Jerome Mayhew
MP for Broadland and Fakenham · Conservative · United Kingdom
“More than 100 organisations have warned the Government that their early release scheme will put women and girls at increased risk. Can the Minister explain to the House and to those organisations how the scheme will help her to halve violence against women and girls?”
“It is apparent to absolutely everyone that this local government reform is now a shambolic, incompetent mess. I just want to put on record how much time, as well as money, has been spent by councillors and council officials right across Norfolk, where this has been a massive, monumental distraction, not for months, but for years.”
“Rural and coastal communities are particularly reliant on seasonal tourism. If Members look at my registered interests, they will see that I used to run one of those businesses. Do the Government not understand that it is already tough enough out there, without them thinking up a new tax on holidays?”
“I am very aware that this may be the last time I face these Ministers across the Dispatch Box, so I just want to say that from my perspective, they are a good bunch. I have really enjoyed it, and I wish each and every one of them the best of luck on Monday or Tuesday.”
“Q7. Books are going to be written about how a Mayor of Manchester has managed to out-manoeuvre a sitting Prime Minister with a 170-seat majority and take the keys to No. 10.”
“Scotland’s beef breeding herd is in trouble; it is down 373,000 in the last decade. There are also declines in dairy cattle, pigs and chickens, which show that the industry is in distress.”
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“Given that the Minister has reversed the decision and that he has signally failed to express his support for the chief executive, can he now confirm whether or not he still has confidence in the chief executive of the MCA?”
“I am very aware that this may be the last time I face these Ministers across the Dispatch Box, so I just want to say that from my perspective, they are a good bunch. I have really enjoyed it, and I wish each and every one of them the best of luck on Monday or Tuesday. Turning to the question at hand, I welcome the Minister’s statement that he is going to stop the ill-judged decision on CROs, but that does not let the MCA off the hook. At a meeting of MPs recently, the chief executive of the MCA claimed that 93% of coastguard rescue officers supported plans to make them unpaid volunteers. We know from a leaked internal survey that the MCA misrepresented the views of CROs both to Ministers and to Parliament. Up to half of them said that they would quit or reduce their hours if the Government forced through the plans to remove their pay.”
“Scotland’s beef breeding herd is in trouble; it is down 373,000 in the last decade. There are also declines in dairy cattle, pigs and chickens, which show that the industry is in distress. In her response, the Minister said that food security is national security, so why do she and the Secretary of State let the SNP use devolution as a shield while stripping Scotland’s larder bare?”
“Q7. Books are going to be written about how a Mayor of Manchester has managed to out-manoeuvre a sitting Prime Minister with a 170-seat majority and take the keys to No. 10. The Prime Minister appears to have been brought down by an inability to articulate a plan for government so it must be tough to be replaced by a man who refuses to say whether he has even got a plan. As the Prime Minister bows out, done in by his hon. Friends, does he agree that in a few months’ time we will all be missing him?”
“Given the reports in the press of yet another U-turn being forced on the Government by revolting Back Benchers, does the Home Secretary still believe that the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain should be increased from five years to 10 years?”
“Like my hon. Friend, I am no expert on the racing world, but I am lucky enough to represent Fakenham racecourse. Does he recognise that the loss of a racecourse impacts not just the racing world but the community that hosts it, both in direct employment and, importantly, in the indirect employment that supports the surrounding community and infrastructure? Furthermore, does he agree that, when a course goes, it goes forever and will never be replaced?”
“Members on the Labour Benches—I have spoken to some; they are not in this room, I admit, but they sit on the Labour Benches—who look at low traffic neighbourhood orders with despair.”
“The measure only works, however, if the powers that are devolved are used well. This is one of the big debates that we have in a central Government such as ours: we seek to devolve power to the lowest common denominator, to get power closer to the people, but at the same time, in giving up authority, we also give up the ability to change other people’s mistakes. With, perhaps, a new Prime Minister, I think that that is an issue we will be considering more frequently in this place. There are many examples, even to date, where devolution has not been successful, particularly when it comes to transport schemes. We only have to look outside the window at the mess that Mayor Khan is making of London with his persecution of drivers. There are many hon.”
“Thank you for agreeing to chair us today, Sir Desmond. May I take this first opportunity to apologise to all members of the Committee for my late attendance? I am afraid I was at the Bar of the House of Lords, listening to the noble Lord Hendy speaking on Second Reading of the Railways Bill; his soaring rhetoric got the better of me, and I took my eye off the time. It is quite right, as the Minister has said, that the West Midlands Combined Authority is currently the odd one out when it comes to the application or the designation of key route networks. All other MCAs have the power to designate KRNs administratively, whereas, as we have heard, the WMCA has to use secondary legislation. These draft regulations therefore appear to the loyal Opposition to be a sensible tidying-up exercise and we do not intend to divide the Committee on it.”
“There is a bigger issue, of which this statutory instrument is a part—a sensible part, I accept—and it is incumbent upon the Minister to explain, in her response to my comments, how she will ensure that local authorities and mayoral combined authorities, particularly the West Midlands Combined Authority, use the powers granted effectively to enhance the experience of road users, rather than merely giving them powers and washing her hands of them.”
“I have already made clear that I think this is a sensible statutory instrument, and I am not proposing to oppose it. It is none the less a relevant consideration when considering devolution, of which this is a part, that we look at the wider issue of devolution to make sure that this is a sensible course of action. That is why it is relevant in this debate to consider what has happened in London, and also in Birmingham, where there has been notorious mismanagement of the roads fund, leading to a lack of repairs despite many hundreds of millions of pounds in private finance initiative credits’ having been awarded to that council.”
“It is quite clear the Secretary of State knows that we need to be spending a lot more on defence than he has been able to announce in the defence investment plan. In writing the DIP, what assumption did he make about the status and future of the Chagos islands? Does he agree that the more than £30 billion that his Government intend to pay to the Government of Mauritius would be better spent on our defence?”
“There is no correlation between what the Minister says and what is happening on the ground. In Broadland and Fakenham, in the last year the number of apprenticeships has dropped by 20%. It has not gone up; it has gone from 150, down to 120. If the Minister thinks that more apprenticeships are a good idea, why does he not sign up for 100,000 new ones, and support the Conservative new deal for young people?”
“Despite all the safeguards and precautions that the Secretary of State has listed, we must be clear about what this trial actually does: it proposes to give puberty blockers to children as young as 11 that may well make them sterile for life, all to treat something that the Secretary of State also says is likely to get better by itself. I accept that this trial may well create clinical evidence, but at what price? How can this damage to children ever be justified?”
“Last night, the Secretary of State claimed that the arrival of the class 701s at South Western Railway was an example of what a nationalised railway could do. As she well knows, those trains were ordered back in 2017 by a private company from a private company, using private finance. Her only involvement was some garish vinyl wrap and to turn up and claim the credit, all while ordering Avanti West Coast and, now, Govia Thameslink to cut services to the public. She told us that nationalisation would be “more than a paint job” and that passengers would come first. Why has she done the exact opposite?”
“The Minister refers to yesterday’s vote. Last night, he and his Secretary of State ordered Labour Members to vote against the protection of rail discounts for veterans and their families. He told us that the Government have “no plans” to cancel veterans’ railcards. At the last general election, Labour had no plans for a family farm tax or to raise our taxes—in fact, they had no plan for how to govern the country. Surely that is all the more reason to protect veterans in the Railways Bill, so why will the Secretary of State and the Minister not stand up for our brave veterans?”
“The Minister is responding to this urgent question because the Government have decided to charge VAT on donated medicines used for compassionate EAM schemes. The Minister says, “Well, that is not our fault—the scheme has been around for 30 years”. That may be true, but they have decided to apply the rules for the first time. Why have the Government decided to impose VAT now?”
“Privatisation had some faults, but it also brought many benefits to the railway industry: a huge increase in capital investment, a new focus on what the travelling customer wanted rather than what British Rail decided to give them, innovation in service provision and increased services.”
“I note the Minister’s words about new clause 48. This Report stage follows 16 sittings of the Public Bill Committee, when I and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), tabled well over 200 amendments, of which more than 120 were put to a Division. It is fair to say, therefore, that I think the Bill could do with a bit of work. Let us start at the beginning, with the purpose, as contained in new clause 52. We began in Committee with a degree of consensus on the idea that—it is fair to say this, and I think the Minister referenced it—the Government have a golden opportunity to improve our railways by addressing one of the key challenges of the previous privatisation settlement, namely closer integration between track and train.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member, but he will recognise that if we look at the safety record under privatisation as a whole, compared with nationalisation previously under British Rail, safety has increased enormously and I am pleased to say that, prior to nationalisation, we operate one of the safest rail systems in the world.”
“I have addressed that point, so I want to move on. We have the key challenge that the division of track and train at times created some perverse incentives between the track operator and the service operator, and this too often led to some inefficiencies. This Government, however, inherited from the Conservatives a solution in the Shapps-Williams review: the creation of Great British Railways, where track and train services could be integrated to design out the problems of the earlier settlement while, importantly, retaining the efficiency and service benefits of private operators, as well as the increased access to capital.”
“It is a non-exhaustive list, but it includes “prioritising the needs of Great British Railways passengers…providing value for money for passengers and taxpayers…expanding and improving the network…modernising working practices”— putting the customer’s needs above interests of the unions— “ensuring fair and transparent treatment of open access, freight and devolved operators…integrating track and train…and…supporting multimodal integration”. As track and train are integrated, this Bill should have been giving GBR the tools it needs to deliver the necessary dynamic management to undertake what is, in anyone’s book, a huge organisational change.”
“I am interested in pragmatism. I am interested in what works for the taxpayer and for the user of the railways. If state companies want to operate as private businesses in the United Kingdom and bring benefits to the United Kingdom taxpayer and rail user, bring it on! What I do not want, and what is clearly wrong, is to impose nationalisation of the rail network across the board for political reasons, because it is going to bring some real problems, just like it did the last time Labour decided to have a go at this. As I have said, what the Government are doing is a mistake, but if they insist on it, we need this Bill to direct the top to tell GBR what it is for and what to do. New clause 52—the “purpose” clause missing from the Bill—starts that process by making it clear what GBR is there to do.”
“I quite agree with my right hon. Friend. It seems that the Government have insisted on going back to the future: back to the 1970s, with state control and a revamped British Railways. They have even chosen the same logo, which I think tells us a lot about their intentions.”
“Under new clause 54, tabled in my name, a working practices and productivity modernisation framework would provide GBR with that direction and give it the political cover to act.”
“It should be putting passengers first by giving GBR the power to sort out the worst of the union-imposed inefficient working practices. How can we seriously have a seven-day timetable staffed by a five-day working week, requiring voluntary overtime to staff just normal service? It is clearly ridiculous. This legislation should give GBR the power and, importantly, through this new clause, the political support it will need to fix that problem. We need to enable drivers to operate train doors where that is not yet standard practice and to fix similar Spanish practices. I think that is very unfair on the Spanish, by the way, who surprisingly run a much more efficient railway in some respects. We need to increase flexible driver training and operation, and so much more.”
“I stand to correct the hon. Gentleman: the most punctual is, I believe, Greater Anglia, which services my constituency, but the point he makes is a good one. The greater integration of track and train brings greater efficiencies and leads to greater punctuality. That is exactly why that was Conservative party policy going into the last general election. What we do not need is increased control by perhaps heavily unionised workforces being given extra political power through nationalisation, taking the focus off the customer and focusing on the organisation and its purposes instead. We have the track and train being integrated, and this Bill should be giving GBR the tools it needs to deliver dynamic management. That is crucial for a big organisational change.”
“The hon. Member will be aware that I have already addressed that question in answer to one of his colleagues, but if international companies, whether state-owned or private, make a tender that is more attractive than any other operator applying for that tender, the people who benefit most are the taxpayers and service users of the United Kingdom. That is what happens.”
“Will it lead to the dynamic management that this structural reorganisation must have if it is to have a hope of working? Let history be our guide. I cannot think of a single example of a nationalised industry in any country, either now or in the past, that is or was a byword for management dynamism. Members should try it themselves—we cannot think of one, can we? If GBR needs dynamic management, how can nationalisation possibly be the answer?”
“My right hon. Friend rightly says that the needs of disabled passengers such as his constituent, whom he so ably represents, are very important. That is one performance indicator that the Government should impose on GBR, but is it not ridiculous that we have to have Government action to impose KPIs on a railway? We should not be doing it this way. Instead of giving GBR a clear purpose and direction and then supporting it to deliver, the Government are imposing nationalisation, which will bring with it, as we see in the Bill, an inevitable explosion of bureaucracy, civil service plans, targets, long-term strategies and civil service rights to give guidance and direction, all in the name of the Secretary of State. What will be the impact of this on GBR over time?”
“Services will become more expensive, worse, less frequent—or all three—and we will be back to the rationing of resources as we see in every nationalised sector.”
“I fear that over time, as the corporate memory of the train operating companies fades and with it their focus on the customer experience, this focus will be replaced by other incentives. Heavily unionised workers of a nationalised industry well understand that the Government will now be politically exposed to industrial action as never before. It will be entirely rational for them—I do not blame them for doing so—to use this new bargaining power to increase pay and improve conditions, which sounds good, does it not? Why would they not do so? It does, however, increase costs and reduce productivity. Who benefits? Not the passenger or the taxpayer. Labour will be too weak to stand up for the taxpayer and for fare-paying passengers.”
“Instead of these sensible, pro-growth and pro-passenger measures, we have clause after clause of political control, micromanagement of a nationalised structure, and unfettered rights of guidance and direction by the Secretary of State—by which we mean Department for Transport officials—over GBR at any time and for any reason, under clauses 7 and 9. It is a recipe for corporate paralysis where decisions are second-guessed by civil servants. Amendments 150 and 151 limit at least the giving of guidance by Department for Transport officials to issues where GBR fails to meet a key performance indicator, and the giving of mandatory directions to serious issues where GBR has missed KPIs and the chief executive has been removed in consequence.”
“British Rail oversaw the long-term decline in ridership from about 1 billion in 1950, reducing in a straight line to 750 million in 1992. Privatisation immediately reversed that 40-year trend of decline, growing back ridership not just to 1 billion but to 1.7 billion in 2019. Under the Bill, GBR does not even have a passenger growth target. New clause 14 in my name would rectify that by requiring the Secretary of State to set GBR a passenger growth target and to keep it under review. How can the Government be against that? They have agreed to put one in for rail freight growth, but for some reason passengers are not listed in the Bill.”
“New clause 53 and amendment 158 provide them. They are detailed, but in essence, they focus on reliability, safety, comfort and on-board experience, affordability and value for money, passenger and network growth, financial sustainability and freight growth. Until covid, privatisation undeniably brought a focus on ridership that had been missing previously under nationalisation. I accept that private businesses are not trying to be nice; they work to increase ridership because it brings in fare income, which creates profit. They are not directed to do so; the natural incentives work to solve the problem. The innovation of privatisation, fought tooth and nail at the time by Labour and the unions, was supported by passengers, who voted with their feet.”
“The Father of the House is nailing me down to a cast-iron assurance at the Dispatch Box. I am not in a position to do that, but I fully expect to be in this role in a future Government and look forward to the opportunity to encourage open access to provide the through train that the right hon. Gentleman needs or for GBR to do so. If GBR needs the dynamic management that we say it does, the Government are imposing for political reasons—very popular ones among their Back Benchers, as we have heard—a management system that has never worked in the past, but somehow it will be different this time. They have made their choice and we need to make the best of it. At the very least, this founding legislation should identify core key performance indicators which will survive the test of time in legislation.”
“The increases will create further challenges for regional airports, which face some of the steepest charges. We only have to look at Heathrow, which had an initial proposal of a 350% increase in its business rates. The combination of measures has made airports wary, so it is unsurprising that they have concerns about the concept of an increased number of flights being cancelled under a new regime, with the cost of those empty slots being borne by the airports. I understand that this goes to the winter of 2027, though I think the Minister said June 2026. I may have misheard him, so perhaps he could clarify—”
“However, we have seen little evidence of that—in fact, quite the opposite in the case of the North sea, with the Government’s baffling legislative proposal on new licences. Given the Government’s lack of commitment to tackling the fundamental issue, they have turned to these regulations, which have had the unfortunate consequence of dividing the opinions of airlines and airports. While airlines broadly support the proposals, we should acknowledge—as I hope the Minister will—the ongoing and significant concerns of airports. Those concerns have increased over the near two years of this Government’s rule, because of their mix of anti-business mandates and enormous increases to business rates, which have imposed significant costs on airports, even if they have managed to avoid the preposterous increases that were originally set out.”
“The problem with the Government’s other policies on energy is that they are making it so expensive to operate energy-intensive businesses such as oil refining in this country that the industry has voted with its feet and left in a large percentage. We do not actually need less jet fuel than before the conflict in the middle east began. In fact, the spiralling cost of the carbon tax has meant that refineries are struggling to remain open. That will only increase our reliance on imports and make us vulnerable to geopolitical concerns around the strait of Hormuz. If we want to support our oil refining sector, we must start by removing the additional costs, such as the carbon tax, while backing our North sea oil and gas industry to support the energy ecosystem that we rely on. That includes licences for new exploration and drilling.”
“Thank you for chairing the Committee, Ms Lewell. I am grateful for the Minister’s explanation of what is essentially a pickle of the Government’s own making. We will not divide on the regulations because we recognise that there is a real problem that has to be solved. But rather than fiddling around with emergency statutory instruments to plug a gap, the real problem is the Government’s running down of the domestic energy sector and our ability to refine jet-grade oil and supply our airline industry. We need to rejuvenate our energy sector, encouraging the investment and business conditions that will allow refineries to reopen. That is essential to manage the challenges posed by fuel shortages—I am thinking of Stanlow, Fawley, Pembroke and others. We have the ability to refine jet fuel in this country; we just need to expand it.”
“That is always liable to change, but those comments raise fair questions from the sector about the appropriateness of the regulations that the Government propose. I hope that the Minister can answer some of the concerns of airports, and, frankly, my concerns about the risk posed to the travelling public, so that there can be clarity about the necessity of these measures beyond the existing alleviation rules.”
“That includes whether there are sufficient protections for travellers under the 14-day window, and whether he is confident that the system will work as intended and we will not see people’s holidays more disrupted than necessary over the summer period. In addition, I would be interested in hearing his rationale for extending the period into the winter when the peak period for flights is during the summer. Would it have been feasible to make changes at a later date, particularly if the Government get around to passing their Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill in a more timely manner than they appear to be doing at the moment? Ultimately, the Government are right to ensure that there is flexibility when there is a crisis, but we have been repeatedly told that there is not a jet fuel shortage.”
“If we could have a bit more clarity on that, I would be grateful. The director of the Airports Council International Europe went so far as to say: “The UK Government is effectively handing airlines a carte blanche to cut services and not deliver their schedules, leaving passengers, communities and airports to bear the full brunt.” Although I appreciate that there is a balance to be struck, that is a strong argument and deserves a direct response from the Minister about how he will maintain the balance through these regulations. We all appreciate the importance of airport slot alleviation, particularly if there are significant fuel shortages, so I will not oppose the regulations today. Nevertheless, the proposals have been introduced in such a way that I think it is incumbent upon the Minister to address a few of the issues.”
“My constituents hate seeing organised shoplifting taking place with apparent impunity. Norfolk police recognises this and has identified suspects in more than a third of all cases, but what is the point when the Government’s assumption is that any sentence shorter than 12 months will automatically be suspended? What are the Government going to do about it?”
“That undermines the administration of this country by democracy. Parliament is where decisions are taken; we are the people who decide what authority is granted to the Executive. For officials to then decide, perhaps for good reason, that they will not comply with the direction of the high court of Parliament undermines our entire democratic process. They do not have the legal authority to make that decision. It is for the Government to stand up for Parliament, and if they think that Parliament has made too wide a direction, they must come and persuade us of that, and they will no doubt get a vote to correct it.”
“It is important that the Government have no legal authority to take decisions not to disclose. As the Intelligence and Security Committee said, “while Government may believe that there is good reason to withhold certain documents, it does not currently have the authority to so do.” It is not for officials to decide what is released to Parliament; Parliament decides. If the instruction—a direction from the high court of Parliament to officials—is thought by officials to be too widely framed, it is the responsibility of Ministers to come to this House and persuade Parliament to change its mind. They have not done so. One of the things that really worries me about this Administration is that officials appear to think that they can decide what is and is not supplied to Parliament.”
“Messages have been leaked to the press, including The Guardian and T he S pectator , which are not included in the release to Parliament, even though they were ordered to be. The Intelligence and Security Committee—an organisation of eminent Members of the House from across the parties—has given its opinion that the Government are interpreting exclusion of material on the grounds of prejudice to national security or international relations “far too broadly”. I am sorry to say this, but it feels that the Government are still at it, because they are withholding documents. We have talked a lot about the vetting file. If that file is too difficult to disclose, at least its conclusions should be shared with the ISC, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) suggested.”
“I accept that perhaps that happened, but there were also no messages from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, no messages from the Deputy Prime Minister—although we know that no one tells him anything, so perhaps we have not missed anything there—and no messages from the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, either. We also had the use of disappearing messages, with no record kept by the Prime Minister, in direct contradiction of Cabinet Office guidance for the retention of records. All that was found out drip by drip, one painful and damning piece of evidence after another, as a result of the Conservative-led Humble Address. Yet we are still not at the end. It is clear from the documents that have been released that there are obvious continuing gaps in disclosure.”
“This, of course, is the Prime Minister who famously said that he was going to put “country before party”. On this occasion, he appeared to put party before national security. It is pretty serious. Some months ago, we had the unedifying spectacle of the Government attempting through obfuscation to cover up this scandal. They whipped their Back Benchers to vote down the release of relevant documents, which was such a grubby move that it fomented such revolt among Labour Members that the Government were forced into a climbdown. Then there were not one but two stolen phones.”
“Tony Blair knew it, because he sacked him for dishonesty not once but twice. We have known for years that Peter Mandelson was a byword for double-dealing—after all, his nickname was the Prince of Darkness, and that did not come from nowhere. We have known for years, unfortunately, of his continued friendship with his best pal, Mr Epstein—that they were such close friends, and that Mandelson was so on Epstein’s side that he stayed in Epstein’s house even when Epstein was in prison for child sexual offences. We say that too often without stopping to realise what it actually means. It is an extraordinary statement. We knew that. The Prime Minister appointed Mandelson despite knowing those things and despite having advice on vetting from his then Cabinet Secretary. He ignored that advice.”