Alex Burghart
MP for Brentwood and Ongar · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Minister to his post. I very much look forward to him updating the House on his negotiating mandate and his conversations with the European trade commissioner.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady for her answer, but she did not answer my question. My question was about the income tax receipts that Ben Houchen will be allowed to retain. Over the summer, she said that he would not be allowed to use that to give rebates to local individuals and businesses.”
“It is perfectly reasonable to rule things out. The Minister has had plenty of time to talk to No. 10 since his interview on Sky. I am sure the Labour party would rule out many things at this stage—I am sure it would rule out leaving the European convention on human rights, getting rid of net-zero targets and bringing back the death penalt…”
“They will only have the freedom to increase the size of the state, not reduce it. It appears that this Government are rewiring the state—but just to grow it. The last point is simply about cost. How much is this reorganisation costing? How much is being spent on No. 10 North?”
“Over the Blair years, laws such as the Human Rights Act 1998 and environmental legislation created endless sources of judicial review, which made it increasingly difficult for Government to do things—to build infrastructure and so on. That is a colossal drag on the capabilities of the state. If the right hon.”
“I thank the deputy Prime Minister for advance sight of her statement. I congratulate her on her appointment—it is a major achievement—and I look forward to working with her. I also congratulate the right hon. Lady on the wording of her statement.”
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“The Labour party might want to try turning it off and, well, maybe just leaving it off, but it is good that it has taken the time to come up with an emergency list of priorities. After only 14 years in opposition and five months in power, it has finally decided on some things that it is going to work towards. The statement was quite punchy about the past, unusually punchy for the right hon. Gentleman. If he is rattled, and he is not the rattling type, it is a sign that the Government must be feeling pretty unstable at the moment. Labour Members talk about legacy, and I wish them good fortune in government—I genuinely mean that. The last Government had to clean up the mess from the greatest financial crisis in a century. The last Government had to deal with the biggest pandemic in a century.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for advance sight of his statement. It was very nice to receive it only 12 hours after T he Times , although I must say that I received the policy document itself only at 11.05 am, unlike Labour MPs at Pinewood studios who, according to social media, had the document some time before. While the Prime Minister is at Pinewood, I hope he will hear its owner’s concerns about the very substantial increase in business rates from 2026, which will affect the profits and viability of what was, under the Conservatives, a flourishing sector. The Opposition congratulate the Government on their most recent reset—there are only a few more resets left before Christmas.”
“Those are incredibly important points of law that will have a long consequence in British courts. I would be grateful if he could give the House clarity on those matters.”
“That was a decision in which the Court of Appeal sought to disapply statute, and in his statement in July he referred to it as a technical point of law, but it is quite some technicality. Article 2(1) of the Windsor framework is very important in this judgment, and I would like him to be able to give clarity on the Government’s position. Is it, as the last Government’s position was, that the rights available to the people of Northern Ireland under the Belfast agreement should not be diminished as a result of our leaving the EU, or is it that a broader range of rights available at the time of our departure from the EU should not be diminished as a result of leaving the EU, or is it that the rights of the Northern Irish people should keep pace with EU law as it develops?”
“Thirdly, I must ask the Secretary of State about the new regime that is emerging—it seems rather more by accident than design—and how it will work. We will have inquests, the ICRIR and inquiries. Who will decide which route a family goes down? Will it be the family, the Government or the courts? What criteria will be used? How will disputes about the route chosen be adjudicated? One of the qualities of the legacy Act was that it greatly simplified the system. The system is now being returned to complexity. Finally, I must ask the Secretary of State to give the House some clarity on the Government’s position on article 2(1) of the Windsor framework. I am pleased that he is continuing his appeal against the Colton judgment handed down in July.”
“In his statement, the Secretary of State said that he will “reform and strengthen the commission’s independence, powers and accountability.” I would be grateful if he could set out exactly how and why he intends to do that, given that in September Sir Declan made it clear that he already had the necessary independence and powers to do his job. Secondly, I was pleased to hear that the Secretary of State intends to appeal the Court’s specific finding regarding the Secretary of State’s power to preclude the disclosure of sensitive information in circumstances where disclosure would be prejudicial to national security, but will he confirm that, in the event that his appeal is unsuccessful, the Government will legislate to ensure that national security is protected? If he does so, he will have our support.”
“I appreciate that he may not be able to answer them all this evening, so I would be grateful if he would undertake to write to me on these very important matters. The first issue I would like to touch on is the ICRIR, which was set up by the legacy Act. Indeed, for all the Government’s current talk of wanting to replace the legacy Act, a very large part of that legislation is concerned with its establishment. I was very pleased earlier in the year that the Secretary of State affirmed his support for the ICRIR and for Sir Declan Morgan, who is doing an admirable job of overseeing it.”
“I will remind the House of the central reasons why the last Government legislated. They did so to try and protect some elderly people, including servicemen, who were being brought before inquests to discuss events that may or may not have happened very many years before. This was a process inevitably weighted against the police and the armed forces, who kept records and whose servicemen were easily locatable and contactable. Tonight there will be many such men harbouring a sense of dread. I know the Government are taking a different approach, but I do ask them to spare a thought for those men this evening and to think very deeply about what they can do to support them and what help they can offer them. I have a number of questions for the Secretary of State.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, for giving an oral statement on this very important subject, and for scheduling the statement at such a time as would not interfere with the Opposition day debates—that was very decent of him. I do not intend to rehearse all of the long debates that were had in the last Parliament over the legacy Act. The Labour party won the general election on a manifesto that included a number of measures that the Secretary of State has just discussed, and it has a mandate to make the changes it wants to make. But I will say this: there was an attempt by the last Government—a desire from the last Government—to draw a line under many difficult things that had happened, and with the actions the Government are now taking that line is being erased.”
“I associate Conservative Members with the remarks that the Under-Secretary of State made about Ken Reid; he will be very much missed. A belated happy birthday to the Secretary of State for yesterday. Last week, the Secretary of State suggested to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that the Treasury had not yet conducted a detailed analysis of how the Budget will affect farmers in Northern Ireland. Has he now asked it to do so?”
“Will the Secretary of State commit to asking the Chancellor to publish detailed Treasury working on the Budget’s impact on farms in Northern Ireland so that independent experts can check their figures?”
“And, I hope, conversations with the Secretary of State. He will know that the make-up of farming in Northern Ireland is slightly different from that in the rest of the UK: there is a greater density of farms in sole ownership and agricultural land is worth more. That means that farms in Northern Ireland are more exposed to Labour’s family farms tax. The farmers I have met in Northern Ireland are deeply concerned about that. As the Secretary of State said, there is disagreement nationally about the figures. On one side, we have the Government who say that not many farms will be affected. On the other side, we have the experts who say that very many farms will be affected. Transparency will help everyone.”
“Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I am very happy to associate myself and the official Opposition with the right hon. Lady’s remarks about Ukraine. Democracies must stand together. What are the Government doing to bring down inflation?”
“Well, I thank the right hon. Lady for her standard charm. The truth is that the Government are not doing anything to bring down inflation; this Government are stoking inflation. First, we had above-inflation pay rises for the unions. Then, we had a Budget that the Office for Budget Responsibility said would increase inflation— [ Interruption. ]”
“First, we had above-inflation pay rises for the unions. Then we had a Budget that the OBR said was going to push up inflation. This morning, we had City economists—real economists—saying that next year inflation will hit 3%. Does the right hon. Lady agree that this Government’s decisions mean higher inflation for working people?”
“We have already talked about Ukraine. It was Ukraine and covid that drove up inflation, but this Government are doing it to the British people. High tax, high inflation, low growth, low reform—there is a word for that: it is Starmerism. Yesterday, like many Opposition Members, I spoke to farmers from across the United Kingdom. Some of them were families who have farmed their land for centuries—elderly men in tears, children worried about their parents and all of them worried that their way of life is about to be destroyed. What would the right hon. Lady like to say to them?”
“If the Government are not going to reverse this terrible policy, will the right hon. Lady at least commit to no further increases to inheritance tax and no further reductions in agricultural property relief or business property relief in this Parliament?”
“Perhaps the right hon. Lady thinks that everyone came to London yesterday to thank the Government. Let us look at the facts. A typical mid-size, 360-acre family farm in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) have spoken to their accountant. Their new liability because of this Government is half a million pounds. That is 12 years’ worth of profit. When this generation passes away, that farm will become totally unviable, and it is just one of thousands and thousands of similar farms. It is clear the Government have not got their facts right. The Central Association for Agricultural Valuers—the real experts in this field—say so. The National Farmers Union says so; it is shortly to publish a report showing that 75% of all commercial farms will fall above the threshold.”
“This is just another part of the Budget that is unravelling. Everyone here and all the farmers at home will have heard that there was no guarantee there. We know what that means: they are coming back for more. Even if the right hon. Lady had made a promise today, it would not have been worth a fig. We know that the Environment Secretary, before the election, promised the farmers that this would not happen. Labour promises get broken. Let us put all this into context. The Treasury says that the family farms tax will raise on average £441 million a year. The Treasury also says that the public sector pay rises the Government announced in July will cost £9.4 billion a year. That is over 21 times as much. Why do the Government think that above-inflation pay rises for the trade unions are worth so—”
“I understand why the right hon. Lady does not want to answer questions about the terrible choices the Government have made. It is because the truth is ugly. The truth is that this is a punishment meted out to people who do not vote Labour. It is the same punishment meted out to parents who send their children to private schools. It is the same punishment meted out to the owners of small businesses who are terrified about national insurance contributions, and it is the same punishment meted out to pensioners who cannot afford to pay for their fuel this winter. Is it not the truth that if you do not vote Labour, they do not care about you? [Hon. Members: “More!”]”
“Lady in thanking the PSNI for the work it does for the people of Northern Ireland, and indeed for all of us in the United Kingdom, and I congratulate it on helping to reduce the threat level from “severe” to “substantial”. I am pleased to say that my party will be supporting the order today.”
“What provision are the Government making to review the new code to ensure that it is working effectively and getting the results that we all want? Thirdly, the hon. Lady referred to the fact that the Government have made money available in the Budget for additional security funding for Northern Ireland. There is, as she will know, quite a long-standing problem with police numbers in Northern Ireland. At the moment, I think the PSNI has 6,300, and the number agreed in New Decade, New Approach was 7,500. What is the Minister doing in conjunction with the Secretary of State and the Northern Ireland Executive to make sure that the PSNI can get up to the required figure, which obviously has implications for national security? That said, I join the hon.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Hon. Members will be disappointed to hear that I do not intend to detain them for long. We support this order. As my noble friend Lord Caine said in Grand Committee in the other place, this is essentially Conservative legacy legislation. We drafted it, we conducted the consultation earlier in the year, and we are pleased to see that the Government have continued with it. I want to raise a couple of small points, the first of which is technical. The hon. Lady referred to how an intimate search may not be authorised or carried out under the new power. Will she give us a little more detail about why that decision was made? Secondly, looking to the future, we all hope to see this change implemented.”
“It is an honour to speak to the Bill in Committee. When we last discussed it, on Second Reading, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden)—a very great man—set out why the Opposition do not approve of the way in which the Government are going about this change. We believe that this nervous little Bill is misconceived and perhaps, at its worst, dishonest.”
“As ever, my right hon. Friend is one step ahead of me. It is not that we seek a comprehensive reform of the House of Lords. It is that the Labour party promised that this would come. The Government promised that they would leave the remaining hereditary peers there until they had a plan for comprehensive reform, but that comprehensive plan is missing. Labour is throwing out the stone in the shoe of the accepted hereditary peers and dodging the hard, principled questions about how to ensure that the House of Lords functions most effectively.”
“Those Cross Bencher hereditary peers who will be axed by the measures have, as far as I can see, done an excellent job, yet they are not being given another way out such as that suggested by my right hon. Friend.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He strikes at the critical failure of the legislation, which is that really the Government are seeking to remove Members of the upper House who happen not to take the Labour Whip. What we all agree on—or what I hope we all agree on—is that the role of the Lords is that of a chamber of scrutiny, and we must welcome more expert scrutiny. We have seen from the behaviour, attendance and work of hereditary peers that they are an intrinsic part of that scrutiny, so it is highly suspicious that the Labour party should seek to remove them. Indeed, if we set the precedent that the Government of the day can remove Members of one House because they do not agree with them, where will it end?”
“My point is more that the Government are seeking to remove highly experienced people without offering another way out. We would have been happy to debate that, but we are instead seeing an attempt to deliberately cut out a group of peers from the constitution.”
“It is very generous of the hon. Gentleman to say that the Prime Minister will create 40 peers at his command—I had no idea that the hon. Gentleman’s career was progressing at such a rate. We all know that that is not what is happening here; we all know that, in the coded words of the Minister, it is goodbye to the 88 hereditary peers, whose voices will not be heard any more. Our position is that it is time for a constitutional conference to consider these matters, and that the major issue is how to have an upper House that does not challenge the primacy of the Commons in conducting proper scrutiny of Government legislation in order to improve it.”
“The manifesto promised that that modernisation would consist of a mandatory retirement age of 80, a new participation requirement, a strengthening of “the circumstances in which disgraced members can be removed” from that House, reform of the appointments process, and improvement of “the national and regional balance of the second chamber.” Although we on the Conservative Benches might not agree with those proposals, the Labour party promised to introduce them immediately, but the only immediate modernisation being undertaken is to remove a group of hard-working and diligent peers, including 33 Cross Benchers and their Convenor, for the crime of not being Labour party placements.”
“As ever, wisdom from the Deepings. The truth is that this will not make the upper House a better Chamber for scrutiny. All it will do is remove some of the Labour party’s opponents from that House. The Labour party promised in its manifesto that “The next Labour government will…bring about an immediate modernisation” of the Lords.”
“The point that we are making through our amendments is that the Labour party is undermining a key facet of the upper House: scrutiny. We are talking about a body of 88 hereditary peers who have already been performing that job, and have done nothing wrong, but are losing that job because of the measures introduced by the Bill.”
“It is fundamentally misconceived, focusing on the composition of the other place rather than on how we can ensure that it best performs its vital role of scrutiny. This is a Government and a Prime Minister who do not stand up to scrutiny—a Government led by politics, not by principles. My amendments seek to reinsert some principles into this process: that promises to both Parliament and the electorate should be kept, and that we should legislate only for what works, not for political advantage. I see no reason why the Government cannot accept the amendments today.”
“It makes the simple request that a Joint Committee of both Houses should be allowed to scrutinise and report on the Government’s so-called “immediate modernisation” plans, and that this place should agree before legislation comes into force. That plan would be led by the Conservative principle that constitutional change should not be rushed but carefully considered, and implemented only if the House is confident that it will work. Amendment 26, which stands in my name, seeks clarity on the issue of disputed peerage claims. However, I have listened carefully to what the Minister has said, and I understand that existing mechanisms are in place. For that reason, we will not press it. To conclude, we on the Conservative Benches think that this Bill is a sham of reform.”
“It was rightly repealed by the Conservatives in the last Parliament to reinstate tried and tested long-standing conventions. Let that be a warning to the Government as they meddle, in the name of petty politics, with long-standing conventions that work. Walter Bagehot eloquently described the “dignified” and “efficient” elements of our constitution. In a sense, the hereditary peers represent both thanks to the way in which they diligently scrutinise legislation. Labour must take care that pulling on one thread—in this case, that of the hereditary peers—does not unravel a great deal more. Amendment 25 seeks to ensure that there is proper scrutiny of the changes to the composition of our legislature.”
“The current constitution of the other place has been effective in bringing expertise and a degree of independence to the work of legislative scrutiny. Like much of the uncodified British constitution, one might not have created such a system from scratch, but the tried-and-tested checks and balances of the House of Lords have complemented the work of the elected Commons. The Lords does not claim to be a democratic Chamber, and that is the point: our House has primacy. We can see the dangers of ill-though-through constitutional change. None of us in this place will forget the difficulties caused by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, a foolish measure introduced by the coalition Government that created all manner of unintended consequences.”
“I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman has married so well. Of course, life peers do a fantastic job of scrutiny—they do so every day, and I enjoy reading their lordships’ Hansard . What we are talking about is a group of 88 hereditary peers, who have done a very good job in scrutinising Government legislation, but who are being removed, through no fault of their own, simply because they do not fit with the Labour’s party’s views. We believe that that is wrong. I turn now to amendment 25 in my name, which concerns the very simple Conservative principle that constitutional change should not be rushed, and should certainly not be proposed for political advantage. We have inherited a constitution that has evolved through the generations and has the distinction of working.”
“Although we can put people forward, we cannot guarantee that they will go into the upper House. The Government could make that commitment tonight, but they have not done so. They have said nothing about the 33 Cross-Bench hereditary peers who will be removed by the legislation. Labour has broken its promise from 1998, and it has broken its promise to bring forward all its reforms immediately. The Conservative party will not support it.”
“The reason the remaining hereditary peers are in the House of Lords is that the Labour Government put them there. That was the agreement that was reached in 1998. The remaining hereditary peers—who already sit in the Lords and scrutinise, night after night, the legislation introduced by this House—should not be treated in this way. Had the Government respected their position and made provision for them in a reformed Chamber, it would be very hard—not impossible, but very hard—to oppose this legislation. However, as it is, the Government are seeking to remove established scrutineers in order to replace them with Labour appointees, and we cannot support that. The Minister’s argument that the Conservatives can nominate replacements is obviously not entirely genuine.”
“It was very significant that, on 5 March, Lord Mandelson made an intervention with the Lord Speaker—on his very popular podcast—and said that the proposals of the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, for constitutional reform had “barely been put in the oven…let alone…baked.” I am very pleased that the Labour Government have taken that on board. That said, the Bill in its present form cannot have the support of the Opposition. The Labour party has reneged on the solemn promise it made in 1998 not to get rid of the remaining hereditary peers until it brought forward a comprehensive plan for a reformed upper House. Many Government Members have said that the hereditary peers sit in the House of Lords by duty of right; well, that is not entirely right.”
“But when you get to the Lords, you face five former Secretaries of State, three former heads of the civil service and people with expertise from across the sector, and what you find there is real scrutiny.” I love this place and I do not wish to take anything away from it, but I do not wish to see it replicated; one of us is enough. That is why, despite the fact that the Opposition disagree with many of the things that the Labour Government are doing, we have been pleased to see that they have edged away from their long-standing commitment to an elected upper House. An elected upper House would replicate this place unnecessarily. It would inevitably get in the way of the primacy of the Commons and make the passage of law harder.”
“I echo the words of the Paymaster General in thanking everyone who has spoken this afternoon. It has been a good natured and interesting debate. I want to echo some words of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) in praise of the House of Lords. When I first came to this place, I bumped into Lord Young of Cookham, who I had known a few years previously, and I said, “How are you getting on in the upper House as a Minister?” He said, “It’s rather harder there than it is down your end.” When I asked him what he meant, he said, “Well, you see, when I stood up as a Minister in the House of Commons, I normally felt that, with the support of my officials, I was probably the best informed person in the room.”
“I just gently say to your man starting out in his Front Bench career in government not to get too good at it, because you will find your party will give you ample opportunities to defend the indefensible in the years ahead.”
“Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure to play a part in bringing today’s interesting debate to a close. I take this opportunity to welcome the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to his post—I know he has been in post for a few months, but we have not had the chance to get to know each other. I must say I have been very impressed him. He is a fluent speaker. He is good on detail. That is not sarcasm—I was once warned by Hansard that sarcasm did not come across well in the written record—but I know what it is to be sent out to defend the indefensible. I can see that he is developing a fine skill and that he is some way on his way to mastering it.”
“I thought that behind the great ambiguities of the Labour manifesto there would be a game plan, but game plan has come there none. We have £140 billion of extra borrowing, and £10 billion more in higher debt repayments. Mortgage payments are up, and there is austerity for employers and workers. A loveless landslide has become a loveless tax rise for the British people, and they will not wear it.”
“What is becoming painfully apparent is that Labour wasted its time in opposition. It had 14 years to come up with a plan for the NHS, but it did not, and now it is scrabbling to find one. By the time we see the Prime Minister’s fabled plan, more than 10% of this Parliament will have passed, and very little will have been done that was not already being done before. The Prime Minister said there would be no extra money without reform, but that is precisely what he has given the country. That is the price of political complacency. It is the price of thinking that governing is easy. It is the price of believing your own hype, and of failing to be honest with yourselves. Some people said that the Labour party was trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes, and I was one of them.”
“It is tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and never does reform come. That is the plan for the NHS. It is relatively well developed, next to the non-existent plan for welfare reform. My right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), who is now the shadow Chancellor, started that work, but silence has now descended. More workers are needed to grow the economy—the OBR was quite clear on that. The Chancellor has chosen tax over employment, which will not deliver growth. The Government’s plan has been to tax, to spend, to think a bit, to set up a website, to get told to serve waffles for every meal, and to think a bit more. Then they will see whether any money is left, they will discover that there is not, and they will need to increase taxes again.”
“Let us proceed to part 2, moving more care to communities. On that, the Red Book says absolutely nothing. As for part 3, prevention, there is a small increase in tobacco duty and a vaping products duty. Not content with taxing us into growth, the Chancellor intends to tax us into health—but it is all right, because apparently the Prime Minister has a plan to have a plan in the spring. I will tell you a funny story about the spring, Madam Deputy Speaker. When I was first working as a parliamentary researcher, there was some long-forgotten report that the Department for Children, Schools and Families was producing. We asked when it would be published, and we were told, “In the spring.” We asked, “When does spring end?” The Department told us, “When summer begins.” In that tale is an insight into the way in which Labour Governments think.”
“It was good to read in the Red Book at a time of the Budget that His Majesty’s Government intend to: “Invest more than £2 billion in NHS technology and digital to run essential services and drive NHS productivity improvements”, which “will deliver 2% productivity next year.” That is very sensible, but it gives rise to a strange sense of déjà vu—and then one remembers that in the spring Budget this year the then Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt), announced £3.4 billion in additional funding for the NHS to deliver 2% annual increases in productivity through new technology and digital across the health service in England. So part 1 of Labour’s three-point plan is not new at all. It is a Conservative initiative, already accounted for by a Conservative Chancellor.”
“As I said, the Treasury must have the data, and if the Chief Secretary does not have it at his fingertips, I ask him to put it in the Library of the House of Commons as soon as possible. We all want better public services; the question is, do we think we can get them if the services that I have mentioned are being taxed? As the Chief Secretary said on television the other day, without reform more generally, money will just follow money out of the door. We are told that Labour has a plan for improving the NHS. We know that, because the Prime Minister told us in a speech on 11 September that in the spring he would have a plan. That plan, he said, would contain a transition to a digital NHS, moving more care from hospitals to communities, and focusing efforts on prevention over sickness. Who could argue with those sensible measures?”