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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“About half of the employers surveyed believed that, overall, the ERB measures will negatively affect employment at their organisation. When we look at how employers plan to respond to the seven measures, one by one, we can see that between 5% and 20% of employers indicate that each of the measures will lead them to reduce staff through redundancies and/or recruiting fewer workers to their organisations. So much for the No. 1 mission of growth. Out of the measures proposed, the planned changes to the rules on unfair dismissal are expected to have the largest negative impact on employers’ recruitment and redundancy intentions.”
“Looking at the overall cost of the reforms, the Regulatory Policy Committee said: “The direct impact on business estimate does not account for the likelihood employers may offset the costs of regulation and mandated benefits through wage adjustments, benefit reductions or other compensatory mechanisms which would eventually be borne by the employee.” Let us see what other people think of the impact assessment. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development published a report in April 2025 entitled “The (Unintended) Consequences of the Employment Rights Bill”. Its survey of 2,000 employers showed that about eight in 10 believed that the measures in the Employment Rights Bill will increase their employment costs.”
“My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. When these measures kick in, we could see the law of unintended consequences playing out, with a series of compound impacts. The RPC said that the fundamental basis for the creation of the Bill in the first place had not been made, and that there had been insufficient “considerations of alternative options” and an “inadequate assessment” of how the Bill would impact small businesses. Some of the individual impact assessments had “missing business impacts, lack of proportionate monetisation and insufficient assessment of key risks.” The areas in the impact assessment with the weakest scrutiny included day one unfair dismissal rights, reforms of trade union legislation, flexible working and third party harassment.”
“A few months ago, The Times invited the Chancellor of the Exchequer to address its CEO summit. Just before the Chancellor was called up to the stage, the host reminded the audience that the Chancellor had promised that this would be the most pro-business Government ever. The host then invited the chief executive officers—I think there were 200 of them—to say how many of them, having seen the Labour Government at work, think that it is pro-business. Not a single hand went up. Is the hon. Member aware of that?”
“I think I am right in saying that the impact assessment’s estimate of a cost of £5 billion was at the higher end, but I read out quite an extensive set of quotations from the RPC saying that it was an inadequate impact assessment and that it completely under-gunned the financial impact of the measures. Does she just think that the RPC is wrong?”
“I thank the Minister, the shadow Minister and all hon. Members who have contributed to this debate. I fear that it has been a bit of a conversation of the deaf, but we will see whether the number of women employed in this country goes up or down. We will see whether the number of disabled people employed in this country goes up or down. We will see whether these new regulations contribute to growth in the economy, or to further shrinkage and further increases in unemployment. I fear for the British economy; I think we are heading in a really bad direction, and this Employment Rights Bill is going to turbocharge our getting there. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the impact of employment rights on businesses.”
“10 and the Foreign Office are taking to examine every single thing that Lord Mandelson did when he was our ambassador, in order to establish the extent to which the politically fatal kompromat had skewed his judgment and driven his behaviour.”
“10 Downing Street on behalf of a single defence manufacturer for Britain to buy an unmanned military set of equipment—a major buy—without a competition, bypassing UK small and medium-sized enterprises and expertise. I will not put two and two together, but it seems extraordinary that someone who was meant to be promoting British interests overseas was instead promoting US defence capability to No. 10. We buy a lot of good kit from America, of course, but the absence of a competition skews the pitch and is odd behaviour. I hope that when the Minister gets an opportunity to speak, he will talk about what measures No.”
“I am amazed that the Foreign Office has not gone into full lockdown and damage limitation mode, having found out that potentially Lord Mandelson could have been blackmailed this entire time. If it had turned out that he had been an agent of a foreign state, the Foreign Office would have done that. All it knows now is that someone—we do not know who—had politically fatal kompromat on him that whole time. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) talked about some of the behaviours of Lord Mandelson in office, and that is the bit I am concerned about. I do not know whether the Minister is aware that Sir Ben Wallace gave an interview to Times Radio recently in which he said that Lord Mandelson had been lobbying No.”
“I thank and congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) on securing this emergency debate. The focus of the debate thus far has been primarily on three areas: the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s appalling crimes, the conduct of Lord Mandelson prior to his being appointed and the judgment of the Prime Minister in both appointing and firing Lord Mandelson as the British ambassador to Washington. Quite rightly, in this debate the House has focused on those three areas, but I will add a fourth area that I find as chilling as the other three. Since December last year, our ambassador in Washington has been potentially subject to leverage and blackmail, because someone—we do not know who—had politically fatal kompromat on Lord Mandelson throughout his whole time in office.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way on the negotiations. He is making great play of the fact that the previous Government started the negotiations and that there were 11 rounds of them. Is he not aware that, in 1965, the United Nations passed a resolution saying that we should enter into conversations with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Those negotiations went on for 17 years and ended in 1981. In 1982, we all know what happened. So it is not where we start; it is where we finish.”
“If the Minister is such a big fan of the social time discounting method that has been applied, will he tell the House where the social time discounting method has been used in other parts of Government to generate net present value?”
“I do not know whether the hon. Member listened to the outstanding, forensic dismantling of the Government’s case by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), but on the basis that every constituency in this country will kiss away the opportunity to have £52 million as a result of this deal—that is what it is going to cost in total—would he like to tell the people of Dunfermline and Dollar why he would rather give away that amount of money to a foreign Government on a spurious legal basis than invest it in his own constituency?”
“I am grateful to the hon. and gallant Member for giving way. On the pricing, he said that Government Front Benchers are putting it out that this is a good deal. Would it still be a good deal if it was £35 billion or something like that?”
“I visited a nursery in Staines in my constituency, and the head there reported to me that, because of the charging regime and what they can and cannot charge for, every Saturday morning she ends up doing many hours of work on education, health and care plans, for which she cannot pass on the cost. Does the Minister recognise that phenomenon? If so, is it widespread?”
“T9. It has been more than a fortnight since the Alaska summit, and the deadline set by President Trump at that time has now passed. What diplomatic efforts are the Government making to maintain US focus on the Ukrainian theatre of operations in the face of Russian intransigence?”
“It is a pleasure to come in on the side of David versus Goliath. Is my right hon. Friend aware that the 10,000 acres being proposed in his constituency could be replaced by 5,000 acres of floating solar on the reservoirs of this country? In my constituency, I have 2,000 acres of raised reservoirs. They are all closed sites; we cannot see the top of them. They are twice as efficient as land-based systems, and they reduce evaporation by 70%. Would that not be a better way of striking a balance than plastering them all over Newark?”
“The Stanwell hotel in my constituency is being used to house asylum seekers. I wrote to Home Office Ministers on 24 July, again on 25 July, and again on 29 July, and I have had zero responses to any of those letters. Please will the Home Secretary show some respect to my constituents and the people of Spelthorne and reply to their questions and concerns?”
“Spelthorne residents Emma and John lost Holly to cancer in October last year. They set up the charity Holly’s Heroes in her name. Before she died, Holly was given a wheelchair by the NHS, and Emma and John cannot now give it back to the NHS for love nor money. I have raised this with the chief executive of the trust, but can the Secretary of State reassure me that this practice is not replicated nationwide?”
“I thank the Minister for that answer. On Friday, I had the opportunity to visit the outstanding Springfield primary school in my constituency. It has 500 pupils, 30 of whom have education, health and care plans, with six applications in currently. Can the Minister reassure the parents of those six children and the many, many parents across the country that, while this review into EHCPs is going on, local education authorities will not slow-roll existing applications or fail them as a default in order for them to go to tribunal and try to beat the clock?”
“The Leader of the House mentioned the statement by the Secretary of State for Defence about the super-injunction. The Defence Committee will undoubtedly embark on an inquiry, but before we do, can the Leader of the House state very clearly the Government’s position? Is it ever right to use a super-injunction?”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. Following the magnificent success of the England cricket team earlier this week and the triumphal return of Mr Jofra Archer, does the Prime Minister agree that what he needs from his Ministers over the next 12 months is more pace and less spin?”
“We have been using floating solar technology in this country since 2016. Last month, the French started the largest plant in Europe, producing 74.3 MW. The Chinese have single plants that produce 350 MW. Given the scale of its use across the world, bar Britain, why did the Secretary of State refer to floating solar as a nascent technology? What is nascent about it?”
“I think it is worth clarifying exactly whether it was a civil servant, a spad or a soldier, because conflating the term “Defence official” to cover members of the armed forces is something that might come back to bite the Secretary of State if he continues to do it.”
“I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and the tone of voice with which he delivered it. I commanded the Scots Guards in 2010 in Afghanistan, at the high watermark of violence. I was very well served by Naz and Mukhtar, and I will always be grateful both to the Ministry of Defence for getting them to Britain and to the communities in this country who have welcomed them to their new lives here. I want to focus on a particular phrase the Secretary of State used. The shadow Secretary of State asked whether it was a civil servant who carried out the leak. The Secretary of State said it was a “Defence official” and The Times is reporting that it was a soldier.”
“I think the Veterans Minister and the Secretary of State are having a lively debate behind the scenes, but I invite the Secretary of State to listen very carefully to the Veterans Minister, who has the ear of veterans. I think I know where the Veterans Minister is coming from, and I expect the Government to do the right thing.”
“To understand the context in which these mendacious and vexatious prosecutions will be pursued, I remind the Secretary of State of the moment when Stormont was recalled because someone had put a vase of flowers in the lobby, and the whole Assembly had to be recalled to debate the colour of the flowers. Why? Because after the Good Friday agreement, everything becomes a proxy answer to the question: who won? The Good Friday agreement was, by necessity, a compromise—it was a peace agreement. However, ever since, everyone has been trying to relitigate the question of who won. It is essential that we do not allow our veterans and their prosecution to become pawns in that proxy game. I will leave it at that.”
“The Veterans Minister knows this well, but there are three components to fighting power: the moral, the physical and the conceptual. It is a very well-known model; Napoleon said, “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” We undermine the moral component of fighting power at our peril. I was recently appalled to see a GIF that a veteran sent me on my phone. It was a picture of the Prime Minister very recently addressing a number of troops. The subtitle underneath said: “We want you to go to Ukraine to do things which we are going to prosecute you for in 30 years’ time.” We undermine the moral component at our peril.”
“I said, “Can I fire now?” The instructor said, “This is a very tough moment, but it is a moment to remind yourself, Sir, that it is sometimes better to be tried by 12 men than carried by six.” Pretty chilling—particularly when two of our guardsmen on that tour subsequently had to make a judgment in a shooting situation. One of them believed they had seen a coffee jar in a plastic bag. It turns out that they did not get tried by 12 men; they were tried by one. They were convicted and given life imprisonment. That is the point: all the cases that we have come here to talk about went through a rigorous judicial process at the time. It is horrific double jeopardy, and in some cases treble jeopardy, to put our veterans through that process again.”
“We were trained, when we went to Northern Ireland, to identify the presence of the abnormal or the absence of the normal in order to set the context. We would see a perceived threat, the threat would build up and we would be invited to fire the round. A little yellow dot would go on to the screen, and our instructor would say, “Congratulations—you have successfully carried out the rules of engagement”. However, the coffee jar bomb presented a massive dilemma. Could we shoot someone simply for having a coffee jar in their hand or being in the process of throwing one? It was purely designed to put soldiers, like me and the 24,000 others who served there, under incredible pressure. I remember one moment with a real dilemma in the cine film.”
“The IRA would take a small piece of scaffolding and put it in the coffee jar alongside a detonator, a small amount of Semtex and what was affectionately known as “shipyard confetti”. The coffee jar also held a switch from a fridge so that when the jar was thrown and broke on the ground, the bomb went off and the bits went everywhere. We knew that these bombs were incredibly lethal because, a year before, one had been thrown at a dog handler called Darren, who had been feeding his dog. He had watched as his left leg flew 20 metres away, his other leg a smouldering wreck. We knew they were very dangerous. When we were training to deal with these bombs, we went to a cine range. We would be there with a sub-cal, looking at a movie screen that showed a street scene. The film would stop and we would see a threat.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the 170,000 people who signed the petition, particularly those from my Spelthorne constituency. I served four tours in Northern Ireland and dedicated three and a half years of my life to trying to bring peace to that place. My first tour was in Belfast in 1992. It was a guinea a minute—a young Captain Jopp and a young Lieutenant Ben Wallace were on the same tour. The IRA at the time was fully aware of our rules of engagement —the so-called yellow card that has been referred to today. In fact, the IRA designed a whole weapons system around it. It was called the coffee jar bomb. It was a coffee jar, funnily enough—usually Nescafé, although other coffees are available.”
“I declare an interest as a Surrey Member of Parliament, and my constituency of Spelthorne is the northernmost borough of Surrey. Can I just confirm whether the changes that we are making today still require Spelthorne borough council to give permission for compulsory purchase, when we have handed those powers to Surrey county council?”
“The first line of defence in national resilience is us, the citizenry. The Health Secretary and the Education Secretary wrote recently lamenting the absence of much-needed grit among many of our young people. Now that that risk has been identified at the highest level of Government, does it appear on the risk register?”
“We had a long discussion in Committee about assessing how much this regulator was going to cost and how big it was going to be, but all the amendments we put forward were voted down. When will the Minister know that this thing has grown too big and costs too much?”
“The Mercure hotel in Stanwell in my constituency is used to house asylum seekers, and I have had multiple reports of asylum seekers there working illegally. Will the Department please put that on immigration enforcement’s radar, so that it can take the appropriate action?”
“Before the general election, the Chancellor said that this would be the most pro-business Government ever. She spoke recently at The Times CEO summit. Before she was introduced to the CEOs, the host asked how many of them thought that this Government are still pro-business, and not a single hand went up. Why does the Chief Secretary to the Treasury think that is?”
“The way in which the Minister is talking about insurance buy-out suggests that, in the Government’s mind, insurance buy-out is still in some way a gold standard. Can he reassure the House that he is seeking to flatten the playing field, such that the increased choice available to defined-benefit pension schemes will mean that for perpetuals who run on—such as OMERS, which started off as the Ontario municipal employees retirement system and is now worth 140 billion Canadian dollars—there is as much safety in superfunds as there is in insurance buy-out?”
“I was just googling “dirigiste” and my right hon. Friend’s everyman quote. Will he comment on the fact that OMERS, which he would probably agree is one of these megafunds that he thinks are slow and unwieldy and invest in infrastructure and illiquids, returned a 7.1% net return over the last 10 years and the London Pensions Fund Authority returned a 7% return over the last 10 years?”
“The Pensions Regulator did not see why it should take any additional risk if politicians were not going to. I encourage the Minister to have the strength of his convictions to use primarily legislation to tell the Pensions Regulator the market that he wants it to regulate. Then he will give pension superfunds a fighting chance of coming into existence and consolidating. Notwithstanding some of the concerns that others have had, 5,100 of anything is not a working marketplace; it is ripe for consolidation—it was then and it is now.”
“I do not want the Minister to be in the position of his predecessor, Guy Opperman, who stood in this place and said that greenlighting superfunds was his greatest achievement during lockdown, yet as a result of a combination of the regulatory environment that was put in place and the vested interests of those who argued against the birth of superfunds, the whole concept was strangled at birth. I want the Minister to avoid that, so I encourage him to look back at the first efforts to produce superfunds and tell the Pensions Regulator a great deal more about how it should do its business. The reason why the Pensions Regulator became risk averse was because the last Government refused to cover superfunds in their Pension Schemes Bill, now the Pension Schemes Act 2021.”
“Will the Minister take a close personal interest in this and change the way that the Pensions Regulator works, so that there are stricter and shorter time limits for assessing suitability—shorter than the limits currently in the Bill, which are six months as a default and nine months as a stretch? In the case of the pensions superfund, we had three applications and a similar timescale was used. One can just imagine why the investors’ patience finally ran out and the whole thing was wound up.”
“He might consider: specifying that superfunds should apply a 98% one-year confidence threshold; the creation of a rule similar to the matching adjustment that applies to insurers; extending a VAT exemption to superfunds for essential pension services, such as admin, actuarial and investment, including scheme origination and transfers of the scheme to superfunds; or—I suppose this is an “and/or”—allowing superfunds to use structured capital instruments such as subordinated debt and preferred shares to lower the cost of capital and enhance investment flexibility, without compromising quality. Lastly, I turn to the Pensions Regulator’s process of assessing superfunds and giving them a licence to operate—this is the bit where I have the scars on my back.”
“In combination, that means that the capital buffer for a buy-out provider is approximately half that of a superfund under the current interim regime, even taking into account the fact that superfunds are proposed to have a one-year 99% confidence level. The Bill must address that inherent unfairness if, as the Minister wants, the superfund market is to grow. At the moment, it is the proverbial baby who refuses to put on weight. Can the Minister assure me that the Bill will address the problem and create a more level playing field that will allow superfunds to offer the 10% to 15% pricing discount to insurers that his Department has said it is seeking? As the Minister knows, there are a number of techniques for achieving that.”
“However, under the current interim guidance, capital requirements for superfunds are about twice those for insurers providing buy-outs, so it is hardly surprising that we have seen a number of recent new entrants to the insurance market but no new superfunds. The Solvency II regime—apologies for the slightly technical language, but the Minister will appreciate it—that applies to insurers works off a one-year 99.5% confidence level, but over time the industry has been allowed to apply a number of important adjustments, including diversification, matching adjustments and deferred tax credits. All have had the effect of effectively reducing the capital requirement for insurers.”
“When we attempted —[Interruption.] I welcome the Pensions Minister back to his place and am grateful that he is here to listen to this. When we attempted to launch the pensions superfund, we were bombarded by people who wanted to strangle the superfund industry at birth: the Association of British Insurers; an extraordinary intervention by the Governor of the Bank of England—I am not sure whether the Minister has had a chance to reprogramme the Governor of the Bank of England recently, but I hope he is more enthusiastic about the Minister’s proposal than he was about the last Government’s—and lastly, the Pensions Regulator itself. I think the Minister wants to create a thriving market in superfunds.”
“I regret that the Pensions Minister, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell), is no longer in his place; I wanted to pay him something of a compliment for getting the Bill here today with typical ambition and enthusiasm. I should, however, remind him of my grandmother’s favourite saying: an ounce of experience is worth a ton of enthusiasm. I stand here to talk about part 3 of the Bill on the basis of about four years’ experience as a director of the first pensions superfund, having attempted to get it through the Pensions Regulator and the interim regime put up under the last Government. That was ultimately unsuccessful; part of the reason why we are going to need the Pensions Minister’s enthusiasm and ambition is that he will come up against a series of vested interests.”
“It is a please to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cramlington and Killingworth on bringing forward this Bill. I have only one question for the Minister to answer in his summing up. On reducing the notice given to providers from seven to two years, I agree with the characterisation. In respect of the existing contract, however, has that had to be renegotiated— from the service provider’s point of view, obviously the Bill represents a significant change in the terms of the contract—and has that renegotiation cost the taxpayer any money?”
“Ametek, a defence manufacturer in my constituency, has reported to me that the process of getting a defence export licence has almost ground to a halt in the past 12 months. Could the Ministry of Defence send someone sufficiently threatening round to the Department for Business and Trade—perhaps the Veterans Minister—to persuade it to get a grip of its processes and speed everything up?”
“The post-covid backlog in driving tests was trending down under the last Government. At the time of the general election, it had got to 521,000, which was still too high, but it was coming down. Since this Government took over, the number has rocketed up to 600,000, a new record high, meaning that constituents like Oliver, in my Spelthorne constituency, have had to wait six months for a driving test. The increasing delays in driving tests are putting a handbrake on growth and productivity, so whatever the Government are doing, can they do more of it and faster please?”