. Does he not think it curious that Members, except for a handful of us here, still voted for them? Even he went along with it and voted for them.”
“Going back to the point on taking away local concerns and local opposition, which the Opposition want to do, the green belt is cherished by the public. To take away the voice of the public should surely be concerning. If the Opposition will take away the voice of the public from something like this, what else will they be taking it away from?”
“Much has been done but more needs to be done, and they need to pursue that as well as they can. We can say that with our Prime Minister as an advocate. However, in the light of the first-hand experience of my constituents that I have just shared and those survey results, how is the Minister ensuring the security and consistency of supply of medicines? How will the Government compensate pharmacies for the extra costs of offering additional services such as annual health checks, which require more skilled staff? I appreciate the difficulty of finding more funding for the sector, but I know that the Government will be looking to do that, so will the Minister explain how? Local pharmacies want to be at the heart of the health sector and take more of the workload off the NHS, but in order to do that they need to be adequately recompensed.”
“It found that 92% of pharmacies are dealing with medicine supply issues daily, which was an increase from 67% in 2022; 97% of pharmacy owners reported significant increases in wholesaler and medicine supply issues; 81% of pharmacy staff said they were “struggling to cope” with the significant increase in workload; and 84% had experienced aggression from patients due to medicine supply issues. Worse—if things could be worse—pharmacists face more abuse from the public because of drug shortages. To keep our community pharmacies afloat, Lee Williams advocates a complete overhaul of how community pharmacies are viewed and remunerated. I therefore welcome the Government’s announcement of £645 million of new funding for Pharmacy First. The Government realise that things need to be done.”
“If a manufacturer can sell those medicines for a higher price in other countries, it will prioritise those markets over our own. Community pharmacists find that their staff, in their role as pharmacists, are spending a lot of their time trying to find stock, on top of their crippling workload. Community pharmacy is therefore at a low—the pharmacists would say an all-time low—which corresponds to much of the results of Community Pharmacy England’s 2023 pressures survey.”