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.”
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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 3 of 13.
“I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for raising that point. She is absolutely right that the number of new homes that are going to be built in rural areas, putting more pressure on GP surgeries, is significant. Without new GP practices, I am not sure where our residents will go when they need a doctor and need to see somebody about their health.”
“In a written answer to a parliamentary question, the Government confirmed that the review “will draw on a range of evidence and advice from experts,” such as the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation and the British Medical Association general practitioners committee, but there is little information beyond that. There are GPs in Tatton who are keen to contribute but, as of yet, have not been able to.”
“Without connectivity, rural practices are simply unable to access or benefit from Government investment in that area. There are lots of people from rural areas here, and we know how unreliable our broadband infrastructure is. In 2022, the all-party parliamentary group on rural health and care published an inquiry into healthcare in rural areas. It concluded: “Rurality and its infrastructure must be redefined to allow a better understanding of how it impinges on health outcomes”. No progress has been made on achieving that. Removing the rurality measure of GPs’ funding entirely would be a step backwards in understanding how settings impact GPs’ ability to provide healthcare. There is little transparency about who exactly will be consulted in the funding model review.”
“Pharmacies, which help to relieve pressure on GPs in urban areas, are not as common in rural areas. When I secured this debate, I was contacted by the Dispensing Doctors’ Association, which provides an essential role in dispensing medicines to patients who live more than 1.6 kilometres from a pharmacy. It delivers to about 10 million patients across England, but is facing increasing challenges due to its reliance on manual delivery. In addition, while urban pharmacies move ahead with digital efficiency, rural pharmacies often struggle to keep pace because broadband coverage is often unreliable, rendering remote consultations near impossible and service delivery more difficult. The benefits of digitisation in healthcare are well understood across this House, but they rely entirely on having the right infrastructure in place.”
“Often, elderly residents do not drive, so they are left reliant on costly taxis or GP staff taking the time to travel to a patient’s home. That places additional pressures on already stretched services. In Lostock Gralam, despite a population of about 2,800 people, there is no GP practice. That forces patients to make a lengthy journey to Northwich, and without a direct bus service many are left to rely on taxis to make their appointment. For those communities, recruiting and retaining staff becomes more difficult and more expensive. The Rural Services Network reports that 59% of hard-to-recruit GP speciality training posts are located in rural areas. There is less access to specialists and consultants, which makes their services more expensive. Community services and provision are sparser in rural areas, too.”
“I agree with the hon. Member. I will come on to my surgeries that are indeed in Victorian buildings—spread across four—and need to be brought together and modernised. That is in Knutsford in my constituency. I know that there will be many other places like that across the country. The hon. Member raises a valid and pertinent point. We know that GP services in rural communities are spread across a large geographical area, and many elderly residents in Tatton live alone. Although such independence is cherished, travelling long distances to access healthcare is more difficult. Public transport is often limited or non-existent. Community transport schemes exist in Tatton, but they cannot always accommodate short-notice or urgent medical needs.”
“Given the specific challenges they face, will the Department commit to publishing an assessment of the impact on rural communities ahead of any change to the funding formula?”
“The current surgeries in Knutsford do not do that; they are all Victorian buildings and are not suitable. I have been pressing for that for a long time. I have met with the Minister—I thank her for that—and I would be grateful for an update on the progress of the practice in Knutsford. GP practices deliver community care and their ability to deliver is reliant on the environment in which they serve the patients. We must have a funding formula that acknowledges the challenges of delivering healthcare in rural areas. I would be grateful if the Minister could answer the following questions. Who is being consulted in the review, and will it include those with first-hand experience of delivering healthcare in rural settings, like my GPs in Tatton? What assurances can be provided that rurality will remain a factor in a new funding formula?”
“As is typical, Labour’s response to pressure is to level down some areas, which serves only to create additional pressures elsewhere, rather than acting to fix them. The pressure faced by rural healthcare will not disappear soon. The NHS long-term workforce plan, published under the previous Government in 2023, recognised that the increased demand from an ageing population is not uniform in the UK. It estimated that “In 2037, a third of people aged over 85 will be living in rural communities” compared with just a quarter now. The Government must act to address that trend. I have been campaigning for a new medical centre in Knutsford, as was acknowledged before, where doctors desperately need more space and modernised facilities to meet patients’ needs.”
“The hon. Member raises another good question, and we can ask the Minister to look into that. The logical conclusion of not having GPs from rural areas take part in this review is that the Government do not want to listen to them. They are intent on rewriting the formula without acknowledging the realities of delivering rural healthcare. A broadbrush measure such as deprivation cannot take into consideration the very close link between the ability to deliver healthcare and the rural or urban settings in which GPs exist. It comes as little surprise. Whether selling off our family farms or introducing a devolution agenda that pits rural against urban areas, time and again the Labour Government have shown that they are not willing to listen to rural areas, but are quick to sell out rural Britain at the first chance.”
“I apologise for the fact that I cannot stay until the end of this debate, because I have a debate in Westminster Hall, but I need to ask the Minister a question. She talks about outcomes. Is she as shocked as I am that the Labour Cheshire police and crime commissioner has already spent £200,000 on two listening exercises, and is expected to spend another £400,000 on more listening exercises? The precept is going up by 6.7%, but the police force will have to make redundancies. Does she not agree that the money should go not on vanity projects, but on frontline policing?”
“Following on from the Minister’s point, I noticed today that the same Labour police and crime commissioner has put up an advert for a senior public relations officer on £45,000 to £55,000, and there are other vanity projects. Surely that money should be spent on PCSOs and police on the ground, not on the PCC himself.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way; it is most generous of her. My chief constable has raised a point about Labour’s new Sentencing Act 2026, where criminals will not be sentenced for less than 12 months. My chief constable says that their force will now be man-marking criminals on the street, which will cost them approximately £1.6 million a year. Can the Minister explain how she plans to address that issue in costs and man hours?”
“At a time of great pressure on police budgets, my Cheshire police force is having to make redundancies. Was my right hon. Friend as concerned as I was that the Minister felt that our Labour police and crime commissioner could spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on vanity projects? She accepted it, rather than condemning it, and that money should go to frontline policing.”
“Is my hon. Friend concerned about not only that but increasing industrial-scale dumping in rural areas and the additional pressures on neighbourhood policing—whether from the increase in illegal immigrants going into hotels and houses of multiple occupancy, or from prisoners being let out of prisons, who neighbourhood police forces have to man-mark because of Labour’s Sentencing Bill?”
“Given the importance of standards in public life, why is it that the adviser who suggested that Peter Mandelson be made ambassador to the United States had to resign, but the person who actually appointed Peter Mandelson—the Prime Minister —is still in post?”
“When we talk about the appointment of Mandelson, what we are really talking about is the judgment of the Prime Minister. Mandelson is now a key part of the Starmer Government —appointments, what goes on, the key people—which brings into question every judgment made by this Prime Minister, from Chagos and China to the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. I would say that today is the crumbling of Starmer. His judgment is poor, and it is ruining this country and the Labour party.”
“I am going to raise a very sensitive issue. My hon. Friend raised a point about vulnerable women being abused, about powerful men taking advantage, and about a friend who was appointed when he was known to be a friend of a convicted paedophile. We also have a Labour Government who ran away from investigating grooming gangs—again, vulnerable women being taken advantage of by powerful men. The Labour Government have said they stand up for women, women’s rights and vulnerable women. They have shown now that they do not, at any level—whether at the highest level or in respect of white working-class girls. Labour, I am afraid, has a lot of questions to answer about protecting women.”
“Does the Prime Minister accept that in his rush to hoover up economic crumbs from President Xi because of his appalling handling of our economy, he is having to increase strategic dependence on Beijing? The public see the risks the Prime Minister is taking with UK security; does he?”
“Do the Government believe that Lord Mandelson should be stripped of his peerage, yes or no? If they do believe that, they should bring forward primary legislation to do just that. I am afraid the Minister’s excuse of a queue does not wash. Will they bring forward legislation for the disgraced Lord Mandelson, their friend? If they do not, and he keeps his title despite Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being stripped of his, what rank hypocrisy that would be. How much further can this Government stain their tarnished reputation?”
“Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) for cancelling this white elephant project. This Government would do well to follow his lead.”
“Rather than faffing about with carry-over motions—acting more “Carry On”, than carry over—why do the Government not just announce this project is dead and buried, and put it out of its misery once and for all? The Government need to dispose of the properties they have bought and are holding on to, and take them out of safeguarding. It seems the Government are only proceeding with this carry-over motion to try to appease the windbag of the north, Andy Burnham. If they think this futile gesture will ensure he plays nicely and supports the Prime Minister, they are sadly deluded. This is another example of the Government making the wrong decision for the wrong reasons. They should have learned by now that such a tactic will always backfire. My constituents were extremely grateful to the former Prime Minister, the right hon.”
“I rise to object to the High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill carry-over and Select Committee motions. Why is there any need to carry over the Bill? To paraphrase Monty Python, this project is no more: it has ceased to be, it has expired and gone to meet its maker. It is a stiff, bereft of life, so why won’t everyone accept this project is dead, finito, finished? By continuing with this charade, the Government are giving false hope to those who want it to happen, just like they did with the WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—women, and are causing needless anxiety to those in my constituency who do not want it to happen.”
“According to the Secretary of State’s announcement, the money being put forward was, I think, £1.1 billion out of a £45 billion cost, which was to be delivered in decades to come, when the Secretary of State and her Government will no longer be around—hence, it is a charade to keep the mayors of the north happy at the local elections.”
“I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called. We will go to the Front-Bench speakers at about 3.30 pm. I am aware we are expecting a vote, which might come as early as 3.30 pm; I will obviously suspend the sitting when that happens.”
“I will call Amanda Hack to move the motion and I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of both the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention with a 30-minute debate.”
“I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak and that interventions should be short. We will come to the Front-Bench speeches just before 3.30 pm.”
“Order. Before the hon. Gentleman replies, we have a Division. I think there will be three Divisions, so Members should come back in 35 minutes.”
“Well, we will leave it there anyway. There is a Division, so we will suspend the debate for 15 minutes—unless Members are back sooner. If you all leg it back, we will start again sooner.”
“I will call Tristan Osborne to move the motion and I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they can make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.”
“I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to speak in the debate. I also remind them that the latest that this debate can go to is 6.8 pm.”
“In the light of what you have said, Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope that you see this as short question and I hope that I get a short answer. Does the Minister know if the security services have any concerns at all about the proposed new Chinese super-embassy—yes or no?”
“This evening, the Minister is trying to convince us to vote for this Chagos deal. The President of the United States says that the Government are handing over the island “FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER”, so can he give us some reasons?”
“I asked the Minister what the reasons were for the Government signing away the Chagos islands. He could not give any reasons. The President of the United States says that the Government are giving the islands away “for no reason whatsoever”, so can my right hon. Friend give us any reason to sign off this deal today?”
“It was unrealistic —an unprecedented state intervention that was doomed to fail. I totally agree with Members present who are pushing for assurances that that will never happen again, but if we cannot look back with honesty and clarity about what was done, we are doomed to make the same mistakes again. Lockdown was the mistake from which all that injustice and suffering flowed. It was an unknown and unevidenced imposition that should never have been inflicted upon the British people. Many experts predicted from the start that it would cause misery and, horrifically, cost hundreds of thousands of lives through unintended but very real collateral damage.”
“Some 3.8 million UK taxpayers were excluded from support, while the rest of the working population were paid to stay at home. Why were they excluded? The reasons were arbitrary. Financial support was not forthcoming if a person was newly self-employed, a PAYE freelancer, a director paid in dividends, starting a new job—the list goes on. The rules were random and confusing, and they pushed so many people into desperate situations. Sadly, we should not have been surprised that that happened. Although some marvelled at the speedy roll-out of the Government’s schemes, the reality was that they were patchy, poorly thought out and full of gaps—of course they were. How could we ever expect to shut down our society and economy and be able to cover the gigantic financial cost of doing so while ensuring that every person was properly looked after?”
“I thank the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) for securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. There is no doubt that the hardship affecting families, businesses and communities as a result of covid-19 policies is ongoing. The depth of suffering is hard to read about. People have been pushed to their limits, mentally and financially, and have had to endure indignity and injustice through no fault of their own. I hope that we can now all agree that it should never have happened. It is something that we never want to see happen again. The various Government financial support schemes that were set up helped many people, but for the forgotten businesses and individuals who, for one bureaucratic reason or another, were deemed ineligible, the situation was patently unfair and unjust.”
“For me, such a statist, socialist intervention would never work, and that is proving to be the case. Those businesses that did manage to survive after everything that was thrown at them in the name of covid are now having to face more gloom and doom from this socialist Government in charge of our country, with their two tax-rising Budgets and their removal of business rates relief without understanding it—”
“I do not believe the evidence proves that. We can look to other parts of the world where that was not the case. This policy had unwavering and enthusiastic support from across the House, with just a few of us in this House —too few—raising valid concerns, but we were shut down. It should be obvious that some people cannot be damaged in the name of protecting others with interventions such as lockdowns that we do not even know will work. The moral mathematics never added up. And now we must live with the consequences of what we did. We spent in the region of £400 billion on the covid-19 response—a vast sum that will be clawed back through increased taxation and hardship for generations to come. Of course, the Conservative party had to put up taxes to pay for that £400 billion, and it was voted for by pretty much every Member in the House.”
“One was that lockdowns were harmful but should have started earlier, and the other was that the modelling should not have been used to justify major policy but simultaneously proved that 23,000 lives could have been saved. Finally, lockdown was, as Professor Sunetra Gupta from the University of Oxford said—”
“Those 3.8 million people who were excluded from financial support suffered a terrible injustice, but so too did those who received support, because lockdown took from everyone: children denied education; mothers forced to give birth alone; people suffering heart attacks, strokes and sepsis but too frightened to burden the NHS; bereaved families unable to mourn the dead—the list of injustices goes on and on. None of it should ever have happened. The costs were always going to be too high, and worse, there appears to be no evidence that lockdown prevented covid infections. The covid inquiry recently made two incredible assertions.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I added on that sentence because I felt it was very relevant that those who did manage to survive the pandemic are now not surviving, because of the extra taxes that are being put upon them and the removal of business rates relief that was introduced during covid, and it seems that the Chancellor does not even know how that works. Those businesses are suffering twofold, because some of that covid benefit is now being removed. It is no wonder Labour MPs are being banned from pubs, as we see mass closures of pubs. I simply ask that we examine the bigger picture.”
“I am concluding my remarks. I am pleased to have been able to speak today as one of a handful of 650 MPs who stood by “the Forgotten Ltd” and by many of our constituents whose businesses went out of business. I was one of the few in the House who stood up for them. Finally, as Professor Sunetra Gupta said, this was like taking a hammer to a fly on a pane of glass: you might or might not kill the fly, but you definitely shatter the window. It will take us a long time to pick up the pieces. Next time we face a similar crisis, let us not panic and reach for the hammer.”
“I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. I am getting an increasing amount of correspondence from Tatton constituents concerned about careless drivers on country roads and the dangers they pose to horses and riders. Does she share my concern about the changes to planning rules by this Labour Government—a Government who show so little regard for the countryside, as we saw with the family farm tax—under which green belt will disappear and cities will bleed into the countryside, making the roads even more dangerous, city dwellers not understanding the etiquette of country roads?”
“It will remove a bulwark against misuse of the criminal court by the Government and those in authority, and the ability of a jury to take a view favourable to a defendant for reasons other than evidence of guilt.” What about the Lord Chancellor? Until a few weeks ago, he believed in juries and trial by jury, too. This is one thing that Government Back Benchers should really be concerned about: constituents have said to me that for such an important change to our unwritten constitution, there should have been mention of it in the Labour party manifesto. One person said, “That would have factored into my voting decision, and it could well have been—if not would have been—a very different decision.” The debate has been revealing. There are no data, no impact assessments and no pilot. The Minister herself, who even suggests—”
“A better solution for the backlog would be to stop the cap on the number of sitting days and let courts sit around the clock, and also to sort out the failure of the prisoner transport system, which does not get defendants to court, or that gets them there late and wastes time.” Another barrister—a King’s Counsel criminal barrister at Lincoln House Chambers in Manchester—said, “I’m very concerned that curtailing jury trials is based on no credible evidence at all. In particular, there has been no pilot scheme. It appears that the suggested savings of 20% have been pulled out of thin air. Very importantly, it will erode a deeply entrenched constitutional principle that a jury may acquit as a matter of conscience in these cases.”
“No wonder the Prime Minister appointed him. My constituents in Tatton, from school pupils to the leader of the northern circuit and barristers from the Middle Temple, urged me to speak today to say that this is an absolute disgrace, and they put forward some of their suggestions. A barrister at St John’s Buildings said, “Actually, I don’t believe at all that cutting trial by jury will get down these lists and sort out the problem. In fact, I’m deeply concerned that such proposals will further erode the trust of the public in our justice system. It will remove their participation in criminal justice. There is no evidence that it will have any impact on the delays.”
“Who would have thought that a Government led by a human rights lawyer would be leading the charge to remove one of our most basic human rights, trial by jury? The Government are removing the right to a jury trial for any offences that carry a likely sentence of less than three years, supposedly to reduce the backlog of cases waiting to go to trial—but let us look at the evidence. There is a backlog of 78,000 cases. There are around 1.3 million prosecutions in England and Wales every year, and 10% of those cases go before a Crown court. Of those, three out of 10 go to trial. These reforms mean that more than two out of 10 will still go before a jury. Given those figures, there will be no realistic change to the waiting times from removing that fundamental right. Who was doing the maths for this—the “Mastermind” Lord Chancellor?”
“The police have said that the prisoners who absconded from the open prison HMP Leyhill are dangerous and should not be approached by the public. How can any prisoner described in that way be in an open prison? It defies logic, Minister.”
“Seven former SAS officers say that troops feel abandoned by this Government’s legacy Bill. Given those comments, does the Minister believe that the Bill will incentivise the next generation to apply to serve in the armed forces, or, rather, that it will prevent the next generation from taking that career path, in the knowledge that they could be abandoned by a future Government, just like the troops who feel abandoned by this Government now?”