Justin Madders
MP for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough · Labour · United Kingdom
“Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard asked about, will consider the points raised in this debate and whether any of them can be put into future updates to guidance. As was mentioned, good passenger information is central to standards.”
“As the roads Minister, I of course recognise the importance of bus stops and the important effect they have on the streetscape. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard made clear that she is passionate and informed about the importance of bus journeys to everyone.”
“Where responsibility for highways or individual assets sits elsewhere, close and effective working between the relevant authorities is essential. We expect local plans to join up services, infrastructure and passenger information, rather than treating them as separate issues. That will no doubt be music to the ears of my hon.”
“Our guidance encourages authorities to take a strategic approach to stops and interchanges, including keeping an inventory of infrastructure, identifying priorities for investment and setting locally appropriate standards for facilities and maintenance.”
“She is absolutely right that the quality of a bus stop is about more than accessibility, although of course accessibility is vital. Passengers notice whether a stop is easy to find and use, whether it offers shelter or seating where appropriate, whether it is clean, whether the surroundings feel safe and well maintained and, as we have di…”
“That approach reflects a simple principle: local transport authorities know their areas and are best placed to plan improvements across the whole local bus network. That is why the Department’s vision for buses, within an integrated transport system, puts local transport authorities at the centre of delivery.”
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“I suggest that the general confidentiality duty in contracts of employment ought to cover those sorts of situations. I urge the Minister to look again at that as a reason not to extend the scope.”
“When the penny dropped for the Prime Minister on Monday and she realised that her Budget was responsible for crashing the economy, she should have come to this House to explain herself and to apologise to the millions of people who will now be paying hundreds of pounds extra a month on their mortgages because of her mistakes. Now that she is here, can she tell us, given the absolute chaos that her Government have created, why the previous Chancellor lost his job but she kept hers?”
“If the Government really do want to get consent for fracking the countryside, they should put it in their manifesto and call a general election. We will see whether they get that consent.”
“I am afraid the Government amendment does not take us to a place where I am convinced that we will have genuine consent, and whatever is said from the Dispatch Box does not really mean anything when Cabinet Ministers are falling on a daily basis. Let us be clear that consent is not the same as consultation, and the amendment talks too much about consultation rather than consent. Consultation is not as robust and definitive, and it is certainly not what people would expect. The Business Secretary said last month: “Compensation and consent become two sides of the same coin.” —[ Official Report , 22 September 2022; Vol. 719, c. 796.] I would say that they cannot possibly be two sides of the same coin. Compensation is payment in recognition of a loss, which does not in any way mean that people have agreed to suffer that loss.”
“Second, no amount of shale gas from hundreds of wells dotted across rural England would be enough to lower the European price any time soon. And with the best will in the world, private companies are not going to sell the gas they produce to UK consumers below the market price. They are not charities, after all.” Well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, just as a discredited former Chancellor can be right about something. He was certainly right about that. I will say a few words about consent. The dictionary definition of consent is “permission for something to happen or agreement to do something.” Let us be clear that that is not the same as getting a payment in lieu of consent, and it does not mean having a refined planning process to create the illusion of consent.”
“I thank the Tory Whips for making this a confidence vote in the Prime Minister, because after the week that she has had, I think that is more likely to lead to Back Benchers voting with us than against us. But if they are not persuaded by that, I hope they do not fall for the spin that we have heard about our needing fracking to deal with the rising cost of energy, because it was not so long ago that the now former Chancellor said that “those calling for the return of fracking misunderstand the situation.” He also said: “Even if we lifted the fracking moratorium tomorrow, it would take up to a decade to extract sufficient volumes—and it would come at a high cost for communities and our precious countryside.”
“I will start with words from page 55 of the Conservative party manifesto, because it is very clear and it is there in black and white. It says: “We placed a moratorium on fracking in England with immediate effect. Having listened to local communities, we have ruled out changes to the planning system. We will not support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.” I read out those words because they should mean something. They should mean something to everyone on the Government Benches, who were elected on those words. If they do not mean anything to Conservative Members, I am sure they will mean something to the people who voted them in and who will be watching very closely how the vote today, because the science has not categorically shown that it can be done safely.”
“I am sure the markets will be reassured to see the Prime Minister is not hiding under her desk but is here in the House today. She still has until 10 pm tonight to answer questions that have been asked if she wants to reassure the markets and create some stability. However, I have another question for the Leader of the House. I have been drawn in the ballot for Prime Minister’s questions on Wednesday; can she guarantee that the current Prime Minister will be answering them?”
“If a test of the Government is how the most vulnerable in society are protected, I am afraid that this is yet another failure—as has been said, this is not the first time that it has happened. The CQC inspected the trust only a couple of months before the documentary was aired, which raises serious questions about the efficacy of CQC inspections. What challenge has it been given about its findings?”
“Further to the question raised earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) at Transport questions on the progress of the Insolvency Service actions against the directors of P&O for the sacking of 800 workers, the Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), responded that that is a matter for the Insolvency Service. I understand that it is not the responsibility of the Department for Transport to monitor these prosecutions, but this is a matter of great public interest. Those sackings were unlawful and immoral, and the public want to know where the Insolvency Service is up to in its actions against those responsible. Will the responsible Department make a statement?”
“Q11. The Prime Minister wants us to believe that fracking will reduce our energy bills, but it was not so long ago that her Chancellor said that those calling for fracking’s return “misunderstand the situation”, saying:“No amount of shale gas from hundreds of wells dotted across rural England would be enough to lower the European price any time soon.”I ask the Prime Minister: is the Chancellor wrong about that?”
“The people of Ellesmere Port have already signalled their opposition to fracking. A planning application was submitted a number of years ago, the local authority rejected it, there was an appeal, many residents gave evidence against the application and after three years it was finally decided that it would not be accepted. Chester zoo, a big employer in my constituency, said today that it was opposed to fracking, and many of my constituents are repeating their objections. There is no local consent in Ellesmere Port and Neston, so will the Secretary of State send the fracking companies the message that there is no point in their coming to ask, because they will not get our agreement?”
“Last month my constituents at CF Fertilisers were made redundant. Within days of that happening, the company announced that it was halting CO 2 production at its plant in Billingham. I know that the Minister is new in place, but I warned his predecessors again and again that we could not afford to be in such a vulnerable position and that we should have got the company sold to the many people who are interested in purchasing it. I am so disappointed that we have got to this point, because it was completely avoidable. Will he, on behalf of his Department, apologise to my constituents who have lost their jobs unnecessarily and to everyone in the country who will be paying more for their food as a result of this very short-sighted decision?”
“This summer I have heard some horror stories from constituents with life-threatening conditions about the dangerous delays they have faced. When one constituent raised the issue with the NHS, she was told by the senior consultant at the A&E department that the NHS has collapsed. If senior frontline clinicians are saying that in the summer, God help us when we get to winter. I really fear where we are going to be, because there is no doubt that my constituent is very lucky to be alive. We have heard a lot of figures today about the number of excess deaths this year. Will the Secretary of State give us his estimate of the number of people who have died unnecessarily because they have been stuck in an ambulance waiting to get into A&E, or because an ambulance has not turned up at all?”
“Almost a year ago to the day, the Post Office announced that Neston post office was to be closed, but that it would be a temporary closure while it found a commercial partner. I warned at the time that that would be a tough ask, and lo and behold, a year on, the Post Office has announced this week that because it has not been able to find a commercial partner, the post office will close permanently. A town of Neston’s size, with 20,000 people, should have a post office, and it is unacceptable that the Post Office continues with these flawed business models where they rely on commercial support that clearly is not there. Can we have a statement from the relevant Government Minister about what they will do to ensure that the Post Office can serve all communities?”
“I urge the Government to intervene and for members of the Cabinet, for a minute, to stop jostling about their own jobs and to think about my constituents’ jobs, because those will be gone in a few weeks, with knock-on effects on jobs in the agricultural sector generally. Please, will the Minister do everything in her power to keep the plant open? I want to be clear: if it is allowed to close, the ramifications of that decision could be felt for years to come. People will rightly ask, “What did the Government do to stop it?””
“How is it sensible to allow a situation in which we know this course of action will put even more pressure on food prices? How is it levelling up to allow 300 highly paid, well-skilled jobs in the north-west go, when we know that there is a viable business there? If there is a way forward, it should be allowed to continue. I cannot overstate to the Minister just how concerned local people are about the parent company’s true intentions. It is clear from talking to them just how little trust they have in CF now and how they believe the consultation process to be, frankly, a sham. The process ends in just a few weeks and, unless there is a dramatic change of approach, we will lose all those jobs and be in a hugely exposed food-security position in future. This cannot wait for a new Prime Minister.”
“The fear articulated to me by many people is that CF do not want to sell the site to a potential competitor. It would rather see the machinery and plant equipment sold for scrap than lose its monopoly position in the UK market. Look at its financial performance: it makes an awful lot of money. Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation in the first quarter alone was $1.68 billion. It increased its dividend by 33% in the first quarter of the year. CF could give the site away for nothing and it would not materially affect its bottom line, but it does not want to do that because it would deny them the opportunity of seizing every last penny from UK farmers. How is it in the national interest to let that happen?”
“The concern I have, which has been conveyed to me by a significant number of the workforce, is that it is not in the parent company’s interest to sell the site as an ongoing concern. If the site closes, CF will have no domestic competition for fertiliser sales. It plans to retain its site in Billingham in the north-east—for now, at least—but like every other site, that site can be closed at short notice for technical reasons or, as we saw last year, financial ones. It also requires shutdowns for several months at a time every three years or so. Given what we know, it is not a prudent strategy for the nation to put all its eggs in one basket, particularly when that basket is owned by an overseas company that has shown it is ruthlessly guided by the bottom line.”
“Last month, its American owners announced their intention to close the plant and begin consultation on the consequent redundancies with the trade union. I am grateful to the Minister for her offer to have further discussions on the matter and to the Secretary of State, who met with me last month to discuss the situation. At that point, there was still some hope that a commercial solution could be found. After all, the site has been profitable for many years and has a highly skilled and committed workforce, which we want to retain in those valuable jobs. Unfortunately, various newspaper reports over the past few days have indicated that a sale agreement is unlikely to go ahead. That is extremely worrying.”
“We are hearing how the recent increase in energy costs, as well as the increase in fertiliser costs, has had an impact on our farmers, but I am sorry to say that that could be just a taster of the trouble we will face if action is not taken now. I want to make it crystal clear that I am extremely worried that we may be sleepwalking into a desperate situation of too much pressure on fertiliser costs and consequentially on food prices, because of the situation at CF Fertilisers in my constituency. As the Minister knows, CF Fertilisers is a longstanding plant in Ince, near Ellesmere Port, which employs over 300 people and has been a historical and significant source of fertiliser for the UK agricultural community.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) for her excellent introduction and for raising a comprehensive range of issues. I will focus on just one of the issues she mentioned, which is fertiliser production, as I have a significant constituency interest in the matter. As we know, fertiliser is critical to food production. An increase in its cost has an impact on yields. We are in a cost of living crisis and I am afraid that this could make matters significantly worse. We should want to encourage as much UK-based fertiliser production as possible. Indeed, maximising self-sufficiency is one of the aims of the food strategy. If the past few months have shown us anything, it is that the risk associated with food security leaves us exposed to global shocks.”
“Later today, the all-party group on leasehold and commonhold reform, of which I am proud to be a co-chair, will be hosting a reception. Among other things, it will be marking the life of the late Louis Burns, who did so much to campaign on leasehold reform. We will also be marking the introduction of the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022. However, the big question that we will all still be asking is: when will ground rents be banned for existing leaseholders? We have had promises now for nearly five years from successive Government Ministers. Can we have a statement, please, with a date when leasehold ground rents will be banned on all homes?”
“It is not just the failure of the Prime Minister; over the past 12 years, each of his predecessors has decided, time and again, that public services are not a priority, and that they can get away without investing in those services and the people who run them.”
“Let us make it clear that the blame lies at the feet of Ministers, not with the hard-pressed civil servants who are doing their best. As we have already heard, the Government think that we can cut civil servants by 20%. One can only imagine the backlog we would face if that went ahead. This backlog is across every facet of life. The child waiting for their education, health and care plan; the teenager waiting months for a driving test slot; the young family waiting for their passport renewals; and the pensioner waiting for the ambulance to arrive—everywhere we turn, there is another person unable to get on with their life because the Government have failed them.”
“If we multiplied that by all the Members here, it would mean that more than £2 million had been spent in one year on calls to one Department’s hotlines. If that is what it is costing us here, imagine how much the British public are having to pay. It is not just backlog Britain; it is rip-off Britain. I am reminded of a constituent who told me about his passport renewal. Having paid an extra £70 to get it checked by the Post Office, he had to make an emergency dash to Durham on Friday, which cost him £100 in fuel, and then had to pay another £90 to the Home Office to get the passport issued, despite the fact that the application had been sent in more than 10 weeks ago. Just for good measure, he could not work that day, so he lost another £200 in earnings. He could not do his job because the Ministers could not do theirs.”
“The issue has been live for many months now, but it was only last week that the Department was able to provide me with information on its own performance, which takes me back to the original point: the Government have either wilfully or negligently decided not to mention their own performance. I think they are doing that because they just do not want anyone to know how badly they are doing. On the issue of the Home Office backlog, my constituency office phone bill last month was far larger than normal. It was more than £260. When we dug a little deeper, we found that most of it was down to my excellent caseworkers being put on hold for hours at a time when ringing various Home Office hotlines.”
“Despite having a couple of weeks’ notice of the question, the Department could not get an answer to me before Prorogation, rather conveniently. Last week I finally got an answer to the question; I was told that between March and May, more than 90% of applications were processed within six weeks, with approximately 98.5% completed within 10 weeks. Obviously the Prime Minister told us a few weeks ago that everyone was getting them in four to six weeks, which was clearly incorrect, but I think we have done enough on his exactitude recently, so I will not go any further into that.”
“The Government need to get a grip on this, because I know people who have been trying to correct their records since last year, which means that they are having trouble travelling abroad because their vaccination records are not up to date. That shows that it is not just GP appointments, specialist referrals, ambulance waiting times and A&E waits that the NHS is struggling with. However, at least there is some kind of measurement of those issues, although it has not gone unnoticed that for quite a lot of them, the goalposts have moved in recent times. As many Members have said, the biggest issue in the inbox at the moment is passport delays. It has been for at least the past couple of months in my constituency. I asked a written question about processing times for passports way back in April.”
“At least the response to that written question was rather more straightforward than the one I got from the same Department on the average online journal response time for universal credit claimants: “Universal Credit is a 24/7 digital service.” Well, that is really helpful for understanding how long it takes people to get a response. Moving on to the Department of Health, I asked it what the average length of time was for a resolution to complaints to the Vaccination Data Resolution Service regarding incorrect vaccination records. I was told that the information was not held centrally—again, a phrase that I am sure that many Members are familiar with.”
“People claiming PIP usually need immediate help, but how can the Department judge whether it is doing enough on that score if it cannot even tell us how long it takes to get to an assessment? I know some of the practical consequences of that. I have a constituent with multiple long-term conditions who was disgracefully turned down for PIP back in October 2019 and still has not had her appeal heard. She had another go at it last week, but the appeal was cancelled for the umpteenth time because no one from the Department was available to register their objection to her appeal. How is that justice for that individual? How is it anything other than a damning indictment of the way that the Department works?”
“There is an old saying that you cannot solve a problem if you do not know that it exists. While I hope that the contributions to this debate have spelled out in no uncertain terms where the problems are, there has been a failure right across Government to measure performance, which is part of the reason we are here now. To illustrate the point, I will highlight some of the written questions I have asked on these issues. I will start with the most recent. Yesterday I got an answer to a question asking what the average waiting time is for an assessment for personal independence payment from the point of application. The answer I got was: “the information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.” I am sure that Members recognise that phrase very well.”
“This Government should hang their head in shame and step aside for a party that believes in public services, and has a record of delivery in government that this lot can only dream of.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I declare for the record that my wife is a member of the local authority. When we first entered the covid crisis, there was already a system in place for contact tracing through local authorities. Unfortunately that was not deemed good enough by this Government, who decided to spend an awful lot of money on private providers. On the Homes for Ukraine scheme, I get a lot of compliments from residents on how the council is reacting, and a lot of complaints about how slow the Home Office is to respond. The power of local government cannot be overstated, and we should value more the great service that it provides. In conclusion, we have seen over the past few months that a decade of austerity has consequences, and the folly of it has been well and truly exposed.”
“On CF Fertilisers, may I thank the Secretary of State for the time he took yesterday to discuss the future of the site? I am pleased to see that there is interest in purchasing the plant. Does he agree that despite the ongoing challenges that the industry faces, with a parent company that increased its dividends by 33% in the first quarter, there is no reason why the plant cannot be sold as a going concern?”
“What assessment has the Minister made of whether all those who might be eligible can safely and securely apply online for permission to come to this country? If they cannot do that, there has to be a fall-back position, has there not?”
“Last time Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs mileage rates went up over a decade ago, the average price of a litre of unleaded petrol was about £1.20. It is now more like £1.90, so can we have a statement from the Chancellor, ideally at Treasury questions next Tuesday, about what can be done to bring mileage rates in line with the true cost of fuel?”
“The Secretary of State will be aware that the Northern Ireland Business Brexit Working Group, which represents 14 industries, released a statement last week stating that “there are significant concerns about the introduction of an all-encompassing dual regulatory regime.” I understand that dairy farmers have similar concerns. Having heard about those issues, can the Secretary of State tell us what consultation the Government did with businesses before introducing this regime?”
“This motion tonight will not reverse the dark path down which we are already heading, but it will slow it a little, and with persistence and, dare I say it, a little more courage from the Conservative Benches, we might begin to reverse it. We owe it to ourselves and to the democratic ideals in which we must all at one time have believed to do just that.”
“Those at the top need to behave with honour, to respect conventions and to recognise their wider responsibility to the body politic. That is all put at risk when those in power do not see the importance of that, and the weaknesses in our unwritten constitution become all too apparent. That is when our democracy is diluted, and with a Government who, because of the size of their majority, grow contemptuous of the need for probity and bit by bit dismantle the safeguards that we need, we enter this dystopian world where newspaper stories mysteriously disappear and the Prime Minister tells the world that no rules were broken when they clearly were.”
“The rules about how our politics is conducted should be there long after we have all gone and they should not be jettisoned because it is convenient for the Government of the day to do so. Parliament should be the beacon of fair play. It should be an example for others, both in this country and abroad, to look at and say that, yes, democracy is a good thing, and that it can change people’s lives for the better. Not all politicians are self-serving, but when we see a bending of the rules, the ignoring of them, or the changing of them to suit a short-term political agenda, those looking in on this place can rightly say, “Who are you to lecture us about responsibility? Who are you to tell us about showing leadership?” Leadership is what this is all about.”
“Every watering down of the rules, every reduction in transparency, every erosion of accountability have to be fought against because many Governments want—to coin a phrase—to take back control. Most Governments, however, also have a respect for the rules, understand their place in history and know that having clear rules to which everyone is accountable is the glue that holds our democracy together. When we have a Government with a track record like this one, it really is up to us to push back against that. Whether it be breaking the law in a specific and limited way, trying to wriggle out of treaties signed, changing the way that the standard rules operate, or excusing breaches of the “Ministerial Code”, this Government have shown, time and again, that they do not think that they need to abide by the rules. However, rules do matter.”
“None of us is here for ever, but while we are here, we need to remember that we are the guardians of democracy. What we say and where we set the limits of adherence to the rules while we are here matter because they become the starting point for the next generation to work from. If we do end up in a position where the Government of the day decide that an ethics adviser is no longer needed, or we never get to a point where one is appointed, even though, six months ago, it was said to be a critical position, where does the conversation go after that—to a further erosion of the safeguards that any mature democracy needs? Let us be clear: we do need those safeguards, because democracy is fragile and it cannot be taken for granted; it has to be cherished and defended by us as its guardians.”
“For the Prime Minister’s own ethics adviser, appointed by the Prime Minister, to walk away after having his patience tested repeatedly, having warned repeatedly that trust was being eroded, is a state of affairs that should send a shiver down all our spines. Every single one of us in this place who is concerned about the probity of Government, who thinks that it is our job to uphold the law, not to break it, should see that statement as the ringing of the loudest of loud alarm bells. The ethics adviser is not there to provide cover for the Prime Minister who wants to bend the rules. The ethics adviser is not there to be ignored when the advice proves inconvenient, and the ethics adviser is not there to be made a fool of. They are there as a safeguard for the wider responsibility, which we all have, for the way that politics is done.”
“We need not have worried, because he wrote back to Lord Geidt and said he did not think he had broken the ministerial code and how silly it was for any of us to think that actually breaking the law might also be a breach of the ministerial code. All of us can see the benefits of being judge and jury, and why robust checks and balances need to be in place. On the resignation letter, Lord Geidt said that an intention to breach the ministerial code deliberately in advance “would be to suspend the provisions of the code to suit a political end” and that would make a mockery of the code. I agree with him, but I think we reached the point of mockery of the code when the previous adviser resigned after his recommendations were also ignored. We cannot pretend that what Lord Geidt said there is anything other than a damning statement.”
“Last month we had the annual report from Lord Geidt in which he states: “It may be especially difficult to inspire that trust in the Ministerial Code if any Prime Minister, whose code it is, declines to refer to it. In the case of the Fixed Penalty Notice recently issued to and paid by the Prime Minister, a legitimate question has arisen as to whether those facts alone might have constituted a breach of the overarching duty within the Ministerial Code of complying with the law.” There is a pattern here. As with the missing WhatsApp messages, anything inconvenient is ignored in the hope that it will eventually go away. But of course the Prime Minister could not ignore such a clear signal in the report.”
“It is still not entirely clear, despite what the Minister said, whether the Government believe an ethics adviser is necessary. Even worse, the Culture Secretary said this week that nobody gave “a fig” about him resigning. Well, I certainly disagree with that view most profoundly. Where I find more common ground with the Culture Secretary is when she said that Lord Geidt was always complaining that he had too much work to do. I can well believe that with this Government and this Prime Minister, anyone concerned with ethics would certainly have a heavy workload. Perhaps we need two ethics advisers in future. We find ourselves in a position where six months ago the ethics adviser effectively put the Government on notice that he was very unhappy with the way he was being treated.”
“He said as much in the second letter he wrote to the Prime Minister about the investigation: “It is plainly unsatisfactory that my earlier advice was unable to rely on the fullest possible disclosure of relevant information.” That is a very polite way of putting it. The nub of it is when he wrote that “this episode demonstrated insufficient regard or respect for the role of Independent Adviser.” That was a very clear warning sign about where this was all heading. What did we get then? The Prime Minister, without a hint of irony, wrote back to Lord Geidt and said: “I very much value your work as my Independent Adviser. The role is critical for the effective government of this country.” That strikes me as quite a contrast to the position six months later.”
“The origins of this debate are more than six months old and lie in the farce that was the investigation into the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat. I call it a farce not because I want to undermine Lord Geidt—I cannot hold a candle to the Prime Minister in doing that—but because it is clear that he was led a merry dance by the Prime Minister in the first place, when the Prime Minister failed to disclose a series of crucial WhatsApp message between himself and Lord Brownlow. The accidental omission of those messages in the “dog ate my homework” style that must have been forged in the gilded halls of Eton made sure that Lord Geidt was pretty embarrassed that he had been taken for a fool in that way.”
“We no longer have to automatically follow what the EU is doing, but we ought to be using our new-found freedoms to go further and faster than the EU so that we can genuinely say that we are the world leader in animal welfare. Let us do that rather than go the other way.”