Jack Rankin
MP for Windsor · Conservative · United Kingdom
“It is a disgrace that hundreds of prisoners have been released in error under this Government, but more concerning are the thousands it will have been an error to release early. The Secretary of State did not answer the previous question, so let’s try another.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the Minister for introducing the debate. His Majesty’s most loyal Opposition will support the regulations.”
“Q5. The first duty of His Majesty’s Government, and indeed the Prime Minister’s first duty, is the defence of the realm. The Prime Minister is not responsible for the worsening geopolitical situation, but he is responsible for this country’s reaction to it.”
“Just as we must stop unnecessarily pushing young people into courses that offer minimal face-to-face teaching, in return for huge debt and little prospect of employment at the end, we must ensure that new modular courses and training opportunities deliver the highest-quality provision possible.”
“I would like to press the Minister on the importance of face-to-face teaching time. If we want to tackle low-quality provision and ensure that the lifelong learning entitlement lives up to our hopes, we must ensure that learners receive the highest-quality teaching possible.”
“Secondly, given that providers will occur familiarisation and administrative costs as the changes are implemented, and in the light of the wider financial pressures facing the higher education sector, what support will be available to help minimise those burdens? The Opposition support the regulations.”
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“We should be supporting consistency in what an adult is—that is the direction in which legislation has been moving—and not creating added complexity.”
“I slightly disagree with the hon. Member for North Somerset. It seems to me that over time, we have been getting more consistent in our understanding of what an adult is. Obviously, I am quite a young man, but when I turned 16, I could buy a lottery ticket, I could get married without my parents’ permission and I could join the Army. I could then learn to drive at 17. Many of those have been regularised in the last few years, so the age for buying lottery tickets is now 18 and one cannot get married before 18 either. That is part of ensuring consistency about what an adult is. It may well be true that pharmacies have such technology, and I understand why, but most cigarettes are bought in small newsagents and I would not necessarily expect them to have the same technology.”
“On the civil liberties point, I disagree with my hon. Friend entirely, as she well knows. The point about civil liberties is that they need protecting not when the majority agree, but when the majority do not agree. The hon. Member for Winchester made the point that all the experts agreed. We listened to a cohort of experts who were from a variety of fields, but they were also all in some way paid for by the state and had some vested interest in the Bill—they were not retailers, consumers and so on— [ Interruption. ] We had one person out of 15. It was really not a well-balanced affair at all, so I disagree with that point.”
“In the last financial year, the Department underspent by nearly £600 million. The proposed national maths academy was due to cost just £6 million—1% of that total. People are disappointed by this cancellation. Can the Secretary of State explain whether he cancelled the academy because he does not value the role of our national academies, or because he does not think mathematical sciences are important?”
“Now, as we are debating here, senior members of the Thames Valley Air Ambulance are working out how to cover the £130,000 extra bill for the jobs tax next year. The charity, an outstanding resource for Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, works exclusively for the NHS and saves it many times over what the jobs tax will raise. Thames hospice in my constituency will have an extra £300,000 bill; once we add in the effect of the minimum wage and matching the nursing settlement, it will have to find well over £0.5 million next year just to stand still. The Government say that they want to help the NHS, but their Budget is doing the opposite. Why are they doing this? Is it an accidental oversight or a misunderstanding of how the sector works? I call on them to rethink their approach and fix this.”
“Q8. Last week, the royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead announced plans to hike council tax by an unprecedented 25%. That would require the Government’s permission. Does the Prime Minister agree that this outrageous request should be rejected, that the borough might be a candidate for accelerated local government reorganisation, and that my constituents should not be footing the bill for the persistent weak financial control and political failure locally?”
“To protect those in need and to deliver for taxpayers, we need to take tough decisions. Reforming health and disability benefits will require Ministers to make difficult choices, but so far the plans rely on reducing NHS waiting lists, which the Office for Budget Responsibility has said will have hardly any effect on economic activity. Are Ministers willing to make unpopular decisions to solve this issue and, if so, when?”
“I join with Surfers Against Sewage and River Action, which have been working with Members across this House to encourage the Government to make clean water one of Ofwat’s legal duties, and to give it the teeth it needs. I welcome the fact that this issue is being considered in the Chamber, and I hope that everybody in this House will join me in scrutinising Ofwat’s implementation of the powers granted to it in the Bill, hoping the Government will make clean water one of Ofwat’s legal duties and looking for Ministers’ support in holding Thames Water to account at the Slough sewage treatment works.”
“I hope for the Minister's support to hold Thames Water to account on that. However, as others in this House have raised, such a change is a drop in the ocean since the entire infrastructure system is outdated and creaking. It needs long-term and sustained investment of tens of billions of pounds over decades, and we must face the reality that that will come only with increases to consumer bills. If we expect the public to tolerate price increases, we need a regulator that works. In my view, Ofwat’s determination to keep bills low for consumers has exposed short-term thinking that has led only to higher bills in future. With additional funding, water companies—particularly Thames Water—must show customers that the money is going directly to infrastructure upgrades. I am aware of my lack of time, Madam Deputy Speaker.”
“Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey), and with residents in the Boltons in Windsor to see the Bourne ditch filled with sewage in a residential area. The south-east has suffered disproportionately; in fact, 90% of serious pollution incidents were caused by four companies, with Thames Water—the main provider in my constituency—responsible for more than 17 last year. That is inexcusable. I welcome that Thames Water has finally announced upgrades to Slough treatment works following sewage overflows in Berkshire. They will include new tanks, new technology and a new pipeline. It now needs to be made to guarantee the planned improvement project at Slough, which will reduce future sewage spills and provide cleaner effluent entering the waterways around Eton Wick.”
“The role of Opposition is to scrutinise the Government, but as a Member of Parliament I will always be willing to support changes in the law that my constituents have been calling for. This legislation represents an opportunity to start rebuilding our water infrastructure and improve water security for future generations, and we need to get it right. I want to help make sure that it is not simply cosmetic, or contains measures that do not require primary legislation or things that were already being progressed by the previous Government. I wish to offer some constructive thoughts. Like many Members, I have local issues. In the past week alone, I have been out with the Eton Wick Waterways Group to inspect the effluent overflow of Slough treatment works in the Boveney ditch, which I am working on with my hon.”
“Villages such as Datchet in my constituency are bearing the brunt of the fact that 6,000 more illegal economic migrants are staying in asylum hotels since this Government came into office. These single adult males represent something like 2% of the village’s population, so what assessment has the Home Secretary made of the extra pressures on vital local services, particularly GPs and dentists? What assurances can she give my constituents that they will not miss out on vital appointments as a result of the sudden demographic change?”
“Yesterday the Minister finally replied to my letter after my Datchet constituents were given next to no notice about single adult males being housed at the Manor hotel. She said the numbers housed there could reach as high as 85 people, and she gave no indication about how long they would be there, in breach of her manifesto commitment. Will she now give my constituents a concrete timetable for when the misuse of the Manor hotel will end?”
“They not only transformed our lives but improved the lives of children around them, and created opportunities for local people while paying for public services through their taxes.”
“Chucking money at an unreformed public sector while ballooning public sector pay, and doing that on the back of the productive economy and small business, shows a distinct lack of real world, private sector experience among Government Members. My first memories are of my parents going to night school on alternate evenings to get the qualifications they needed to set up their small business. Their aim was simple: to give my brother and me opportunities that they could never have dreamed of. In doing that, they paid hundreds of thousands of pounds—I ended up with quite a prosperous upbringing, I admit—into the Government exchequer. They created apprenticeships and skilled jobs in a tough part of urban Greater Manchester.”
“The theme of this debate is public services, but there has been a distinct lack of discussion from Government Members about what delivers the finances necessary to fund those services; this is the Budget, after all. The answer is simply the productive economy, and small businesses in particular. The Government talk a good game about wanting better funded public services, and each and every one of us in this House would be hard pressed to find a constituent who disagreed, but the Government’s measures—particularly the jobs tax in the Budget, but also their wider agenda in the Employment Rights Bill, through which we are moving to French-style labour laws—are an attack on where that money comes from. We must always remember that every single penny spent by the British state has to be earned in the private sector.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend. That absolutely shows, as we see from the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson). Putting up taxes unsustainably may mean adrenaline into the public sector from an injection of cash, but the medium and longer-term result will be lower growth, which will mean that public services are just getting a larger slice of a smaller pie. It is clear to me that the tax burden is higher than is necessarily sustainable. Tax rises now will not necessarily flow into greater revenue, particularly in the medium term. I ask the Government to check their approach, support small businesses first and foremost, and focus their public service efforts in the first instance on productivity reforms.”
“Any further introduction should be frictionless and should involve working closely with relevant stakeholders, whether that be the BGC or the BHA. Understandably, countries that have seen heavy regulation tend to see an increase in black market betting. PwC found that increased state regulation of gambling in Norway led to 66% of all gambling there taking place on the black market, and similar conditions have created huge black markets in Portugal, Bulgaria and Sweden.”
“At its best, that reciprocal, symbiotic relationship improves the sport and, in turn, the takings of betting companies. However, a big risk we highlight to the Minister today is that an increase in financial checks on customers risks pushing a lot of gambling underground. Less money would be reinvested in the sport, and ultimately there would be less money for the Treasury. We should of course be doing what we can to ensure that a flutter on the races remains an innocent recreational sport, and we need to give support to the people who need it, but I would urge the Government to tread carefully and acknowledge the unintended consequences of further regulation, particularly as problem gambling statistics for racing are at low levels compared even with some national lottery products.”
“Royal Ascot alone welcomes 270,000 spectators across five days and at peak time employs more than 4,500 staff. The visits to the racecourse make up 10% of national racing attendance and their economic importance to my constituency and the surrounding areas cannot be understated. In fact, in 2014 Deloitte assessed the economic impact of Ascot racecourse, just for that event, at £68 million in off-course expenditure through food, accommodation and fashion, all of which drives money into our local economy and into London, our capital, which hosts many punters during those events. For years, the horserace betting levy has helped to fund the grassroots of horseracing. It is not just about Ascot at the top of the tree—this all filters down into grassroots sports. It increases animal welfare and raises the profile of the sport.”
“We get prominent royal figures from Dubai, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and ambassadors from the Commonwealth and indeed the world over, which makes horseracing an important tool for soft power for this country. The event showcases the best of Britain and the best of my Windsor constituency on the world stage, and is broadcast in more than 180 territories internationally. As well as the prestige that comes with competing in Ascot’s group 1 races, it is obviously a significant financial contributor in terms of increasing a stud horse’s value, which remains unrivalled in international racing. As some hon. Members have already pointed out, as a result the racing industry generates more than £4 billion per year and employs more than 85,000 people.”
“Member for Liverpool Walton (Dan Carden). Ascot racecourse was founded in 1711, and that course now has 330 years of history and has hosted some of the world’s greatest races. Royal Ascot has welcomed some of the greatest racehorses from countries all over the world, including the United States, Hong Kong and, probably most significantly, the Australian super-mare Black Caviar, which is often considered one of the greatest racehorses of all time. She only left Australia once, and that was to compete in Britain at Royal Ascot’s diamond jubilee stakes in 2012. It is not only equine royalty that Royal Ascot attracts. A few speakers have made the point about Ascot’s soft power.”
“It is an honour to take part in this debate under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) for securing this important debate. I am very fortunate that in my patch I have two world-renowned racecourses—the Royal Windsor racecourse and Ascot racecourse. There is very rarely a better place to be on a Monday night than Royal Windsor—hon. Members are all very welcome. Ascot is obviously famous the world over, particularly for its annual five-day Royal Ascot event—an event that bucked the national trend this year by seeing an increase rather than a decline in attendance, which is a credit to all involved. For those who heard my maiden speech this week— I cannot remember the name of his constituency, but the Member for Aintree clearly did— [ Interruption. ] I apologise to the hon.”
“My hon. Friend is quite correct to say that. I am a big cricket fan and effectively we have seen what big money overseas can do to the heart of a sport that originated in this country and gives us a lot of power, and we must be really careful about what we do. Obviously, we should also acknowledge that if people are pushed to the black market, there will be even fewer barriers to entry there, which might have a bad effect on problem gambling overall. So, we are at an important crossroads for British horseracing. As bookies’ takings, which fund the levy, continue to decline, it is important that the Government’s approach to gambling respects individual liberty, and drives growth rather than limiting it. Just to expand on that—”
“Certainly, Sir Edward. I hope the Chancellor will carefully consider introducing further punitive taxes on the gambling sector in next week’s Budget, because that would further squeeze the horseracing industry. And given that the Labour party made growth its priority, I hope that this Government will be forthright in their support of British horseracing—an industry that plays a vital role in my local economy and in generating this country’s unrivalled soft power.”
“I come from a much more modest background, but all of us in this House, like Windsor’s Elizabeth the Confessor, would do well to appreciate that we are but the momentary trustees of our country. As Burke said: “Society is…a contract…between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” Yes, we have a responsibility to our constituents today, but we also have the shared inheritance of our history and our great parliamentary democracy, and we all have a duty to uphold the great traditions of our past in order to safeguard its future.”
“Didn’t she just? She was the living embodiment every day of the model of Christian service and of the history and continuity of this country and its constitutional monarchy—the very essence of our great nation. Throughout her reign, as the then Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip said on her passing, she was “the keystone in the vast arch of the British state” —[ Official Report , 9 September 2022; Vol. 719, c. 499.] But she was more than that. She was head of state, yes, but she was also head of the nation and, more widely, the head of our family of nations. She deeply understood the role to which she had been called in the context of a millennium of constitutional development, lots of which is local to my constituency but relevant to free people the world over.”
“It was thought that Windsor sounded necessarily regal and English; I wholeheartedly agree. We have now seen our fifth monarch of the house of Windsor, albeit that it is sometimes better that we forget about the second. They have all made Windsor their home, but few monarchs will be more associated with Windsor than Her late Majesty of blessed memory, Elizabeth. Our late Queen made Windsor her principal weekend retreat—indeed, she made it her home—but retreating was something that she very rarely did. Her great passion was the Commonwealth. On her 21st birthday in South Africa in 1947, she dedicated her life to the service of the Commonwealth, famously saying: “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong”.”
“The foundation of Combermere barracks in 1796 and of Victoria barracks in 1853 made Windsor a proud double-garrison town. We owe our armed services so much for protecting the legacy of which I am talking. We will remember them. Of course, none of this compares to the events of 1996, with the foundation of the great institution of Legoland. I cannot give my maiden speech without turning to the house of Windsor, our British royal house and the reigning house of our brothers and sisters in the other 14 Commonwealth realms. It gives us enormous pride that King George V proclaimed: “Our House and Family shall be styled and known as…Windsor”. It was felt inappropriate during the first world war that the royal family be called Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as London was being bombed by aircraft of the same name.”
“I assure the House that I will be bringing its attention on many occasions to the extraordinary wealth of cultural and historical riches, tied to the history of our great country, that originate in my constituency—from the foundation of Eton college in 1440 and of Royal Holloway University by Victorian social pioneers over 170 years ago, as one of the first places in Britain where women could access higher education, to the establishment of Ascot racecourse in 1711, when Queen Anne found a flat expanse of heathland that she thought would be perfect for racing horses. That tradition continues over 330 years later; I say to Labour Members and particularly to the new Ministers that it is a fantastic place for a freebie. Please see my updated entry in the register of interests next month.”
“Tax without proper consent is something that Governments over the years have come a cropper over—most famously the British in North America in the 18th century. I hope our American cousins may rejoin the Commonwealth one day. It is often they who remember our shared constitutional heritage most keenly. The Magna Carta memorial in my constituency was erected in 1957 by the American Bar Association, which alongside us and our Commonwealth kin is the beneficiary of that great legacy.”
“That concept—that taxation should be raised only with the consent of the community of the realm—should give the new Government pause for thought. I recommend it as a good conservative instinct. In this House, those on the Treasury Bench—the Crown—should be cautious about levying taxation, especially if punitive or excessive, without gaining wide common counsel. As this new Government raise taxes in breach of their manifesto commitments, my counsel would be that taxation will gain wide consent if, and only if, it leads to a material improvement in the quality of public services. That will not happen without quite radical public sector reforms to drive productivity improvements, which I seriously urge the Government to consider.”
“In that speech, Bright was arguing for what became the Reform Act of 1867, which, for the first time, enfranchised part of the urban male working class, from which I hail. England is the mother of Parliaments because of the principle, established in Anglo-Saxon England, that yes, we owe our allegiance to His Majesty the King—then in Old Windsor; now in new Windsor—but within a framework that protects our ancient individual liberties, as articulated in Magna Carta. That heritage is proudly ours. The Saxon Great Councils started to be called Parliaments by the 13th century; the principles underpinning them—among other things, that the King could only make law and raise taxation with the consent of the community of the realm—now belong to the whole Commonwealth and the wider free world.”
“One of the things I will advocate for in this place is proper flood defences for Datchet, Wraysbury, Horton and Old Windsor. Disgracefully, if the River Thames scheme is built as currently envisaged, those villages will be the only parts of the Thames, from Taplow to the North sea, that remain materially undefended. What was proposed as channel 1 of the River Thames scheme must be funded centrally as national strategic infrastructure. This House will hear from me again on that topic, I assure you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In the handful of weeks I have been here, I have already lost count of the times this place has been incorrectly referred to as the “mother of Parliaments”—a misquoting of John Bright. It is England that Bright referred to as the mother of Parliaments.”
“I represent most of the communities around it, including Ascot, Sunninghill and Sunningdale, where my wife Sarah and I have made our family home with our sons, Edward and Christopher. Henry’s great-grandson John was besieged by the barons in 1214 and signed Magna Carta the following year. Whether it was signed north of the river in Wraysbury or south on Runnymede meadows is lost to time. Whichever the true site, both are in the Windsor constituency, thanks to the most recent boundary changes, and we welcome Runnymede meadow into the patch, together with the Surrey villages of Englefield Green and Virginia Water, as well as the east of Langley in Slough. Whether Wraysbury or Runnymede, it remains undeniable that there is a propensity for there to be too much water in those places.”
“Old Windsor was an important palace of Saxon kings, documented as a defended royal manor in Edward the Confessor’s time, but evidence suggests that there were royal connections since at least the ninth century. William the Conqueror chose the site for Windsor castle, a strategically important position high above the key medieval route to London on the River Thames. It was part of a ring of motte and bailey castles around London, each a day’s march from the city and the next castle, allowing for easy reinforcements. The first king to use Windsor castle as a royal residence was William’s son, Henry I. Perhaps he was attracted by the proximity of the royal hunting forest—then Windsor forest, now Windsor Great Park in the centre of my constituency.”
“I also appreciated Adam’s work on fintech and his role as the longest serving chair of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. As someone with an academic background in mathematics and physics, it is clear to me that this place needs more of a quantitative and scientific approach. Above all, Adam is a good man and a person I am proud to call a friend. I wish him and his family all the best for the future. Windsor’s link to the royal family is self-evident: the Conqueror first built the castle, and the royal house proudly carries our name. But fewer know that the Windsor constituency was the home of monarchs long before the arrival of the Norman yoke.”
“My Windsor constituency is at the beating heart of Parliament, because it is not just a series of beautiful towns and villages, although that is undoubtedly true; it also encapsulates the glorious history of our constitution, the evolution of our parliamentary democracy and the very best of our shared Commonwealth of nations. My predecessor was a son of the Commonwealth, with a Ghanaian father and an English mother. Adam Afriyie came from a tough background, growing up on a council estate in Peckham, but he became a successful tech entrepreneur and the first black Conservative Member of Parliament. Adam spent his years in Parliament campaigning against Heathrow’s third runway—I will continue that campaign—as well as supporting many local good causes, including the children’s charity, Sebastian’s Action Trust.”
“It gives me great pleasure to make my maiden speech, and it is appropriate to do so in a debate on the Commonwealth of nations. First, I pay tribute to the maiden speech by the hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal). He spoke passionately about the opportunity and the community that Ilford has afforded him, and his commitment to his people there. I am sure that he will make a great contribution to Parliament. We share a set of values with our Commonwealth kin: a belief in the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech, property rights, and innocent until proven guilty by a jury of our peers, all built on a shared constitutional heritage. I want to fight for those principles during my time in Parliament.”