Sir Bernard Jenkin
MP for Harwich and North Essex · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I do not think that the Minister mentioned Essex in his statement, but he made a point about funding which I think is much appreciated—that areas have incurred costs in good faith. Does that apply to Essex?”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Another £2.2 billion of new taxes on business is by far its biggest effect, and the impact of the two previous, absolutely catastrophic Budgets remains embedded in Government policy. They hammered sectors such as hospitality, and businesses that used to enjoy employing a lot of young people can no longer afford to do so.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No, I will not give away. Only 5.9% of the UK economy is goods exports to the EU. A much larger proportion goes outside the EU. Incidentally, during our period of membership, the proportion of GDP that we exported to the EU was in steady decline from 1992 to 2021. Other factors have led to the decline in our exports with the EU.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Their very large majority was a bit of an electoral accident, so many of them will lose their seats, but they can trust the Prime Minister, because he said on 25 September, “Don’t worry, the election will be in 2029”—just as he said, “We’re not going to reopen all the arguments about rejoining the EU” and, “We’re not going to reopen the a…”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The OBR says that debt rises from 95.5% of GDP this year to 97.3% in 2028-29. The headroom is just £15 billion in 2029-30, which is £7 billion less than at the last Budget. The OBR says there is only a 56% chance of meeting the rule. As the bond markets digest this Budget, I am not sure they will be quite as sanguine as they have been.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If the hon. Gentleman is saying, “If only we were not doing this later retirement thing, there would be more jobs for young people,” I have to say that managing the economy in that way is not very successful. It does not work. On the forecast, the Government set great store by what the IMF says about the UK’s deficit reduction programme.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
The complete record
4,629 held · 4,625 searchable for Sir Bernard Jenkin. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 7 of 10.
This is not an official version of UK Parliament proceedings. It reproduces the published record and links to it; the official version is the one UK Parliament publishes.
“May I, in all candour, suggest to the Government that having now introduced this new element—the UN convention on the law of the sea and, I presume, the associated International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea—as the decisive factor that might have created a binding ruling, it really is incumbent on the Government to set out in a statement exactly how it would have affected the electromagnetic spectrum or our ability to use it in Diego— [ Interruption. ] The Foreign Secretary might just calm down for a minute. I just want a proper explanation. I make this forecast. To cut personal independence payments and winter fuel allowances to pay billions of pounds for something that was already British sovereign territory—how is the Secretary of State going to explain that on the doorstep to all his party’s voters?”
House of Commons22 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Can I just point out to the Prime Minister that nothing can undo the fact that 17.5 million people voted leave? They voted to take back control of our laws and stop paying money to the EU. That was a considerably larger number than the 9.7 million people who voted Labour at the last election, but now the Prime Minister is submitting to EU regulations without any control and starting to pay money back to the European Union—he is giving up control over our laws and restoring payments to the European Union. He will pay a bitter political price for this betrayal.”
House of Commons20 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Would my hon. Friend care to disabuse Labour Members who seem to be under the impression that whatever amount we put in, somehow our defence contractors in the UK will get more out of the fund than we are contributing? The history of defence procurement in Europe is that France and Germany invariably make sure that they get more out of it than they put in, and we are always the losers. I do not think we will suddenly become winners when we are not a member of the EU.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“May I point out that the Conservative motion says that the Conservatives stand by the result of the 2016 referendum, but the Labour amendment does not say the same of the Labour party? Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that a one-term mandate in one election trumps a referendum result, or does he respect the referendum result of 2016?”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point about shellfish. The environmental and hygiene standards we apply to our shellfish remained exactly the same the day we left the EU as when we were in the EU—it was the EU that supplied all that bureaucracy and requirement for wet stamps. Under World Trade Organisation rules, if a territory has equivalent standards, it is obliged to allow goods to enter its jurisdiction unchecked. Why does the EU breach this international law so wantonly, and why have the Government become a supplicant to the EU, trying to gain its favour to remove these illegal barriers?”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Gentleman told us that he has a constituent who finds it easier to trade with South Korea than with the EU. What does that tell us about the EU? Is that not one reason why people voted to leave? It is because of its excessive bureaucracy and its protectionism. Why is it easier to trade with South Korea than with the EU if it is not for EU bureaucracy?”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not think anyone would pretend that the European Union was the main issue at the last general election, so anyone in the Government or indeed in the Liberal Democrats trying to use the general election result as a mandate to circumvent the result of the 2016 referendum is playing a dangerous political game.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The referendum demonstrated that the House of Commons was completely out of alignment with the population on the question of our membership of the European Union. The whole Brexit story was about a battle within the House as to whether the pro-EU majority would assert itself and somehow negate the referendum, or whether the referendum would be respected. That is why my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and her shadow Cabinet colleagues are right to put at the front of the motion the importance of honouring the referendum result. The fact is that a referendum result represents a superior mandate to a single term of election for an elected Government, because that referendum takes place on a single issue.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) and his flowery optimism for the future of this country, with it somehow being a terribly good thing that we are realigning ourselves with the European Union without actually rejoining it. It makes me wonder about all the debates I have attended over 33 years in the House about our relationship with what used to be called the common market, then the European Communities and now the European Union. This debate has a ring of familiarity about it, because there are two sides in the House that tend to completely misunderstand each other—only, I think that Conservative Members now understand the truth, because that came out in the referendum.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree with my right hon. Friend. The important point is that we do not have a written constitution, but we do have in our minds a hierarchy of legitimacy on which, in the end, the democratic credibility of the House depends. The fact is, a referendum represents a superior mandate on a single issue and, with a great struggle, the pro-EU majority eventually aligned itself with the decision that the British people had taken on our membership of the European Union.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a dangerous thing for a Government elected on the principle of honouring the referendum result, and one who are now playing dog-whistle politics with immigration, to be backsliding in secret, with a sleight of hand, into allowing jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and permanent alignment back into our law while pretending that is not happening. That is exactly what the Minister did at the Dispatch Box.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree with my right hon. Friend, and that is why it was an extremely ominous portent that the Minister at the Dispatch Box refused to answer him on the question of whether there would be alignment or subjection to the European Court of Justice. If the referendum was about one thing, it was about taking back control of our laws. In fact, many of us in the leave campaign at the time argued that the British people do understand sovereignty—they certainly did by the end of the referendum—and getting into permanent alignment of regulation or subjecting the meaning of laws applied in the United Kingdom to the scrutiny and jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice is giving back control.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I hope we can all agree on one proposition: that there could be no possibility of a proposal to rejoin the European Union or to accept dynamic alignment or the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice—except over its current limited areas, which will eventually expire—without a further referendum. That is a serious matter.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree. But there is another dangerous game being played by another political party: the Liberal Democrats. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) pressed the hon. Member for Lewes (James MacCleary), who wants to rejoin the European Union, on whether there would be another referendum, and he did not say that there would be. That we would have a referendum to leave the European Union but not require a new referendum to rejoin it would be incendiary politics for this country. Why have people become disillusioned with their politicians? It is because politicians seem to agree to one proposition and then do something completely different from what was voted for.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“She warned that it represented the “Three Ds”: the duplication of NATO assets, which was wasteful and unnecessary; the discrimination against non-EU members of NATO such as Norway, Turkey, Canada and the United States; and the decoupling of American and European defence policy. Is that what we want? Is that what this House wants? Is that what the Labour party wants? No. The Labour party says that NATO is the cornerstone of our defence and rightly so, but what signal is it sending to President Trump?”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In any case, this fund is not about creating warfighting capability this year or next year, which is what we need; it is about the very long-term, big programmes that the defence industries want. That will not rescue us from America’s absence from NATO, if that were to occur for more than a few months or a few years under Donald Trump. Let us also remember that Donald Trump will not be there forever; he has 45 more months to go. Let us not do more damage to NATO by making it look to the other side of the Atlantic that we will take care of our own defence in Europe from now on. That is very dangerous. I remember Madeleine Albright, a Democrat Secretary of State, railing against what was then called the European security and defence policy.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As for the idea that we can deploy troops more quickly through free movement of people, what planet are the Liberal Democrats on? It is utterly ludicrous. I come back to the point about the defence fund. There have been such funds in Europe before, but I can assure Members that the game that every country plays is the one where what they put in, they get out. The French are past masters at that. They will participate in a multilateral programme, but if they do not get the lion’s share, they pull out. They pulled out of the Eurofighter programme when that was meant to be part of their deal because they were not getting enough work out of it. Therefore, the idea that it is a freebie for British defence companies to participate in the fund and get extra money into the British defence industries will simply not happen.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No, it was going to be borrowed through some European Central Bank mechanism. Will it instead be taxed? In any case, it is all Government borrowing, so will we add to Government borrowing by participating in the borrowing or funding of that fund, or would it not be better if we just remained aloof from it to concentrate on spending money on our own defence? That is the point that has already been made: the money that we have committed to defence over the years, in the period since the second world war and, indeed, since the end of the cold war, is far greater than that of the vast majority of EU countries. We also mandate our nuclear deterrent to the protection of the whole of Europe. We play our part in the defence of Europe.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am happy to point out that after the referendum and since we left the European Union, we are spending way more than £350 million a week more on the NHS than we were, and our contributions to the European Union have fallen dramatically—in fact, much faster than was expected under the withdrawal agreement. So the benefit that was on the side of the bus has turned out to be correct, although I believe it was a statistical sleight of hand to use that particular number; I disowned it at the time. But have no doubt that if we are to get drawn back into the European Union, we will have to start raiding the NHS to make payments to the European Union again. I do not think that is what the British people voted for. That brings me back to this great defence fund, which I think will be borrowed. Will we have to borrow some of that fund as well?”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I ask that he wait just a minute. What signal is it sending to Donald Trump by suggesting that we will have an EU defence policy that excludes the United States? It is exactly the wrong signal for this moment.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We finished up with something called the Berlin-plus arrangements, which Turkey has never accepted because it is not a member of the EU but is a member of NATO. There has always been an impasse between NATO and the EU on those two questions, and it is all completely unnecessary because NATO has a military headquarters, it has a political committee and it is an international organisation. Indeed, it is the most successful military alliance in the world. Why is the EU trying to duplicate it just for itself? The EU is more interested in statecraft and state-building than defending our own continent. The anger with which Ursula von der Leyen and Friedrich Merz have attacked Trump reflects a latent anti-Americanism that has always been there and which we could do without at this moment.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Yes. That promise of creating an EU defence capability has been on the table since the St Malo declaration of 1999, in the aftermath of the Maastricht treaty that first introduced the word “defence” into the EU. That was when France and the United Kingdom, under a Labour Government, declared that the EU would have autonomous military capability, with separable but not separate military forces from NATO. We still have the absurdity in which the armed forces of the EU countries are allocated to NATO tasks but, at the same time, are ready for EU tasks. There had to be a complicated de-confliction arrangement to try to ensure that an EU defence mission does not conflict with a NATO defence mission.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It does European air defence. We need to bolster NATO. It is encouraging that force planning for a possible peacekeeping force in Ukraine is all being done at NATO and not in the EU crisis management centre or at EU military headquarters. Only NATO has the capability to plan large-scale military activity.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Sadly, European Union defence has always promised far more than it delivers. It was meant to galvanise all the European states into spending more money; it failed and just did not do that. When any serious military operation was required, it was NATO. To the EU’s credit, some EU military operations are taking place, but they are on a very limited scale. The British and the Americans need to reinforce the Balkans now, because the Europeans are not committing enough on their own and are incapable of doing so. Even if, this time, there were rapid growth in EU military capability to address the crisis that we face, it would take decades to replicate what the Americans currently provide, such as tactical nuclear weapons and air cover. Why does the EU need to have its own air defence policy when that is exactly what NATO does?”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has made that point, but the best thing for all European nations is not to try to build our own EU defence capability, but to strengthen NATO. There is an argument that we are somehow doing this through the EU so that it can strengthen NATO, but I do not think that is really the ambition of the bureaucrats in Brussels. They have a flag and a Parliament, and they want an army—a Euro army. That is what people periodically talk about, particularly the Germans and the French. They want a Euro army, but that would send the wrong signal to President Trump. Yes, we need to develop those capabilities, but let us develop them through NATO.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We will stand by the British people, and will dishonour any agreement that the Government make with the European Union that is not in our interests. Indeed, there are parts of the withdrawal agreement that we may need to revisit—for example, in the Northern Ireland protocol. The technology has moved on, and we can move to an electronic frontier across the north-south border, without the need for checks on trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. One of the founding principles of the Act of Union was that there should be frontier-free trade within the United Kingdom as a whole. If the continuing development of the Northern Ireland protocol continues to impose those checks, those checks are not in the national interest, and we should reserve the right to jettison the protocol and replace it with something better.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Actually, the vast majority of our trade, particularly our services trade, is outside the EU—people forget that. By being obsessed with trade with the EU, we drive our economy into a straitjacket; we are well out of that. The Government should take away from this debate a warning. They know that they are being attacked by Reform. Those voters would probably never vote Conservative, or are less likely to vote Conservative than Labour, but they are going to Reform because they can sense the backsliding going on in this Government. If there were ever to be another referendum, I would hazard a guess that the vote would be against rejoining the European Union, so there can be no rejoining by stealth, which seems to be the Government’s policy.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As far as I am concerned, we left the European Union in the national interest, because we wanted to remain a sovereign democracy, in charge of our own laws, and to be like most other countries that are not in the European Union; they get on fine. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) pointed out, the economy is still growing, or was growing until the Government hit it with their Budget. We have every opportunity at our feet. One of the reasons we left the European Union—sorry to relitigate all these arguments—and left that slow-growth, high-unemployment, high-regulation, high-tax trade bloc was so that we could make deals with the high-growth, low-regulation, high-employment parts of the world, which in the end will provide us with far more business than we get from the EU.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Wet stamps are so last century, but the EU is still using them on customs forms. That is how backward it is. There are electronic frontiers between African countries where there are no barriers. Incidentally, that is the answer to the Northern Ireland problem. I fully support the Opposition’s proposals, which are to question everything that the EU will demand of us and which the Government might pursue, and to reserve our ability to tear up those agreements if they are not in the national interest. The Government do not have a monopoly on the national interest. “National interest” is a subjective term—the national interest might be different in the mind of one person and in the mind of another.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think they have always been religiously committed to the idea of EU defence—they introduced it in the first place, in the St Malo declaration—but why are they so devoted to doing this now? Of course, it is what the European Union really wants. We are the supplicant in these negotiations. We are asking the EU for concessions, and the one thing that would really make it feel good is drawing the United Kingdom into the defence arena of the European Union. Meanwhile, what concessions are we getting from the EU? I do not see any. It will be interesting to find out. It will not instantly reduce all trade barriers, because we are not in the single market and will not be in the single market. It will still apply all the checks, including the antiquated wet stamps that are applied to forms certifying the fitness of shellfish.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We should dispense with the idea that making a defence pact with the European Union is somehow the great panacea for all the problems we face on our continent because of President Putin. On the contrary, I think it is likely to make things worse—more complicated and more bureaucratic—and it would probably make our defence industries less competitive, because they would be cocooned inside this fund, instead of competing on the on the global stage with the Americans. Incidentally, our defence procurement co-operation with the Americans remains essential. They have the lion’s share of the technology; they are way ahead of the European Union when it comes to technology. So, why are the Government doing this?”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Defence was never in the minds of the early founders of the European Union, and it is very ill suited to the task of getting defence capability, because the institutions were not designed for that purpose. It is not in the culture of those institutions. To rely on them for our defence and security is extremely unwise. On the other hand, NATO is already very well suited to the task and does not need to be duplicated. To put it mildly, given the political disunity in the European Union, particularly towards Trump—okay, that afflicts NATO as well—this is not an instant solution to the political problems in NATO, if those are what the European Union is seeking to resolve.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Yes, and when we look at the European Defence Agency and all the mechanisms that have been created, we can see that the European Defence Agency is an embryo European Ministry of Defence. That is what is intended. Let us just suppose that, in the ideal world that Labour and the Liberal Democrats live in, this defence capability comes about. The fundamental problem is that the European Union was never originally conceived as a defence and foreign policy organisation. There are many countries in it with very different— [ Interruption. ] No, it was functionalism that drove the foundation of the European Communities. It was about trade and creating a single market.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Who is it that is trying to take us back to the past? It is the Government. Brexit is giving this country its new future and the Government are trying to turn the clock back. That is what is wrong.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is something that I have looked at quite closely. The reason for the collapse is that the United Kingdom is not in the internal market, so we do not give direct applicability and direct effect to EU SPS laws. The EU procedure is to check every consignment of shellfish coming into the EU to see if it complies with EU standards, even though the provisions in EU law on clean rivers, clean beaches and clean water all exist in the United Kingdom, and our provisions are probably of a superior standard to those that apply in much of the EU.”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does the Prime Minister recall from our history that, even during the blitz, concert pianist Dame Myra Hess continued performing her piano recitals at the National Gallery, including the performance of German music such as JS Bach’s “Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring”? As a trustee of the Parliament choir and a singer, may I ask him to lend his support to Parliament’s own VE Day celebration, which will take place next Wednesday evening in Westminster Hall? We will perform, in the presence of His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent and the Speakers of both Houses, not only that Bach chorale, but the music of our allies and some British music, too. Tickets are still available.”
House of Commons30 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Can the Minister please explain what exactly the Government disagree with in the considered written foreword by Sir Tony Blair to his think-tank report?”
House of Commons30 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“May I point out that the strike started under this Labour Government, and under a Labour council—and despite all the Minister’s hand-wringing and anguish, the strike continues under a Labour Government, and under a Labour council? It is futile for the Government to pretend it is all somebody else’s fault, least of all the fault of the previous Government. Will the Minister avoid misrepresenting what my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) said? He made the perfectly reasonable suggestion that the Minister should reinstate the legislation that would allow agency workers to be brought in to pick up rubbish off the streets of Birmingham. Why will the Minister not do that? Because he is pussyfooting around and kowtowing to his Labour paymasters, the trade unions.”
House of Commons22 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To what extent does the 39-member coalition accept that the United States is still the indispensable partner in any so-called peacekeeping operation? Unless a peacekeeping force in Ukraine is ready and prepared to fight and defeat the Russian armed forces, there is no point in it being there. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) said earlier, it would be just a victim of another tragedy. On that point, to what extent would the primacy of NATO be recognised in any proposed EU-UK defence agreement? Again, we do not want inadvertently to send a message to the United States that NATO is over, we no longer need the Americans and we are going off on our own, because we will not be capable of doing that for decades.”
House of Commons22 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. We should not just complain about this terrible new tax that is being applied to hospices, but point out to the Minister that the return on taxpayers’ investment in what hospices spend on the dying is very great indeed. If a little bit of the big increase in funding that the NHS received was transferred to hospices, it would pay great dividends; it would save the need for much more costly care in the hospitals. The return is 300%, according to St Helena hospice, just outside my constituency, on whose behalf I am speaking this evening. I hope the Minister will address that point when he winds up.”
House of Commons8 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Was it the Government’s intention to put an additional tax on hospices? Is that exactly what the Government intended to do, or is that an unforeseen consequence?”
House of Commons8 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I hope that she will look for common cause between the two Front-Bench teams, because this should be done on a consensus basis. We do not need to tear chunks out of one another for the mistakes we have all made in the past.”
House of Commons7 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the hon. Lady for keeping an open mind about what to do to save the remnants of our steel industry. Does she not agree that it is vital that we maintain a strategic capability to make steel? Is it not unconscionable that we are building British warships with imported steel? I recognise that the situation represents the cumulative failings of Governments over many decades, but it is now time utterly to change our policy. That includes the energy policy, which has prioritised things other than price in relation to our energy-intensive industries. I am glad to hear that the Government have some answer to that, but to build up a strategic capability for wartime, which is what we now need to tool up for in this country, we need a wholesale change in energy policy.”
House of Commons7 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If the Government’s top priority really is growth, a policy that sets artificial targets to ban products that people want to buy, which are not subsidised, to force them to buy cheap Chinese products that they do not really want, which are subsidised, does not sound like a policy for growth. Incidentally, they also suffer from very high insurance costs and high depreciation costs, and may lead to the closing down of capacity to produce in the United Kingdom the products that people do want to buy. The Secretary of State may have priorities, but growth is not one of them.”
House of Commons7 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have my doubts, I am afraid, so I would be most grateful if he can address that.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It was an important Napoleonic port, it grew from a wonderful medieval naval base to being a very important naval base during the first and second world wars, and the entire German submarine fleet was gathered in the estuary. Harwich is full of potential. We have the freeport, the offshore wind industry and wonderful manufacturing businesses, providing stable employment to their workforces. The place is full of potential, but I worry that without being championed by our own Tendring district council, which has done a marvellous job but is being lined up for abolition, we will not get the same support. When he winds up, will the Minister assure us that coastal communities will get the same support, under the new local government set-up, that they have always enjoyed from their district councils?”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) said in his opening remarks—I thank him for securing this important debate, although obviously we have much too short a time—these places are full of potential. Harwich is a unique historic town. It is where the Mayflower sailed from in 1620. The captain of the Mayflower lived in Harwich, and his house is now a museum. When we say to the Americans, “Do you realise that you originally came from Harwich?” their eyes are opened. They think it is all about Plymouth, but they are not right. When we tell them what they could come and see, and that instead of some fake Victorian steps, they could come and see the real house of the captain of the Mayflower, they are amazed.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna). I do not need to repeat everything he said, because it all applies in spades to my constituency, which is very much a coastal constituency, which includes not just Harwich, but Manningtree, Mistley, Brightlingsea, and West Mersea. Those are all places of varying economic prosperity, but I wish particularly to talk about Harwich because it is so typical of what has happened to very prosperous Victorian port towns, where glorious terraces of grand houses would be worth millions if they were near London, but instead they are bedsit territory for some of the most unfortunate in our society who find themselves getting off the train and looking for somewhere to stay. Having said that, as the hon. Gentleman and the hon.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Bach to include Germany in the celebration—the music played regularly by Myra Hess throughout the war at the National Gallery. We will be singing some Russian music too, as a memory that Russia was once our ally. We hope that one day Russia will be our ally again, but certainly under a different leader from the present one.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Minister for her statement and for mentioning the Parliament choir, of which I am a trustee, and the concert we are planning as part of Parliament’s celebration of victory and VE 80. I note that though this Chamber was shattered by a Nazi bomb, the scarred arch at the entrance to it remains as a memorial to this House’s defiance throughout the war. I assure the Minister that our programme is a celebration, a commemoration and a noting of the international effort. We will be singing music by not just British composers, but those from the countries we liberated, such as Czechoslovakia and France, those from our allies, such as America, and those from countries we vanquished. We are doing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” by J. S.”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗