Helen Whately
MP for Faversham and Mid Kent · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Every holiday period, Kent and my constituency of Faversham and Mid Kent is brought to a standstill, and that has become much worse with the introduction of the EU entry-exit system, despite the fact that our ports and Eurotunnel have invested in the technology.”
“The situation could be horrific this summer: imagine people, including children and elderly people, and potentially pets, waiting in their cars in this heat for around 12 hours. It is a disaster. I implore the Minister to involve the Prime Minister—and, most likely, the right hon.”
“I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She is making an important point about the fact that we need not just the minimum but the maximum. We need really strong commitments. The Cleve Hill solar development in the village of Graveney in my constituency is huge. It has obliterated 900 acres of agricultural land and marshland.”
“On the point about considering the community benefit, what counts as a community is really important. In some circumstances—this has come up in my local area—a large geographical area is considered as a community, even though the number of households that are very substantially affected is very small.”
“I associate myself and those on the Opposition Benches with the Secretary of State’s comments about the outgoing permanent secretary of the Department for Work and Pensions. I am sorry that this may be my last exchange with the Secretary of State, as we await the coronation of the king in the north and the appointment of his new team.”
“I heard no commitment from the Secretary of State that the benefits bill was going to come down any time soon. Labour can change its leader, but it is still the same old welfare party. The right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) told us this morning that he is going to bring “Manchesterism” to the whole country.”
The complete record
Every one of 603 lines we hold for Helen Whately, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 13.
“My right hon. Friend has indeed made a significant point about the strange position in which so many Labour Members find themselves. Having previously voted against lifting the cap, here they are now, delighted about lifting it. Labour Members say that the Bill will end child poverty. They have read that increasing handouts will decrease the metric called relative poverty. However, relative poverty is a deeply misleading measure. It is not an accurate measure of living standards. It tells us nothing about whether people have enough to live on, or whether children will have better life chances. It can get worse when the country gets richer, even when living standards for the very poorest are rising, and it can look better when people are getting poorer. That is not progress; it is levelling down.”
“My hon. Friend has made the important point that no other party in the Chamber seems to realise what a serious financial position the country is in. We have to ask ourselves hard questions about what the country can afford.”
“They should back people who do the right thing, back jobs and work and lower taxes, and back living within our means and raising the standard of living for everyone, rather than backing a policy that will add billions to the benefits bill and trap parents in a downward spiral of dependency. This Bill does not end poverty. It entrenches it, so we oppose it.”
“Labour claims to be compassionate, but there is nothing compassionate about making welfare the rational choice, nothing compassionate about rewarding dependency over work, and nothing compassionate about saddling working families with higher taxes to fund political U-turns. Outside this place, people can see what is happening. They know when a system is unfair. They know when a Government have lost their way. They know when a Prime Minister’s time is up. Members should not be enticed by his final throws. They should step back and do what is right for the country.”
“Health and disability benefits alone are set to reach £100 billion by the end of the decade—more than we spend on defence, education or policing. The benefits bill is a ticking time bomb. We have to start living within our means. Other parties are simply in denial about the situation that we face in our country. The Conservatives are the only party that recognises how serious this is. We would not be spending more on benefits; in fact, we have explained how we would be saving £23 billion. We would stop giving benefits to foreign nationals, stop giving benefits for lower-level mental health problems and milder neurodiversity, stop the abuse of Motability, and bring back face-to-face assessments. We would get the benefits bill under control, and back people to work.”
“You will have noticed, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we have not tabled a reasoned amendment today, not because we think that the Bill is perfect—I hope that is clear—but because any amendment would still leave us with a watered-down version of the cap. Other parties have got in a right muddle on this—one in particular—but to us it is clear and simple: the cap should stay. Anything else is a worse policy. Amending the Bill is not the right answer; the House should just vote it down. First and foremost, I have argued against the Bill on the grounds of fairness, but there is another reason to vote against it. More than 50% of households now receive more from the state than they pay in. The benefits bill is ballooning.”
“Just six months ago, the Government even suspended the whip from MPs who voted to lift the cap, but now that the Prime Minister’s leadership is under threat, it is the end for the cap. How long will it be before he goes the same way? That is the real reason we are debating the Bill today: we have a weak Prime Minister, running scared from his left-wing Back Benchers. Talking of the left wing, I expect that Labour will be joined in the Division Lobby later by some of the Opposition Members sitting to the left of me. No doubt the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru will also be competing to see who can be the most generous with other people’s money. Reform UK has jumped on the welfare spending bandwagon too.”
“If the hon. Gentleman listens to what I am about to say about the back and forth on this policy on his side of the House, he will see that he should think a bit harder before talking about “consistency”. So what is this Bill really about? If Labour truly believes that lifting the two-child limit is essential to tackling poverty, why did it take the Prime Minister 18 months to do it? Years ago he called the cap “punitive” and promised to scrap it, but then, once he had secured the leadership of the Labour party, he changed that tune. He said that Labour was not going to abolish the two-child limit. His Chancellor, who is sitting on the Front Bench, said that it was unaffordable.”
“They are getting knocked back again and again, and signing on to benefits because they see no other way. They are missing out on the chance to have money in their pockets that they have earned themselves, on the first step towards independence, and on the experience gained in the early years in work, on which future working lives are built. Forget saving to buy a first car or home; dreams and ambitions are being shot to pieces. These people are becoming Britain’s lost generation.”
“Not a squeak—and that is in the bustling and vibrant economy of the south-east of England. She told me that it can be lonely being stuck at home all day applying for jobs, but she is not alone; she is in the company of many thousands of young people. Over 700,000 young people are unemployed—more than the entire population of Sheffield—and the figures are getting worse. Our youth unemployment rate is rising faster than that of any other G7 country. Nearly 1 million young people are not in education, employment or training, and over 700,000 university graduates are on out-of-work benefits. Those are not just statistics; they are lives knocked off course—young women and men putting in hundreds of job applications and getting hundreds of rejections.”
“This afternoon we are here to talk about young people—the young people who wake up every morning with nowhere to go: no classroom, no workplace, no sense that today will be different from yesterday. It is part of our job to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. Today, those are the shoes of a young man or woman who has just left school, college or university, and is setting out on real life in the world of work. That should be a moment of liberation, trepidation and excitement because the world is at their feet, but right now, for hundreds of thousands of young people, it is not. Just a few days ago, I was with a constituent who has just finished school. She is great; she has GCSEs and A-levels, she has done work experience, and she is charming and presentable. She has been applying for jobs day after day, but can she get one?”
“I beg to move, That this House regrets that both youth unemployment and the numbers of young people not in education, employment or training are rising as a result of the Government’s policies, such as increasing the rate of employer’s National Insurance contributions, reducing business rates relief for 2025-26 for retail, leisure and hospitality businesses, and passing the Employment Rights Act 2025; notes that these policies have heavily impacted the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors where young people often have their first job; further regrets that the Government’s inability to reform the welfare system will mean that young people struggling to find work are more likely to become trapped in welfare benefits dependency; and calls on the Government to back business, scrap business rates for pubs and high street shops, and back job opportunities for young people.”
“I am glad that the hon. Lady has some sympathy with the position of young people who are struggling to get jobs. My party halved unemployment; her party’s record is of unemployment going up and up. Since Labour has been in power, unemployment has gone up every single month. What is going on? What is going on is them: the Labour Government. Same old Labour—in they come and up go taxes and up goes unemployment, every single time. They put taxes up by £36 billion in their first Budget, and not just any old taxes. Their national insurance hike was specifically a tax on employment—literally a jobs tax. If you tax it, you will get less of it. That is not rocket science; it is basic economics.”
“Have they any idea how hard it is to break even, let alone to make a profit; any idea how hard it is for people who have started a business to bring in enough to cover the payroll each month, never mind pay themselves; or any idea how hard it is for business owners to make their staff redundant because they cannot afford to keep paying them? Of course they do not, because how many Labour Front Benchers have worked in a business—I am not counting union officials—let alone run one?”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Summer and holiday jobs are important ways for young people to gain experience before they leave education and seek full-time jobs, but there has been a shocking decline in the availability of such jobs because of this Government, who have increased regulation and the cost of employment—that is exactly the problem. On exactly the point about regulation and red tape, the Employment Rights Bill is making it harder for businesses to employ people. Labour says that it wants to achieve growth, but its policies are obviously going to achieve the exact opposite. The problem is that Labour Members do not understand business.”
“By hitting hospitality—all those pubs and cafés where people get their first jobs—the Government are hitting young people again. The simple fact is that there are fewer jobs for young people under this Government. This unemployment disaster for young people is not something that has just happened on this Labour Government’s watch—it is a disaster of their making.”
“She was backed up by her colleague, Allen Simpson, who said recently that if the Government continue their approach, “we will only see job losses and business closures accelerate.” That sector has shed over 100,000 jobs under this Government. Jane Gratton, from the British Chambers of Commerce, said that Labour’s policies are “deeply worrying for employers. They will increase employment costs, complexity and risk for firms, particularly SMEs…Government needs to help not hinder businesses”. That is the crux of the matter: Labour sees businesses as a cash cow, not as the engine of the economy, and young people in particular are suffering as a result. Before businesses start letting people go, they generally stop hiring, and that is what they are doing. And when they stop hiring, who gets hit hardest? Young people.”
“I am perfectly well aware of the policy on national insurance. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point that some Labour MPs do have business experience, but if we look at Labour Front Benchers, particularly those in the Cabinet, we will see that they are few and far between. If he has been talking to businesses—he clearly knows some—he will hear them say, as they have said directly to me and many of my hon. Friends, that it is the Labour Government’s policies that are making it so hard and so expensive to employ people, particularly young people. Even if Government Members do not have business experience, they could and should listen to what businesses have been telling them. For instance, Kate Nicholls of UKHospitality said that Labour’s 2024 Budget did “unthinkable damage” to the sector.”
“Of course there is part to play for training programmes and work placements in helping people to bridge the gap between school and work, but Government programmes are not the answer to the fundamental problem. Young people want jobs, and this Government are killing jobs.”
“My right hon. Friend makes the point so clearly. It is so obvious to the Conservatives, as the party of business, that if the Government keep taxing business, there will be fewer jobs—but they just do not seem to get it. Labour Members do know that they are in trouble, though. That is why they are talking up their youth programmes, youth hubs and youth guarantees— [ Laughter. ] Labour Members are laughing, but they should listen. The hon. Member for Exeter (Steve Race) says from a sedentary position that it was our programme —exactly that! Most of these things are just rebrands of programmes that the Conservatives started. We started youth hubs. Changing the name of the youth offer to the “youth guarantee” does not solve the problem.”
“Now, with the Government’s failure to reform welfare, young people are stuck in a benefits trap—they are better off on benefits and fearful of losing them if they get a job. Let us add to that the stress and misery of trying and failing again and again to get a job, because jobs are fewer and farther between. Most young people I have spoken to do not want to be on benefits, but that is where they are ending up.”
“I will not argue that we got everything right. Some of the graduates struggling to get jobs have degrees that are not actually of any help to them, and they took those degrees when we were in government. Under us, through the pandemic and afterwards, the number of young people dropping out of work and on to benefits because of their mental health went up. We wanted to end the stigma around mental illness, but the consequences have been far-reaching. Our welfare system was not designed to support people with milder mental health problems or milder neurodiversity, or for a time when a quarter of people report themselves as disabled. The system is not working; instead, it is funnelling people off work and on to benefits.”
“I enjoyed the way in which the hon. Gentleman led into his question with a bit of flattery, but I will not be drawn on his attempt to make me talk about the minimum wage or down the routes that he asks me to take, as much as he may love me to do so. However, I will talk about our record in government. We halved unemployment. We got record numbers of people into work. We backed businesses to create 800 jobs for every day that we were in government. We reformed welfare to make work pay. We brought down the benefits bill. None of those things are on the cards under this Labour Government. They are crushing businesses with taxes and red tape, destroying jobs and driving up unemployment. They U-turned on welfare savings and put up taxes on working people by £26 billion at the last Budget to pay for the ballooning benefits bill.”
“We do not have to have a lost generation, but we need a Government who will make different choices—who will back businesses to create jobs, scrap degrees that do not pay back, reform welfare so that it pays to work, help this generation make their way in life, and get our country working again.”
“I welcome the Government’s U-turn on probation periods—many businesses told me that that policy would have deterred them from taking a chance on a young person. I also welcome the Government’s latest U-turn on business rates for pubs How many U-turns are we on? Is it 13? What about the rest of hospitality? Why not adopt our policy and scrap business rates, not just for pubs, but for high street shops too? I ask the Minister not just to send young people off on more training courses or work experience schemes. What young people want now is jobs. Why not adopt our policy to double the number of apprenticeships and end debt-trap degrees, too?”
“The right way to solve the problem is to back businesses to create jobs, not take some kind of socialist, communist or even Marxist approach and create a job with taxpayers’ money so that somebody is in work. The situation is looking pretty bleak. That is a disaster for a generation of young people and our economy, but it does not have to be like this. Even in a world of artificial intelligence, there is another way. It starts with backing businesses, because they are the ones that create jobs, and cutting taxes, cutting red tape, scrapping the swathes of regulation that stop businesses giving young people a summer job or a Saturday shift, and getting government out of the way so that young people can get on.”
“If the hon. Gentleman had been listening, he would have heard me say that there is a place for programmes that support young people into work, particularly if they find that they do not have the skills needed to do the jobs in their area. When we were in government, we had programmes like that, and those programmes are being continued under this Government. However, there is a fundamental problem with the idea and concept of a youth guarantee, which has wobbled a bit at different announcements and different times. The problem is that the Government are trying to guarantee somebody a job, but destroying the jobs that businesses are creating.”
“Since the right hon. Gentleman became Disability Minister, half a million more people have gone on to PIP, and the sickness benefits bill is heading up to £100 billion a year by the end of this decade. We know that his review is not due to serve up any savings, but there must come a point where even he would say that the country cannot afford this. Does he have any ambition to make welfare savings?”
“Under this Labour Government the number of people on benefits is soaring, with nearly a million young people not in education, employment or training, and over 700,000 university graduates are now out of work and on benefits. Many young people are putting in hundreds of job applications and getting hundreds of rejections. This Government are killing their jobs and their dreams by taxing job-creating businesses into oblivion. What does the Secretary of State have to say to those young people?”
“Young people hearing that answer will not be reassured, but that is no surprise—what else can the Secretary of State say? The Prime Minister is too busy blocking rivals for his job, while a generation of young people pay the price for his weakness, and so are taxpayers, who are footing a ballooning benefits bill. Now is not the time for another review, scheme or slogan; what young people want is the chance to get a decent job and to get on in life. Surely he agrees that it is time to scrap the job-killing red tape in the Employment Rights Bill and cut taxes for businesses, so that they can give young people the chance to get off welfare and into work.”
“I offer the hon. Lady my condolences on the loss of her father. About 5,000 homes in my constituency were without water this weekend. That on its own is bad enough, but then we have how South East Water responded—failing to deliver water to vulnerable people; sending elderly residents on a two-hour round trip to get bottled water, sometimes only to find that there was no water left; and ignoring the pleas from livestock owners for water for horses and other animals. This is a disgrace, and not for the first time. The chief executive of South East Water has shown us he is not up to the job. I urge the hon. Lady to use all and any powers she has to move him on and to get South East Water to appoint somebody who is up to the job.”
“In the Budget last month, the Chancellor put up taxes in order to spend £16 billion more on welfare. The Government chose to make working people worse off in order to spend more on benefits. The sickness benefit bill is now set to skyrocket to more than £100 billion by the end of this decade. The Secretary of State likes to blame us, but his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), cancelled our reforms, and Labour Back Benchers stymied the Government’s. Working people are saying to me, “Why bother? I’d be better off on benefits.” The country cannot afford that. The Secretary of State must know this—he is no fool—so when is he going to come up with some welfare savings?”
“I was sorry that the Secretary of State could not answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) earlier. Fortunately, there are people who can help. For instance, UKHospitality has told us that 100,000 people will lose their jobs because of the Budget. That is on top of the 150,000 jobs already lost since Labour came to power. At this rate, there will be queues forming outside jobcentres. Can she tell me what preparations the Government are making to cope with the influx of benefit claimants from all these job losses?”
“Does the Minister not agree that the Government should get out of the way and reduce the burden on businesses so that they can create jobs, opportunities and economic growth?”
“Businesses are cutting jobs at the fastest rate since the pandemic and unemployment has gone up every month under this Government, but clearly they are not ready to deal with the consequences. The number of jobcentre work coaches has actually fallen since they took over. No doubt the Minister will proudly tell us that they have just announced millions of pounds of spending on Government-created jobs for young people, but may I ask her to reflect for a moment? After hiking taxes on businesses so that they cannot afford to employ young people, the Government are spending a load of that tax on state-subsidised jobs for the same young people. Some are calling this the economics of the madhouse, but I simply call it Labour economics.”
“Tackling poverty is about decent jobs, lower taxes and a stable foundation for every child. Throwing money at the problem to improve the statistics is not the answer, and they will certainly not lift children out of poverty by making the whole country poorer. The policies in the strategy and the Budget risk trapping families in long-term dependency instead of lifting them out of it. This strategy is so far from the bold action that Labour is making it out to be and that this country needs to break the cycle of worklessness for families on benefits, give children the best start in life and give taxpayers a fair deal—fair to those who pay in, as well as those who get help. The fact is—”
“Why do the Government insist on using the misleading metric of relative poverty instead of measures that reflect real living standards? With Labour’s Budget slapping thousands of pounds of extra taxes on hard-working and hard-up families, how many families are going to be plunged into poverty because of their tax rises? How many more households will now be eligible for universal credit? If the Government truly believe that lifting the two-child benefit cap is essential to reducing poverty, why did it take the Prime Minister 18 months to do it, and why did he remove the Whip from his own MPs who voted for it? Perhaps the Secretary of State will tell us the real reason. Was it actually about the Prime Minister saving his own skin? I know that the Government are well meaning, but this strategy is all wrong.”
“With unemployment now going up month on month, the number of children in workless households is sadly likely to keep going up. There is something even more fundamental that helps to stave off poverty. It is the family. Some 44% of children in lone-parent households live in poverty, compared with 25% of children who live in households with a couple. Strong, working families raise children who are less likely to be in poverty—it is as simple as that. Yet the Government’s poverty strategy ignores that fact entirely. Rather than tackling the root causes of poverty, the strategy concerns itself with vouchers for formula milk. How many children will be brought out of poverty thanks to those vouchers? Why is there nothing in the strategy on parenting skills, which we know are key determinants of child outcomes?”
“It is through plentiful, well-paid jobs. That way people can provide for themselves and their families, pay their rent or mortgage, do their weekly food shop and afford school uniforms for their kids. The Centre for Social Justice found that children in workless households are four times more likely to be materially deprived. Under this Government, the number of children growing up in workless households has seen the fastest increase on record, rising to 1.5 million children. Contrast that to our record, which saw the number of children in workless households— [ Laughter. ] Labour Members can laugh, but honestly they should listen to what makes a difference to children’s lives. Contrast that to our record, which saw the number of children in workless households decrease year on year from 2014.”
“However, ditching the two-child benefit cap will raise taxes on working people, including those on the poverty line, and disincentivise work. For a measure that the Prime Minister now speaks about with such pride, I am surprised that it took the Government 18 months to bring it in. In that time, the Prime Minister and Chancellor rejected many demands from their Back Benchers to lift the cap, arguing that the policy was unaffordable; in fact, the Prime Minister was so committed to the cap that he removed the Whip from the brave Labour rebels who voted to lift it. But then, as rivals for the Labour leadership circled, the cap indeed went. Chopping and changing policy based on political pressure is no way to govern, and it is certainly no way to solve child poverty. There is a way to boost the prospects of the country’s children.”
“Of course this Government should be working on how to improve the lives of children, as we did before them, but nothing I have heard from the Secretary of State today—however well intentioned—gives me any confidence that they are going to fix the problem. Last week, the Prime Minister grabbed the headlines by saying that the Government will change how supermarkets display baby formula and give customers loyalty points—hardly the groundbreaking fix for child poverty that we have been promised. At the Budget, the Government crowed about how they will lift so many children out of relative poverty by lifting the two-child cap, and that will, of course, help with the stats on that one metric, just like the free taxpayer-funded breakfasts.”
“I will start with something we can all agree on: none of us wants to see children grow up in poverty. We all know something of what that looks like: some hon. Members have lived it themselves; for others, it is part of the bread and butter of constituency work. Even in the wealthiest constituencies there are pockets of poverty, where children spend months living in bed and breakfasts, their meals coming from the local food bank, not knowing when they will have a bed in a room they can call their own and worrying about their mum—and it is usually their mum—and how she will pay the bills. None of that helps kids to succeed in life.”
“We have made our points, argued our position and put amendments to a vote, so we will not be voting against the Bill on Third Reading. However, I urge the Government to listen to the wise and the many expert words that will be spoken when it is debated in the other place, and to use that opportunity to fix it.”
“Finally, there is the question of pension adequacy. While the Bill should help people to manage their pension savings and boost their returns, it falls short when it comes to tackling the serious problem of people under-saving for later life. Millions of people simply are not saving enough for old age. The Government should be acting now in this regard, rather than delaying the next phase of the pensions review and attacking pension savings at every turn. First they came for pensioners’ winter fuel payments, then they came for self-invested personal pensions, and last week they came for salary sacrifice—and that was not a small tweak. The cap on salary sacrifice will net the Treasury nearly £5 billion of extra tax revenue in 2029-30—money that would otherwise have gone into people’s pensions.”
“Instead of forcing pension funds to invest in the UK, Ministers should ask why they have not been investing and then do something about that. Our amendment 15 gave them the opportunity to diagnose these problems and resolve them, but, as we have just seen, they voted it down. In any event, they should stop making Britain a worse place in which to do business, ramping up taxes on employment, slapping on red tape, and briefing out bad Budget news for months in advance to kill confidence in every sector of the economy. As my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) said earlier, our other concern with the Bill is the relationship between scale and innovation. We agree with the need for scale, but the Government should avoid blocking the emergence of new entrants and the scaling up of existing smaller players.”
“I say to the Pensions Minister that a Minister should always consider the worst thing that someone else might do in their position—in essence, “I am not a bad man, but what might a bad man do?” He might be confident that he would not abuse the power, but what if someone else had it? Those in the pensions sector do not support this plan. Earlier in the year the Minister told them to “chillax”. He may be intensely relaxed, but I must say to him that he is also intensely wrong. Trustees are the custodians of people’s life savings. They are not there to carry out manifesto pledges or pet projects, and the Minister should not put himself or any future pensions Minister in a position to tell them to do so.”
“Today, the job of a pension fund manager is to make the best possible decisions for their fund members about where to invest. Their sole objective is the interests of those members. That is their legal duty, and mandation would change that, because mandation means the Government will be able to tell pension funds how to invest their assets. We should not for a minute underestimate the significance of that. Ministers have insisted it is merely a backstop and a tool they hope never to use, but a threat made just in case is still a threat, and pension trustees know it.”
“We also welcome the Government’s amendment of the Bill, reflecting our new clause, to index pre-1997 pensions, for which there was significant consensus across the House. That will provide some dignity for pensioners who have seen their pensions eroded over the years, and we hope that the Government continue to work with campaign groups to see that through. I also thank my right hon. Friends the Members for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) and for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) for their representations on that. The Bill also has some serious flaws. Nestled within the sensible reforms that the Government inherited is a power that no Government should wield: the power to mandate how pension funds invest.”
“Many civil servants will have worked on this Bill and pensions experts will have contributed, and I thank them all for their hard work and expertise. May I also finally offer congratulations to the current Pensions Minister, the lucky one who gets to be here to see this Bill off to the other place? We on the Conservative Benches do not agree with all of the Bill, but there is a lot in it that we do welcome, particularly the parts that the Minister inherited from us, including the consolidation of fragmented pension pots, the introduction of the value for money framework and the pensions dashboard. Those will help people to manage their pension savings and get better returns.”
“As this Bill nears the end of its journey through our House, I take a moment to acknowledge some of the people who have played their part, whether that is former Pensions Ministers, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), the former hon. Member for Hexham, my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), who cannot be with us today, or my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith), who also cannot be here today. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) did such a brilliant job speaking earlier this afternoon. I also thank the hard-working members of the Bill Committee, including my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford).”