Lincoln Jopp
MP for Spelthorne · Conservative · United Kingdom
“All my residents in Spelthorne and I are desperate to get Spelthorne’s five stations into the travelcard zone. The Secretary of State has looked at this in the past, but will she look again, with South Western Railway, at the financial modelling being used to say that it is not possible?”
“My residents in Spelthorne love their racecourse and have no desire to see it flattened and turned into housing so, as any Member would, I started a petition. It has received over 3,500 signatures so far. I also organised a public meeting in the Magpie pub in Lower Sunbury last week, attended by about 70 people.”
“Barratt Redrow told me on 20 March that it was going to put in a planning application by the end of this year. After I started campaigning vociferously for Kempton Park, it elicited a media statement from the company on Friday that it had no plans to put in a planning application during this calendar year.”
“In the centre, Jukebox Man; on the far side, Gaelic Warrior; and on the near side, Banbridge, in a classic renewal of the Ladbrokes King George.” The reason I focus on that is because I was there on Boxing day last year to watch the running of the King George.”
“The proposal had been seen off under previous planning rules. However, hon. Members will be aware that, under the new national planning policy framework, there is an assumed yes for planning purposes if a proposed development is within 800 metres of a train station with two departures an hour in the same direction.”
“Member for Liverpool Walton (Dan Carden), that it is “an internationally recognised venue and a major economic asset that, once lost, can never be replaced. Locally, it supports jobs and generates substantial spending for hospitality, retail, transport and many other businesses, while providing valuable green space.”
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“The other group that has been bypassed, and which I did not mention, is the 18 prime contractors. This is direct to the SMEs. I am afraid that the model that we have developed since the end of the cold war has seen the 18 primes getting rich off defence pounds and SMEs getting legged over. The national armaments director should look seriously at the way in which that is done, in order to capture the innovative nature of SMEs that are doing some wonderful stuff. Ironically, they are not selling that to the MOD; it is all going overseas. To the point made by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar about showing honesty about the threat, I agree that we must be very clear about the threat and express it outside this place at every opportunity.”
“I do not know whether my hon. and gallant Friend has yet had the opportunity to go down to Speaker’s Court and meet the armed forces representatives there. I met the very improbably titled Fungus 1, who is an F-35 pilot, and I was appalled to hear that he had spent nine years in training and has only just done three months on the frontline. As well as all the other things we are giving Defence Ministers to think about, surely pilot training has to be one of them, if we are going to be ready.”
“Members of a mini-Parliament from Town Farm primary school in Stanwell, in my constituency, visited me here this morning and asked me some very good questions. I was, for instance, asked for my view of the new right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham), but we will leave that one where it is. The school’s head, Mr Bhatti, has just been given the OBE in the King’s birthday honours. These things do not come up with the rations. Will the Secretary of State please put on record her thanks to Mr Bhatti and all the team at Town Farm primary school for the outstanding job that they do?”
“This is a joke, right, Madam Deputy Speaker? We have got the Deputy Prime Minister here giving a statement on a G7 summit that he was not at. I am embarrassed to point that out in front of the Public Gallery and the world. Can the Deputy Prime Minister name a single Prime Minister who has gone to a G7, a G8 or a G20 and not come back personally to make a statement to this House?”
“It is not only places of worship that are being targeted. Practices that have been prohibited post al-Bashir are being carried out with impunity. Religious discrimination is reportedly rife. Vulnerable minorities are being forced to convert. Many are denied work, food or education until they abandon their faith. Hudud laws are being used to target minorities, yet the Sudanese authorities are in no state to prevent or prosecute public floggings, which had been outlawed.”
“In particular, the RSF appears to prize places of worship because of their strong walls: fighters take churches and mosques, often threatening and killing clerics and pastors to do so, and then violently clear the area of civilians. In turn, the SAF bombards those places of worship, targeting the RSF and other rebel groups. The destruction of religious sites is a terrible thing, but worshippers pay the highest price when good and evil collide. We have seen that far too many times: the drone attack on the El Fasher mosque that killed more than 70 people; the airstrike, days before Christmas, on a church in Al Ezba in 2024, which killed 11, including eight children; and the visit without notice of SAF fighters, accompanied by police officers and religious extremists, to demolish the Pentecostal church in El Haj Yousif.”
“More than 150,000 people have been killed, nearly 15 million have been displaced, 33 million need humanitarian support, and 40% of Sudan’s population faces severe food insecurity. Yet, the warring parties continue. The Rapid Support Forces and the Sudan armed forces constrain aid deliveries to those most in need. They continue to commit massacres on scales that beggar belief. Appalling acts of sexual violence are being perpetrated daily against women and girls. Of course, among those barbarous acts, worshippers are being abused, minorities targeted and places of prayer levelled. The religious freedoms of the 2019 draft constitution have collided with the reality of war. The warring parties have attacked religious sites.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing the debate, and Members from across the House for their thoughtful and heartfelt contributions. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) has actually been to Sudan, which is a rarity in this place. I have not been to Sudan, but I have known the horrors of war. I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Strangford for securing the debate because, jostling for attention with other terrible conflicts across the world, Sudan is often forgotten, despite the catastrophic situation there; indeed, it is experiencing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.”
“How is the UK supporting the Quad in achieving the goals we hold in common: securing a humanitarian truce followed by a permanent ceasefire, securing a commitment to protect civilians and supporting an inclusive Sudanese transition to establish a civilian-led Government in Sudan? The war in Sudan is a stain on the world’s conscience. The freedom of religion or belief abuses being carried out are utterly barbaric. Britain must exert every ounce of influence and leverage to get the warring parties to lay down their weapons immediately, to secure lasting peace and to hold to account those responsible for the crimes being committed in the name of, and against, religion.”
“We are all aware that pressing the warring parties into a ceasefire, and hopefully an eventual sustainable peace, will require combining our efforts with those of our international allies. How is the Minister using the UK’s role as the penholder for Sudan at the UN Security Council to ensure that humanitarian aid is reaching those in desperate need? How is he using that role to tighten the screws on the warring parties, pressing them into a ceasefire and ending this barbaric conflict? Finally, when did the Minister last engage with his US counterparts on their peace efforts in Sudan, and what specifically is the UK contributing to those efforts? Has he, or any of his colleagues, had discussions with other members of the Sudan Quad about their push for peace?”
“Indeed, does the Minister see a wider role for the human rights sanctions regime in cracking down on abuses of freedom of religion or belief in Sudan? Will the Minister tell us how the Government are pursuing accountability for the religious abuses we have heard about today? How are they gathering evidence of those abuses? Since Sudan was last raised in this House, what have they done to support the collection of evidence of war crimes, so that those responsible can be held to account? How is the UK using international courts to pursue those responsible for such atrocities? On the big picture, I know that the House is united in wanting to see the immediate end to hostilities in Sudan.”
“BBMB fighters have reportedly been involved in arbitrary arrests, torture and summary executions. The BBMB has benefited from training and weapons provided by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—the same organisation that the Minister’s party, when in opposition, promised to proscribe. The Government are almost two years into their time in office, and only this week did they publish the text of the legislation that will make that happen. With that in mind, will the Minister tell us whether he has considered following the US’s lead and sanctioning the BBMB or even proscribing it? How do the Government plan to use the global human rights sanction regime created by the previous Conservative Government to crack down on religiously inspired Iranian agitation in Sudan?”
“When these things take place, it is abhorrent to the whole House. Laws mean nothing when the state lacks even the most basic capacities to enforce them. Among this chaos, bad actors are thriving. We have long known that Russia deploys mercenaries in Sudan in return for a free hand to smuggle gold and a Red sea port for Putin. There are reports that the Houthis are using the chaos in Sudan to smuggle weapons to their terrorist forces in Yemen. In keeping with the topic of this debate, Iran is using its links to Islamist paramilitaries to perpetrate Sudanese civilians’ suffering. For example, the Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade is a Sudanese Islamist militia that has contributed tens of thousands of fighters to the civil war. The US has placed sanctions on the BBMB, but the United Kingdom has not.”
“How would she feel if she were indirectly responsible for the destruction of an internationally famous, iconic racecourse?”
“T6. The Secretary of State will be aware of the provision in the national planning policy framework that if a proposed development is within 800 metres of a train station, it is a presumed yes from the planning inspector’s point of view. However, that creates a planning loophole in my Spelthorne constituency because Kempton Park station is the first one outside the Oyster zone, so no matter how many houses are built there, no one will use the station because they will all go one stop up the line to Hampton to travel much more cheaply. As a result of that loophole, Barratt Redrow is planning to put in a planning application to flatten Kempton Park racecourse and put 2,000 homes on it. Will the Secretary of State look at the planning loophole in the NPPF to ensure that it is not abused?”
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for her statement. What exactly are the Brits going to contribute to the multinational maritime mission in terms of hardware? Has Ukraine offered up its two Sandown-class mine-clearing vessels and crew, which are currently in Portsmouth?”
“This is not my specialist subject, so I ask the Minister to bear with me. Thames Covers in Shepperton in my Spelthorne constituency, which is a boat fitter, has been told that the cost of stainless steel tubing will go up by 50% from 1 July because of a new tariff kicking in. As I understand it, the tariff is to encourage people to buy British Steel, but the trouble is that British Steel does not make stainless steel tubing, so it will add a huge cost. The Minister says the Bill is not about individual businesses, but about overall governance. However, the Government may be causing unintended consequences, and perhaps the impact assessments we are calling for in new clause 7 would be a good idea.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. A few moments ago, I asked the Minister why he came to the Floor of the House to answer an urgent question rather than bringing forward a Government statement. I believe his answer was that he thought Home Office Ministers had made a statement earlier today. The Minister and I are both new to this House, but given that statements tend to follow oral questions— I sat through Home Office questions—and there has not been one, the Minister may have inadvertently misled the House. What opportunities are there for the record to be corrected?”
“One of the sources of contamination that the Minister did not mention is human waste being discharged over the side from slum boats on EA land. The EA claims that its statutory obligation is only to register boats on its land when an application is received, and that it is discretionary. It basically does not police slum boats on its land. Will the Minister have a look at this issue and discuss it with the Environment Agency, so that slum boats on EA land can either be registered properly and policed, or moved on?”
“In the Secretary of State’s wide consultation, did he consult General Sir Nick Parker, who suggested that there should be no further criminal investigations, inquests, inquiries or prosecutions unless there is new and compelling evidence that was not available at the time of the event?”
“I am grateful to my fellow member of the Defence Committee for giving way. If he supports new clause 5, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty), will he vote for it?”
“I thank the Minister for his statement. The media are going to have a frenzy over the tittle-tattle of all this stuff during the next three days, but to my mind the whole Mandelson affair represents a very serious breach of national security. Can the Minister reassure me and the House that the Foreign Office and the security services are turning over with a fine-toothed comb every minute of Lord Mandelson’s time as ambassador to make sure his actions in that office were in the national interest?”
“The pubs in Spelthorne are under the cosh. The Minister, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew), said that a review of pubs and how they are valued for business rates purposes is ongoing. She will know that the review will not be relevant until 2029. Pubs are closing today. Young people are losing their jobs today. Will those on the Government Front Bench please do more to lobby the Treasury for our pubs?”
“I heard something this morning that I could scarcely believe. I heard that neither the Armed Forces Minister nor the Veterans Minister—notably, the two military veterans on the MOD’s ministerial team—have actually seen the defence investment plan. If he can, will the Secretary of State confirm or deny whether that is the case?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. Is he concerned that by reducing the relative punishment for youth offending relative to adult offending, he may inadvertently be making the young people of Spelthorne and across the country more attractive to be recruited by county lines gangs? That would clearly be an unintended consequence of his actions, but will he think again if it turns out that that is the case?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. Unlike others, I have not had the benefit of reading it beforehand, so I hope that he will forgive me when I say that it is very high protein and will take a little while to process. To pick up on the remarks he just made to the hon. Member for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas), with whom I serve on the Defence Committee, about bringing forward more provisions in Committee to respond to veterans’ concerns, the Bill was carried over on a promise that that would be done, so will he update the House on the status of discussions with veterans’ groups to give us some reassurance? Is he in a position to say that they now fully agree with the provisions to protect veterans, which were so lacking in previous versions of the Bill?”
“I thank the Minister for his statement today, and for the gravity with which he has approached this statement and his job while others in Westminster are being distracted by noises off. I completely agree with him that it is totally unacceptable for a foreign state to be conducting shadow policing operations on UK soil, and I welcome that he said that the Foreign Secretary has called in the Chinese ambassador. However, he will also be aware that, if press reports are to be believed, the Chinese embassy in London issued a statement on Sunday in which it called on the UK Government to “stop wantonly arresting and convicting Chinese citizens” on “trumped-up” charges. It is clear that we are miles away from one another, so will the Minister encourage the Foreign Secretary to throw the book at them?”
“I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way. He is being very generous with his time—although, as Madam Deputy Speaker pointed out, we have quite a lot of it. The UK Government used to have a golden share in Heathrow airport. However, that was ruled illegal by the European Court of Justice in 2003. Given that the Government broadly want the same thing as any promoter might want, inasmuch as they want Heathrow expansion, that would suggest that the Government are at the point of maximum influence in this build-up phase. Post-Brexit, will the Minister consider making any progress with the third runway conditional on the British Government getting back their golden share, so that we can control a great deal more of what goes on at Heathrow at Government level?”
“The Prime Minister has used a lot of words about the defence investment plan. I think it was due in the autumn of last year, so when is he going to sign it?”
“As I understand it, the purpose of the regulations is to take a pragmatic approach so that developers can develop inshore and offshore wind more quickly by providing a wider range of compensation. If the Government have a change of heart about the development of Rosebank and Jackdaw, does my hon. Friend expect them to take a similar approach to offshore oil and gas?”
“It is hard to believe that it was 34 years ago that one of these proxy bombs was driven into my checkpoint in west Belfast. I remember it like it was yesterday. I agree with the Secretary of State that we must find the perpetrators of this evil act, and I, too, encourage the community to come forward, because that is where the answer lies. Will the Secretary of State ask the Chief Constable how many Police Service of Northern Ireland detectives are allocated to investigating legacy issues, versus those allocated to finding the perpetrators of the Dunmurry police station attack?”
“I thank the Minister for his statement, in which he said that “the Government will not publish information that undermines or threatens our country’s national security or international relations.” My question is: in whose judgment? Ultimately, is that the judgment of an official or of a Minister? If it is that of a Minister, which one?”
“My right hon. Friend is incredibly well informed on this subject. In his research, has he found any justification for public money being used in that way?”
“When I served on the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill Committee, I distinctly remember the Government whipping their Back Benchers to vote down a Conservative amendment to oblige the Secretary of State to maintain a register of hostile actors posing a threat to the cyber-security of critical UK industries and sectors, including health. Will the Minister commit to reviewing that in the light of this serious data breach? This is a grave incident. UK Biobank is an amazing project with thousands of trusting volunteers. I hope that the Government will send in the relevant agencies to help UK Biobank to secure its systems for the future, including vetting the research institutions that it trusts.”
“The statement says that the research institutions identified as the source of the leak have had their access blocked. I am left thinking: is that it? Were those institutions Chinese? What sanctions are available either to the UK Biobank or to the Government on those institutions? Is their blocking permanent or temporary? How has UK Biobank reassured itself and its participants that no further copies of the data exist? What is the possibility or likelihood that the full dataset is now in the hands of the Chinese state? I hope that the Minister will forgive me for not being an instant expert on UK Biobank. Can he tell me whether any research institutions that have access to UK Biobank data are based in Russia, Iran or North Korea? What is the Government’s risk assessment?”
“I thank the Minister for his statement and for prior sight of it. This is indeed a serious breach. In another life, I was the chief operating officer of a tech company and we, too, had data breaches. We found that the best way to deal with them was to have developed a culture of openness and honesty in the organisation, not to flap or panic, to plug the leak and to limit the damage. Ideally that is all rehearsed, because it is too late to learn to swim when the ship starts sinking. A couple of things in the Minister’s statement require clarification. The statement says what the data does not include, with the implication being that the participants could not be individually identified. What was in the data? Could it be used to identify participants, even if only mosaically?”
“Q8. Last Thursday, a man was arrested in Laleham in my constituency. He had been approaching children at the primary school, having been warned by the police not to do so. He was taken into police custody and, after further examination, detained under the Mental Health Act. Unbelievably, he was living in an unlicensed house in multiple occupation, supported by the Home Office, a stone’s throw from the primary school. What I would like to know, Prime Minister, is: who is responsible for the risk assessment that put him there? Was it the Home Office, or was it Spelthorne borough council? Who screwed up? Who can I hold accountable?”
“We have now established that the Prime Minister did indeed know that Peter Mandelson had been a director of Sistema when he appointed him. Why on earth would the Prime Minister be so reckless with our national security as to do that?”
“If we are going to offer flexi-access drawdown, does the Minister agree that it would be better if members of defined contribution schemes had greater awareness of what their pension schemes were invested in? The latest research suggests that more than 50% of people in DC schemes do not know what they are invested in. To make informed decisions, does it not behove all pension fund holders to make themselves aware of what they are invested in?”
“On 6 March, the Minister kindly allowed the Defence Committee into the Ministry of Defence for a secret briefing. I would obviously never refer to the information that we received in that briefing, but it is telling that later that day, the Labour-dominated Defence Committee insisted on issuing a statement saying that we should go to 3% of GDP in this Parliament. That is the Conservative party’s policy, the Liberal Democrat party’s policy, and the Defence Committee’s recommendation. Will he tell us clearly why he is resisting it?”
“Frequently, we are led to believe that alternative sources of energy can be something of a zero-sum game—when someone takes one step forward, someone else has to take one step backwards. As I am sure we will hear, in large parts of the United Kingdom there are proposed large, land-based solar farms, frequently on very good agricultural land, so the zero-sum game between food security and energy security needs unpicking.”
“I did further research and it turns out that in 2016, on the Queen Elizabeth reservoir in a neighbouring constituency, a large technology demonstrator for floating solar was laid down, and ever since it has produced 6.3 MW of power—enough to power about 2,000 homes. That was at the time the largest one in Europe; back in 2016, we were leading. I looked into the situation further in order to see whether we were world-leading, but it turns out that we were not particularly, and that floating solar has been deployed to a greater extent in China, India, Vietnam and Israel. We will come in due course to the benefits of floating solar as an alternative to land-based systems. I want now to return to the more national context.”
“Members get to the River Thames. When I was elected, at the last election, to be the Member for Spelthorne, I looked at a very big map of the constituency—hon. Members will be very surprised to learn that I used to be in the Army, and there used to be a very good saying in the Army: “If you don’t know what’s going on, get a bigger map”—and I identified four enormous blocks of blue. That was half of London’s drinking water in four raised reservoirs. Being a practical man, I thought to myself, “Well, there aren’t many votes in there.” I also thought to myself that we cannot really build many homes there.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of alternatives to ground mounted solar panels. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I sensed the people coming into the Chamber in the last couple of minutes and I felt a quickening. It was like energy coming together, which is completely appropriate given what we are here to debate: alternatives to land-based solar panels. The context in which I wish to couch this debate is twofold. One aspect is local and one slightly more geostrategic. People say that in politics, where you sit defines where you stand. Hon. Members may or may not know that I am the proud Member of Parliament for Spelthorne. I sometimes feel the need to remind hon. Members that Spelthorne is not in Lincolnshire or Lancashire; it is, in fact, everything south of Heathrow airport until hon.”
“I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I hope other Members will come forward with their own preferred alternatives to land-based systems, because there are others.”
“As the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my hon. Friend is only too well placed to talk about that. As his Whip, I can only say that his jokes get better too.”
“And there we see the battle. Without wishing to get into other controversial areas, it is a little like proposals to build on green belt. If everything else were built on first and we protected the green belt, we would be a richer country.”
“The tops of those reservoirs can be seen only by people taking off from or landing at Heathrow. The hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) is quite right: nothing is as simple or as perfect as it might first sound. I do not envy her having two grid plug-in points—she will be one of the most popular Members of Parliament going. But if we can, we must examine floating solar in greater detail, because it could, to a certain extent, produce a valuable alternative diversification of our energy supply in a world that is becoming ever more dangerous and insecure.”
“Last August I stood on top of the Golan heights, looking down towards Syria, and saw two enormous reservoirs that were almost completely covered with floating solar panels. We should look to hotter and more arid countries for our sense of where we should take our innovation and technology. My plea to the House and the Government is this: look again at the potential for floating solar. When it comes to energy security, food security and water security, it provides a non-ideological, highly practical solution—a NIHPS—without papering over the beautiful parts of England. By the way, all the reservoirs in my constituency are raised, so this solution comes with none of the visual vandalism of our country being carpeted in solar panels, to which people object so much.”
“I think there are 570 reservoirs in this country, and there is floating solar on one—the Queen Elizabeth. Ten further projects are planned. We also have innumerable former quarries and unused ports such as at Barrow. The opportunity is huge; we are talking terawatts. If it is realised, floating solar could generate 1% of UK baseload. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) mentioned space. Clearly, that would be phenomenal. Dare I say that it behoves the Government to look at this in a more strategic way than hitherto? They published their long-awaited solar road map. It has about 94 pages, and about half a page and a photo are dedicated to floating solar, which they describe as a “nascent” technology. I hope that I have shown that it is not nascent at all; it has been with us for quite some time.”