Sir Ashley Fox
MP for Bridgwater · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Too many coastal towns suffer from poor transport links, economic inactivity, seasonal employment and the loss of young people seeking opportunities elsewhere.”
“I hope the Minister, when she sums up, will consider the effect of the right to guaranteed hours on businesses in coastal towns. Has she considered that, when those businesses take on seasonal workers during a period of good weather, they are compelled to offer those hours for the next reference period, whatever the weather might be?”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. Britain’s coastal communities are among the most beautiful parts of our country, but behind that picture postcard image lies a reality that too often goes unnoticed—isolation, hidden deprivation and a lack of opportunity.”
“The Leader of the House is a decent and honourable man, and the fact that he is so clearly rattled this afternoon shows how uncomfortable he is with the statement that he has delivered to us. As he knows, the purpose of that Opposition day debate was to have a vote to delay recess by one day to scrutinise the new Prime Minister.”
“I want to give the Minister the opportunity to comment on how the right to guaranteed hours affects seasonal workers. We are enjoying some beautiful weather in Somerset.”
“Bridgwater high street has many excellent independent businesses, such as Styles Menswear, Soda & Rye, and Alise and Louie, but there are also too many dodgy Turkish barbers and criminal enterprises selling illegal cigarettes.”
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“They promised not to raise taxes on working people and to fund public services through a stronger economy, but from the moment that they took office, they have done the opposite. Labour have expanded welfare without reform, handed out huge pay deals without productivity gains and piled costs and regulations on to employers. When the inevitable bill came, what did they do? They reached into the taxpayer’s wallet. These tax rises are a political choice. The consequences of these choices are clear. Taxes on working people are at record highs, growth is sluggish and unemployment has risen consistently since the election. Record numbers are now trapped outside the labour market on benefits, with no requirement and no incentive to seek work at all.”
“A Budget is the most important set of choices that a Government can make, and introducing clause 10 is a choice by this Government. I oppose clause 10 because it extends the freeze on the personal income tax allowance and the basic rate limit for a further three years, from 2028 to 2031. That means that rates will have been frozen for 10 years. The choice in this Budget, as in all others, was clear: will spending be controlled or will taxes be raised? For the second year running, this Labour Chancellor chose higher taxes. In 2024, the Chancellor said that to extend this freeze would be to break her manifesto commitment not to raise the level of income tax, but at this Budget, she did it anyway. At the last election, the Government promised growth.”
“The people paying for the price for this incompetence are working people, pensioners, and everyone who has ever worked hard and done the right thing to provide for themselves and their families. It is no wonder that my constituents are so livid with this Government, and that is why I shall oppose clause 10, which is the cornerstone of this Budget for “Benefits Street”.”
“Had the Chancellor chosen to control public expenditure, then clause 10 would not be necessary. She could have chosen to make work pay. She could have chosen to reduce our welfare bill, to increase productivity in the public sector, and used savings to reduce debt and protect taxpayers, but she chose not to because when faced with difficult decisions, this Government’s guiding principle is their own survival: surviving the next vote, the next headline and the next rebellion by Labour Back Benchers. This Government have now U-turned on headline policies 12 times. By the Prime Minister’s own admission, that meets the definition of serial incompetence.”
“Unlike those in work, pensioners cannot put in more hours or ask for a pay rise. They are victims of this Government’s failure to control public expenditure. Where is all the extra money that clause 10 will raise going to go? Rises in welfare spending. With the uprating of universal credit, the rise in the amount of people claiming health-related benefits and now the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap, more and more families are finding it less beneficial to work. Clause 10 is perverse. It discourages work and entrenches dependency. Labour says it is all about fairness and compassion, but in truth it is the opposite. The best way to alleviate poverty is through work, and that is exactly what Labour’s Budget seeks to discourage. There is another choice.”
“My hon. Friend makes a valuable point, which anticipates my next point. Teachers in my constituency have written to me saying that they will be pushed into the higher rate tax bracket by 2030, paying 40% on any extra work that they do—marking exams during the summer, for example—and that doing such work is not worth it any more. Many pensioners in my constituency, who have worked and saved all their lives, and who have done the right thing, are now set to be punished too. Clause 10 will drag more pensioners with modest private pensions into the tax system. Freezing allowances will mean more pensioners paying tax on their income from savings. Anyone with income from a private pension or income from savings will now face having to fill out a tax return, and that number will grow when clause 10 takes effect.”
“If it is based on evidence, as he says, will he publish that as soon as possible? In the last two years, Government figures show that the Ministry of Justice, which includes the court service, lost the highest number of days per member of staff in sickness and absence in the whole of Whitehall, at an average of 10.7 days of sickness—more than two working weeks for every member of staff. That is more than 30% higher than the civil service average and over twice the UK average if the private sector is included. Were the Lord Chancellor to focus his efforts on improving the efficiency of his own Department, he might start to see the system as a whole improve.”
“I do not agree that the Government should curtail our rights to trial by jury. Trial by jury is an ancient right in England and the very essence of our criminal justice system. Combined with the Government proposals for digital ID, it reveals a very authoritarian attitude. It marks a significant shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the state, and I shall vote against it. There is a crisis within the criminal justice system and specifically with the Crown court backlog, but that backlog was not caused by trial by jury and will not be cured by its removal. Why does the Lord Chancellor believe that abolishing the right to jury trials for those likely to receive a sentence of three years or less is the right thing to do to bring down the backlog?”
“We know that this Government have a habit of making bad decisions, getting ambitious Back Benchers to defend them for a few months and sending a hapless junior Minister out to face the media while the Secretary of State hides in his office, only at the last minute to realise what a disaster the plans are before executing a U-turn that comes far too late for them to gain any credit. We have seen that on winter fuel, welfare reform, the grooming gangs inquiry, the two-child benefit cap and, most recently, the family farm and family business tax, so I urge Labour Back Benchers to be very cautious about supporting the Government this evening. They risk voting for something that their constituents do not want and that in their hearts, they know is wrong.”
“In my experience, staff absence is normally the result of poor management. I suspect that the Ministry of Justice is managing its staff significantly worse than the rest of the civil service if staff sickness is 30% above the public sector average, which is not great to begin with. With approximately 16,400 staff in the court service, simply reducing the rate of absences to the civil service average would free up nearly 50,000 working days. That would help cut the backlog without undermining the principle of a fair trial.”
“23. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of the proposal to restrict the right to a jury trial for certain offences on the rule of law.”
“When the Lord Chancellor made his statement on jury trials last week, he said that an impact assessment would be published with the legislation. Given how powerful a defender of jury trials he has been in the past, will he publish the evidence and the modelling that he has seen since coming to office that caused him to change his mind?”
“Does the shadow Minister recall that in 1999 when the Blair Government increased the cap, they held a consultation beforehand, and that in 2015 when the coalition Government introduced a cap, they held a consultation beforehand? Why are this Government behaving differently?”
“Twelve months ago, the hon. Gentleman and I sat on the Bill Committee. This is the first time that the Commons has had the opportunity to debate this measure, courtesy of the House of Lords. The Lords have done us a favour, haven’t they?”
“The Globe Inn in North Petherton is a fantastic local pub. This financial year, its business rates bill is zero. By 2029-30, it will be £5,000, thanks to this Government. That is an extra 10,000 pints it will have to sell to meet that extra cost. How is the Government’s strategy helping?”
“Will the hon. Lady acknowledge that under the last Conservative Administration, the minimum wage rose at the same time as we created 4 million new jobs and left unemployment at a record low? The difference now is that in only 17 months, unemployment has risen by 280,000 as a direct result of her Government’s policies. Our caution on the minimum wage is that it is now at a level, with their economic policies, that means they are pricing younger people out of work.”
“This year, it will not pay any business rates, but it will pay £5,000 a year from 2029-30, so it will have to sell 10,000 extra pints just to pay the Government’s higher taxes. That might not sound a lot to Labour Ministers, but I can assure them that, for a small business with a tiny profit margin, any additional cost can have a hugely negative impact. It is not just business rates that are going up.”
“They believed the Chancellor’s prawn cocktail offensive. They thought this Government would be a reincarnation of the Blair Government, who, at least in their early years, managed to control public expenditure. Instead, they seem to be the very worst of Wilson, Callaghan and Healey. The reality is that, rather than implement the modest tax rises and spending increases contained in its manifesto, Labour increased taxes by £40 billion last year and a further £26 billion this year. That is a huge increase in taxes on businesses and hard-working families to pay for more welfare spending. All the businesses I speak to in my constituency are suffering. They have lost any faith they ever had in this Government, and who can blame them? The Globe Inn in North Petherton is a fantastic local pub.”
“I am fortunate to represent a beautiful part of the Somerset coast. Burnham-on-Sea, Berrow and Brean all have lovely sandy beaches and are visited by many holidaymakers every year. Seasonal tourism is not just part of the local economy; it is the bedrock of those communities. Our motion regrets the many measures introduced by this Government that hit both the economy at large and have had a particularly bad impact on those areas that are dependent on hospitality and tourism. The effects are even worse for businesses that employ seasonal workers. I have said before that, although the Government were elected on a promise to go for growth, most of their actions over the past 17 months seem designed to achieve the opposite. Before the election, many businesses backed this new Government.”
“I know this from experience: in Burnham-on-Sea, the number of visitors who turn up very often depends on the weather. If there are two or three weeks of very good weather, businesses will need lots of seasonal workers. In this great country of ours, that could be followed by many weeks of rainy weather. What would the Minister say to employers who are contractually bound to offer work to employees who are not required because tourists are not there?”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, which I agree with. The Globe Inn is not a husband-and-wife team but a mother-and-daughter team, and those extra costs bear heavily on the business. It is not just business rates that are going up. There is also the hated jobs tax, which we heard about earlier, and the consequences of the anti-jobs employment Bill. On paper, guaranteed hours and scheduling rules sound as though they would protect workers, but for seasonal workers whose livelihoods depend on flexibility, immediate availability and quick uptake of short-term work, the measures risk doing precisely the opposite. Let us take some examples. Forcing employers to offer guaranteed hours after a short reference period will make businesses reluctant to take on seasonal staff at all.”
“If a grower cannot schedule pickers until they know the fruit is ready, or an events company cannot bring in extra hands until bookings spike, they may be forced to reduce the number of workers they engage at all. The added liability on agencies will shrink the pool of temp placements, on which many seasonal workers rely. It is natural that agencies will become far more cautious about taking on temps. No doubt some will pull out of short seasonal contracts altogether. That means fewer people will be in short-term work, fewer people will be building experience in their first jobs and fewer people will have the stepping stones to full-time employment. The Bill will act as a hammer blow to seasonal work. Employers will hesitate to hire, and workers will lose the very flexibility that makes seasonal work viable.”
“My hon. Friend is correct. In fact, what will probably happen is that many businesses will offer less work. That tells us that these regulations have been drawn up by people who have never run a business. When a farm, holiday park or festival operator knows that it might be legally required to provide fixed hours even when demand disappears with a change in weather or tourist numbers, the safest option will be not to hire so many people. It should not surprise the Government when that is what businesses decide to do. Seasonal workers could see fewer opportunities, shorter seasons and more competition for every shift. Secondly, the strict advance notice rules and penalties for changing shifts might offer security for longer-term part-time workers, but seasonal work often depends on rapid, last-minute scheduling.”
“I have to say that that boast is not all it might appear. What it really means is that the alternatives are so awful that they would tax, borrow and spend even more if Keir and Rachel disappear—”
“There are only so many tasks someone of that age can be given, but now the salary increases and other changes will be prohibitive. Two of the three will be leaving, and Kathy tells me they will not be replaced. Is it any wonder that youth unemployment is rising? Many businesses will think, “Why risk it?” Every Labour Government leave office with unemployment higher than when they started. Last July, unemployment was 4.4%; it is now 5%. That 0.6 percentage point increase may not sound like much to Labour Members, but it is an extra 282,000 people out of work and claiming benefits. I fear we have not reached the peak because while unemployment is rising, business confidence is falling. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor cling to their jobs, telling their nervous Back Benchers that it is them—and only them—who the markets trust.”
“My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point with which I agree. The combination of extra costs and extra regulations means that it becomes incredibly burdensome for small businesses to afford to take on staff. The above inflation increases to the minimum wage add further pressure, and that all has a disproportionate effect on industries such as hospitality and tourism. My constituent Kathy owns a shop in Burnham-on-Sea, which she has run for 20 years, but the recent changes imposed by the Chancellor are making it harder and harder for her to operate. Kathy currently employs three 16-year-olds. Increases in the minimum wage and future changes to employment law will force her to stop the practice of giving youngsters their first job.”
“My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. If the current Prime Minister and the current Chancellor were to disappear, all confidence in the Government would collapse. It seems that the Prime Minister has as much faith in his Cabinet as the rest of us have in him. It is unfortunate that the Government are comprised almost entirely of people of public sector, academic or union backgrounds. Precious few have ever operated a business. They do not understand how running a business works, and it shows. There is another path that the Government could take, and it is not too late. I call on them to withdraw their Employment Rights Bill, to get rid of their “Benefits Street” Budget, and to lower taxes for hard-working people and businesses.”
“18. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of extending freezes on income tax and national insurance thresholds on working people.”
“Extending the freeze on income tax thresholds will cost working families £900 a year. It will also drag many pensioners into paying income tax for the first time. Why is the Minister hitting these low-income families to pay more for welfare?”
“One of the first acts of this Labour Government was to hose money at striking train drivers to buy them off. Does my right hon. Friend share my fear that we will see the cost of a publicly run railway increase dramatically at the cost of taxpayers, and that we will also see services get worse?”
“It has not been voted for by the British people. It is authoritarian, expensive and un-British, and on behalf of my constituents I shall resist it.”
“All employers already have a legal duty to conduct a right-to-work check on people they employ, and those who break the law now will continue to do so. What is lacking is the will of this Government to enforce the existing law and deport illegal migrants. While the Government say that this ID scheme will not be mandatory, it will effectively be compulsory for everyone in the workforce. The Minister responsible for delivering this policy is reported to have told his Cabinet colleagues that digital ID could transform people’s experience of the state, indicating his intention that it would become integrated with all public services. Any expansion of the use of digital ID for other services will see the scheme become mandatory in all but name for all citizens. This policy was not in the Labour party manifesto.”
“Not only did the Prime Minister’s anti-Midas touch annoy a lot of Labour supporters, but for the first time in 15 years it has caused serious scrutiny of such a policy. Mandatory ID, be it physical or digital, fundamentally alters the relationship between the citizen and the state. It changes us from a country where the citizen is at liberty to do whatever he pleases, unless it is prohibited, to one where the citizen needs the permission of the state to do certain things. That is a serious shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the state, and not one that should be rushed through as a gimmick to help this most unpopular of Prime Ministers. The Government claim that digital ID will help crack down on illegal migration and illegal working. Is there anyone on the Labour Benches who seriously believes that nonsense?”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) for introducing this debate on behalf of the nearly 3 million people who signed the petition to stop digital ID. Some 5,300 of them were from my constituency, and I thank them for participating. From the emails that I have received, I am in no doubt that my constituents are opposed to the measure. We all know why this proposal was introduced. It has nothing to do with well-thought-out policy and everything to do with the Prime Minister being in trouble. He saw a policy that, according to his focus groups, enjoyed broad support, so he announced it as Government policy without much thought as to the consequences.”
“For the first time in its history, the OBR was forced to correct the record about the forecasting process in the run-up to the Budget. Is not the reason that the Chancellor selectively leaked information from the OBR to mislead the public and justify tax rises?”
“I am grateful for your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker. Perhaps I can rephrase that: the Chancellor inadvertently misled the public to justify those tax rises.”
“In his report, Sir Brian Leveson made a number of recommendations to reduce the Crown court backlog. Many of those recommendations are welcome, but curtailing the right to a jury trial is not one of them. Will the Secretary of State instruct his Department to publish the modelling it will have undertaken, so that we can see how much of an effect on the backlog each individual recommendation will have, and this House can take a view on the efficacy of his legislation before we vote on it?”
“It was too expensive and not the best way to tackle child poverty, and seven Labour MPs had the Whip removed when they voted against that. So what has changed? Well, nothing, except the collapse in the Prime Minister’s authority. He is buffeted by events because he has no principles and no vision for where he wants to lead our country. He is raising taxes on Rowena, and others like her, to increase benefits, because that is what Labour Back Benchers want. Devoid of any real purpose, his Government’s only guiding philosophy is to survive, so Labour is now doing what it has always done: taxing and spending, without thought for the consequences. Taxes on working people are rising to their highest level ever, all to pay for higher benefits for those who do not work.”
“Calculators suggest I will be approximately £1,500 worse off annually. In fact, under the new rules, I would be financially better off and under less stress if I had two more children and claimed Universal Credit now that the two-child cap has been lifted. That is a deeply troubling message for hardworking professionals. I also want to share a personal perspective: my 15-year-old daughter is in Year 11 and about to take her GCSEs. I encourage her every day to work hard and aim for a successful career. But what is the purpose when she sees her parents struggling and effectively penalised for being hardworking? What message does this send to the next generation?” I hope that the Secretary of State will answer Rowena when she winds up. Twelve months ago, the Chancellor was opposed to removing the two-child benefit cap.”
“I manage long hours, increasing responsibilities, and rising needs within schools, all while striving to maintain high standards for my students. I do this as I care deeply about educating future generations and also to pay my mortgage and support my three children. I do not claim any benefits, other than child benefit, and I have always taken pride in being financially independent. However, the changes announced today leave me questioning the value of this commitment. Under the new thresholds, I will be dragged into the 40% tax bracket, making additional work—such as examining during the summer—financially unviable. If I stop examining, students and schools will feel the impact. But what’s the point when 40% of that exam fee will disappear. Teachers are not high earners, yet these changes treat us as if we are.”
“Last year, the Chancellor increased public spending by £72 billion, financed by £40 billion of extra taxes and £32 billion of extra borrowing. That was all justified, we were told, by a mysterious black hole that only the Labour Front-Bench team could see. The OBR certainly could not find it. These tax rises were so large that the Chancellor felt it necessary to reassure the country that “I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.” One year later, the Chancellor is back for more, raising Britain’s tax bill by a further £26 billion. These extra taxes will be paid by working people, like my constituent Rowena, who wrote to me after the Budget. She said: “I have worked in education for over 10 years and have only recently reached the top of the pay scale after years of dedication and hard work.”
“The closure of the ExxonMobil plant is bad news for the whole of the UK economy, and it is the direct result of Labour’s economic and energy policies. Does the Minister accept that by pushing up taxes and energy prices, his Government are making the UK an uncompetitive environment for energy-intensive industries? What policy changes will he make to ensure that this is not the first of many such closures?”
“I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. Labour’s change of course is most welcome, and she has outlined some useful steps. My constituents want to see the Holiday Inn in Bridgwater emptied of migrants and returned to commercial use. To achieve that, she will have to be bolder, so does she agree that anyone who arrives in this country illegally should be detained on entry and deported automatically?”
“The decision by Liberal Democrats on Somerset council to cancel the Cross Rifles roundabout upgrade in Bridgwater has left residents facing severe congestion. Combined with a new one-way system on Salmon Parade and East Quay, it has left Bridgwater gridlocked, and my constituents now face longer and more costly journeys. One resident, Sadie, told me that because of the one-way system, her weekly taxi fare to the supermarket has risen from £7 to £20. May we have a debate on how we can hold councils to account when they cancel Government-funded infrastructure projects without offering an alternative for local people?”
“Would my hon. Friend agree that what has actually changed is the inability of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to control their Back Benchers, who now feel free to demand whatever public expenditure they think is convenient?”
“She increased borrowing not by the promised £3.5 billion, but by £32 billion. And believe it or not, she did not increase spending by the promised £9.5 billion. She increased it by £72 billion. The Chancellor imposed £40 billion of extra taxes on our economy. She increased employer national insurance, stamp duty and capital gains tax and she imposed extra taxes on family businesses and family farms, then she pretended that none of those were taxes on working people.”
“It is fair to say that we Conservatives did not believe them, so we were not entirely surprised when, within weeks of moving into Downing Street, the Chancellor told the country that she would have to raise taxes after all. She had apparently found a magical £22 billion black hole. I say “magical” because nobody other than the Government seemed able to locate it—certainly, the Office for Budget Responsibility could not find it. It was, of course, a fiction to give the Chancellor cover for what she always intended to do, which was a massive increase in taxes, borrowing and spending, because that is what Labour does. Dogs bark, cats miaow and Labour increases taxes, borrowing and debt. In her first Budget last year, the Chancellor did not raise taxes by the £7.3 billion promised in the manifesto. She increased taxes by £40 billion.”
“During the general election, the Labour party said that it would not increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. It repeated that it would not increase taxes on working people. In its manifesto, it said it would increase spending by only £9.5 billion and that that was to be paid for by £7.3 billion in extra taxes and £3.5 billion in extra borrowing. That was a modest plan with a prudent margin. It was a plan put forward to the electorate to show that the party could be trusted with the public finances. My constituents might be surprised to learn, however, that if they now look on the Labour party website, that manifesto is rather more difficult to find than it was a couple of months ago.”
“We’ve put everything out into the open, we’ve set the spending envelope for the course of this Parliament. We don’t need to come back for more.” Except we know that that is not true. She is coming back for more. She is now set to break that promise again by putting up taxes again.”
“That compares very favourably with what has happened in Scotland and Wales, where those reforms did not take place. The skill of government is in improving public services without always spending more money. The Liberal Democrats used to have a few Members who were called “Orange Book” Members. It is a shame there are so few of them left. Who does the Chancellor think she is kidding when she says she has not increased taxes on working people? Try telling the farmers in my constituency that they are not working people, or the young family where both parents work and are saving to pay the stamp duty on their first home. As Labour Members will recall, that first Budget was not well received, so to draw a line under her broken promises, the Chancellor said: “We’ve now wiped the slate clean. It’s now on us.”