YouSaid · the spoken record
Jesse Norman
On the record 2010–2026
hansard
This is everything the corpus holds for Jesse Norman. It is not everything they have said on the record.
Every line below is reproduced as it was said and credited to the record it came from, and links to that record wherever it can be linked. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections
“He will know that many thousands of veterans, including hundreds in my constituency and in his, have had their lives thrown into uncertainty and bad—desperate, in some cases—anxiety by the Government’s decision to repeal the Northern Ireland veterans legislation, the Northern Ireland (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. That was more than a year ago now. The Government promised a legally sound and effective legislative solution to the problem they had created, so could the Leader of the House let us know—now or in a written update before the recess—when the Northern Ireland Secretary will come to the House and publish that solution?”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The only people who probably will not be affected are junior doctors in London, who have voted to have strikes until the new year, so they will be staying at home anyway. As the former director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies remarked, it all shows how “staggeringly unprepared” Labour was for government, and it is we across this House and all our constituents who are paying the price for their arrogance and negligence. The Leader of the House will only just be coming up to speed now, of course—one perfectly understands that—but, if I may, I would make one early request of him, with the utmost seriousness.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“People are already scared to death about all the taxes coming in the Budget, but they will be completely reassured if we run a Labour leadership election at the same time. Ideally, we can make the deputy leader a former Cabinet Minister whom the Prime Minister has just abruptly fired. That’ll be good for stability. Oh, and we can go further! We can actively undermine relations with our closest ally if we throw in a major scandal over the Prime Minister’s personal choice as ambassador to the USA.” If only this were a joke—instead, it is a tragedy. It is like we are trapped in an unending episode of “The Office”, with the Prime Minister as David Brent. The unions are ratcheting up their pay demands. The RMT is holding seven days of rolling walk-outs. The tube has come to a standstill.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I had somehow thought that, having plumbed the depths of incompetence over the summer, the Government would now settle down a bit. How naïve—how desperately foolish—I was. The No. 10 team were obviously taking the mickey. They were laughing at us. “You think this is incompetent?”, they said, “We have hardly got going. We can do vastly better than that. Resets are for wimps—let’s have a full-blown crash reshuffle. Let’s have a new Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary, as well as a new Deputy Prime Minister. And let’s undermine the Chancellor of the Exchequer by ostentatiously lining up the former Chief Secretary to replace her. The markets will really welcome that. Even better—let’s have an election for deputy leader of the party.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“She supported the wrong football team, and I struggled to get her to answer my questions, but she was diligent and effective in responding to Members across the House, as well as in Committee. Without getting too teary about it, I will even miss her appalling puns. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Hurricane tax dodge blew away the Deputy Prime Minister and destroyed the Prime Minister’s much-vaunted phase two, but it has brought us the former Labour Chief Whip! He was a history teacher, and there cannot be many better forms of public service than that. After his distinguished career channelling industriously away in the usual channels, I warmly welcome him blinking into the bright lights of the Dispatch Box.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Leader of the House for the business. On this 24th anniversary of 9/11, I know the whole House will want to join me and, I am sure, the Leader of the House in sending our best wishes to the families and the friends of the victims of those horrendous terrorist attacks. So, too, our best wishes go to those grieving the murder of Charlie Kirk in the USA, and to our own great colleague, the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), for the terrible news she has had this morning. I thank the recently departed Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). She and I had our disagreements; I do not think there is much doubt about that.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does she see how difficult they have made the situation for her colleague, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is planning to put a Budget in front of this House that will include tax-raising measures, many of which will likely be focused on property? Above all, Labour—and every Labour Member stood by this—made a solemn commitment to maintain the “highest standards” in office in its own general election manifesto. Does the Leader of the House accept that this conduct by the Deputy Prime Minister massively falls short of that, and that it discredits both the Prime Minister and the Government as a whole?”
House of Commons4 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We need to know more about what disclosures she made to the civil service about her three homes, what review was carried out and what advice she was offered. I hope the Prime Minister’s adviser will look at those issues, in addition to all the other issues he is looking at. Does the Leader of the House believe that Cabinet Ministers—let alone the Deputy Prime Minister of this country—should be using schemes to dodge tax? Should the Secretary of State responsible for housing be flipping her own main residence to avoid paying tax due on it? Does she concede that there is the appearance of very serious impropriety about these proceedings?”
House of Commons4 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“] Or potential tax fraud, but we now have a situation in which the Deputy Prime has tried to dodge paying £40,000 in tax on her third home after demanding that previous Ministers should resign over tax scandals. It appears that she failed even to look at His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs guidance on the internet as to whether higher rate stamp duty was payable. That guidance is readily available and is straightforward. It is hard to imagine that any qualified tax adviser—let alone any individual seeking to question their own tax arrangements—would not have taken a look or know about it. The Deputy Prime Minister signed a deed for what appears to be an off-the-shelf trust scheme from Shoosmiths, the solicitors. Was that crafted to avoid tax?”
House of Commons4 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In the real world, it seems that those of us poor souls who actually do pay tax are about to be confronted with a massive tax-raising Budget, perhaps with a particular focus, it has been rumoured in the media—or kites have been flown—on property taxes. Last year, the Chancellor increased spending by £70 billion, funding half of that through taxes and half through increased borrowing. Of course, it seems that the only person who will not be paying more tax is the Deputy Prime Minister. I like and rather admire the Deputy Prime Minister—uniquely among the Government, she at least has a policy of trying to reduce taxes. We just heard the Solicitor General talk about Government taking a strict line on fraud; I did not hear so much about taking a strict line on tax fraud— [ Interruption.”
House of Commons4 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I had been planning to talk about the Government’s performance over the summer, taking into account the escalating union demands for pay, the rise in inflation, unemployment and gilt yields, and the record number of small boat crossings in the first half of the year. I think it is fair to say that the past few weeks have been a total shambles for the Government. Little wonder that the Prime Minister has undertaken yet another of his performative Government resets to distract the media and the general public. He insists that everything is absolutely fine, which is doubtless why it is all being changed round yet again. They cannot blame these things on the previous Government, though doubtless the Leader of the House will try. There can, however, be only one topic today, and that is tax.”
House of Commons4 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hope you and everyone in this Chamber had a very good summer break, with just the right proportions of sun, sleep and family. If I may, let me start with a double round of congratulations: first, to the Prime Minister on his 63rd birthday this week, putting him squarely in the prime of life; and secondly, to my brilliant colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), who has just been appointed to the giddy heights of shadow Deputy Leader of the House. That is the reshuffle that really matters. As befits a former lawyer at Freshfields, he will bring his forensic intellect to scrutinising the Government.”
House of Commons4 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When will we see legislation to address the legal gap that the Government’s decision to abandon these legacy Act appeals has created?”
House of Commons17 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is inconceivable that he did not understand the distinction. To that extent, he was, whether deliberately or inadvertently, misleading the House. The Secretary of State appeared to say that he had abandoned these appeals on political grounds. It is plain that the Government are split and have been unable to develop a satisfactory legal remedy in the 12 months since they abandoned the appeals, leaving thousands of veterans, many in their 70s and older, exposed to legal harassment, anxiety and trauma. I put two serious and substantive questions to the Leader of the House. As the Leader of the House, in upholding the practices, tradition and honour of this House, will she ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Prime Minister to correct those false and misleading statements to the House?”
House of Commons17 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Yesterday, in Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister himself said twice that the legacy Act had been “struck down”. Unfortunately, those statements are both untrue and misleading. There can be no doubt what the law is on this topic. A succession of the most senior judges in recent British history—Judges Steyn, Hope, Bingham, Hale and Reed among them—have made it absolutely clear that a declaration of incompatibility does not mean that the law is unlawful or has been struck down. As the then Senior Law Lord, Lord Bingham, said in 2004, in such cases the validity of the law “remains unaffected”. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is no lawyer, but he should understand that basic point, given his job. The Prime Minister, however, has been a barrister for 38 years, and a human rights lawyer for most of that time.”
House of Commons17 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As the Leader of the House will know, hundreds and thousands of men and women went to Northern Ireland not of their own accord, but under orders and in a chain of command on the Queen’s business, to combat the most serious terrorist organisation in the world at the time and to protect human lives and human society. Many of those veterans, including many members of the special forces, cannot respond to the terrible injustice being done to them. Almost exactly a year ago, barely three weeks after the election, the Government decided to abandon the appeals to the Supreme Court to uphold the key sections of the legacy Act against a High Court judgment in Northern Ireland. In the veterans debate on Monday, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said that those sections were “unlawful” as a result of the judgment.”
House of Commons17 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The refusal to answer genuine, sensible questions is actually a discourtesy not just to the House, but to our wider constitutional framework and ultimately the supreme source of sovereign authority in this country: the King in Parliament. I think any fair-minded person reviewing our exchanges would conclude that my questions are almost always directed at some public purpose, and it would undoubtedly improve business questions and the accountability and authority of the Leader of the House if she were able to engage with them. In the same spirit, I will raise some serious questions about what the Government’s position is with regard to Northern Ireland veterans.”
House of Commons17 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Leader of the House distinguished herself with her very graceful response to my remarks about my father some months ago, and I thank her again for that. I also thank her for her engagement and humour and, I must say, more than a few groan-inducing puns, of which we will undoubtedly see considerably more this morning and with which she has dealt with questions from colleagues across all parts of this House. I hope I may register that it is a slight sadness to me that the Leader of the House has not been willing to answer my own questions in the same spirit. I ask these questions not in a personal capacity, but as the spokesman for His Majesty’s official Opposition, whose function is, after all, to hold the Government to account.”
House of Commons17 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We are getting close to the end of term and I want to thank all the staff for their service, and, of course, you, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Speaker and the other Deputy Speakers, and the Clerks for the resilience, courage, determination and poker faces that they have kept through all the business questions that we have had since the beginning of the year. It may come as slightly more of a surprise to the House that I also want to thank the Leader of the House. No one who has not held that position understands the amount of work that is involved in scheduling and managing the business of this House, let alone the amount of work involved in scheduling and managing the Prime Minister and Cabinet colleagues.”
House of Commons17 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I doubt if the Leader of the House has ever given a more popular statement to the House of Commons. More seriously, this is a welcome development as it will give guidance to colleagues and their families, and I am sure it will be widely welcomed across the House, so I thank her for that. I understand that Robert Gibbs, the acting director of catering services, will be leaving on Friday, after 25 years in this House. One shudders to think of the thousands of Members of the House of Commons and their staff whose lives will have been enriched by the joy of eating the food of the catering services under his command, and we thank him very much for his service. I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in thanking him for his work.”
House of Commons17 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Leader of the House for those words. I would like, in supporting the motion, to add one small cautionary note. It has been relayed to me, both by constituency staff and by other bodies, particularly the trade unions, that there is a concern that it might be possible to connect the names released in the official public register with the email addresses used by staff. I would be grateful if the Committee devoted some consideration to that concern, among the other issues that it will wish to reflect on further, to ensure that this ruling is as good and effective as possible.”
House of Commons16 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Lady has made an eloquent case for how defective the legislation was. Why did the Government not oppose sections 46 and 47 when they were in opposition? Does she think that they were wrong not to oppose them? She evidently thinks that the legislation was faulty, so why did her own party support it?”
House of Commons14 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Above all, why did they not decide on their own solution before they decided to create all this uncertainty by abandoning the appeal?”
House of Commons14 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Sections 46 and 47 were not controversial when they were passed. They were passed with the support of the then Opposition, who are now the Government. It is therefore absurd to hear colleagues from across the Chamber suggest that they somehow always disagreed with them, or that they have now suddenly discovered some Whips’ interest. Will the Secretary of State give us all the answer to the following questions? Why did the Government abandon the appeal? How exactly is the legislation in sections 46 and 47 incompatible with the convention rights? Did the Government give thought to allowing that supposed incompatibility to continue, given that they are under no legal obligation to cure it? Why did they not simply allow the pattern of the normal course of law to proceed and let the Supreme Court make that decision?”
House of Commons14 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It was therefore astonishing for this country to send young men and some women into that cauldron to defend all the rights that we take for granted today. They were men who acted under orders and in a chain of command—on the Queen’s business—and who cannot now respond, in many of my constituents’ cases, to the terrible injustice that is being wrought at the moment, which is itself already proving, even among this group, dangerous and deleterious to morale. There is something fundamentally dishonest about the Government’s position, which is that they have not bothered to explain the basis of the legal reasoning that is used. I invite the Secretary of State to clarify that basis in this Chamber today, and if he cannot, I want him to write to me so that we can share, in public, the basis of the legal reasoning.”
House of Commons14 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a nonsense to suggest somehow that there is political scaremongering here; these men have sat in front of me, and with all the astonishing bravery, vigour and fortitude they have shown, they have flinched in the face of the legal challenge, and the vexation and worry it has caused them, their families and their communities. We must recognise that. I also speak on behalf of Anthony Daly, a great friend of mine who died at the age of 23 in the Hyde Park bombing, on the soil of England, because of the IRA. Let it never be forgotten that the IRA is not just any other terrorist organisation. It was the most professional terrorist organisation in the world at the time. It trained and supplied other organisations of a similar kind around the world.”
House of Commons14 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is very good to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. As a member of the shadow Cabinet, I am speaking with the permission of Mr Speaker and the Clerk, because this is a matter of the utmost importance to my constituents. On the petition map, Herefordshire is a dark brown colour, showing that the two Herefordshire constituencies have the highest proportion of constituents who have signed the petition—and mine has the highest of all. That is because so many of my constituents—1,159—are veterans of special forces and other regiments, and I speak on their behalf. These are men—many of them now in their 70s—who have had their lives blighted.”
House of Commons14 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Secretary of State described the situation in law as illegal, but he never pressed the question of the appeal to the Supreme Court, which would have decided the question of whether it was in fact illegal. Was that decision taken on the basis of law, and if so, what were the grounds for it?”
House of Commons14 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“How mortified the Prime Minister must be to be wrenched back almost weekly from the perfumed chanceries of Europe to the grimmer realities of domestic politics. We need not dwell on the pieties and pomposities of Labour’s pronouncements about stability and trust before the July 2024 election. These are the facts, they speak for themselves, and they say only this: must do better—a lot better.”
House of Commons10 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The normally sympathetic New York Times commented that Britain’s Prime Minister is “fading away before our eyes”. Even supportive British newspapers have not been able to disguise their dismay. The Financial Times has bewailed Labour’s “drift”, and The Guardian its “lack of vision”—not my words, but those of some of the most respected newspapers in the world. Finally, what do the poor, suffering public make of all this? We know what a laser focus those in 10 Downing Street keep on the polls, and it will not have escaped their notice that the Prime Minister’s approval rating is now at -35. No Government in recent times have ever lost public support after an election faster than this one.”
House of Commons10 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is two full percentage points higher than Germany and higher even than Greece and Italy. I am afraid to say that the Government have stored up more pain to come. The junior doctors have now voted in favour of further strikes through the autumn and into the new year. They had a 22% increase last year, the House will recall, and they are now looking to their Labour brothers and sisters for a scarcely believable further 29%. That is before we include their pensions. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has, as the wildly overrated Aneurin Bevan said in 1948, “stuffed their mouths with gold”, and they are already coming back for more. What has the media reaction been to all this? Internationally, The Economist described the Prime Minister’s first year as “wasted”. Time called it “a catalogue of errors”.”
House of Commons10 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Labour promised to meet NHS waiting list targets for 92% of patients, but the current figure stands at 59.8%—just one percentage point better than a year ago. Labour vowed to smash the boats and the boat gangs, yet small boat migrant numbers are up by almost 50% compared with this time last year. Perhaps we can forget the pledges. How, then, is the UK economy actually doing? Well, we know that the Office for Budget Responsibility has cut its growth forecast to just 1%, inflation is higher than a year ago and unemployment stands at its highest for four years. So diminished is the Government’s standing in international markets that the Institute for Fiscal Studies recently pointed out that the UK now faces higher borrowing costs than almost all comparable countries.”
House of Commons10 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To that extent, it is 1225 and not 1215 that should be recognised as the birth date of Magna Carta. [ Interruption. ] I am pleased to hear that wide array of support from the House—thank you. I thought it was an important point to put on the record. For the Government, of course, the past week marks an anniversary of a somewhat less glorious and happy kind: their first full year in office. As a House, it falls to us to ask how the Government have done. It would be right to focus in the first place on their shockingly negligent and abusive treatment of our Northern Ireland veterans, but that is the topic of a Westminster Hall debate next Monday, so let us focus on wider issues. Labour pledged to deliver the highest economic growth in the G7. In reality, UK growth has failed even to beat the G7 average.”
House of Commons10 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am not going to let this moment pass—I am sure no colleague would wish me to—without again reminding everyone present that this week marks the 20th anniversary of the 7/7 bombings. On 7 July 2005, 52 people were killed in four separate attacks and 700 more were injured, many of them grievously. I know that the whole House will want to join me in mourning the victims of these dreadful crimes and in sending all our best wishes to their families and loved ones. While we are on the subject of anniversaries, the House will need no reminding that 2025 is 760 years since Simon de Montfort convened the first representative Parliament. Perhaps even more significantly, this year marks 800 years since the year 1225, when the charter we now know as Magna Carta was agreed as a statute and, indeed, became the first of all our statutes.”
House of Commons10 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“He has shown that he is in office, but not in power. What is the point of this Government? No one knows, not even the Prime Minister.”
House of Commons3 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Little wonder the gilt market exploded during Prime Minister’s questions yesterday. Secondly, the Prime Minister has opened the door to future rebellions. Indeed, he has gone further than that; he has written the playbook for them. Doubtless, he will have a reshuffle sometime soon. Loyal dissenters will be punished, the talented cast out, and Select Committee Chairs bought off, but that will make no difference. There will be others—the Select Committee Chairs have shown that they are a powerful new force in Labour politics. Finally, the Prime Minister has massively damaged his own reputation. He has endlessly harped on about the need for professional competence and moral seriousness, but this has been a year in government that started with a host of undisclosed personal gifts received and has ended with utter political humiliation.”
House of Commons3 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There has been a remarkable complacency about this Government and this past week has shown it up. They regard disagreement as something to be ignored or crushed: they do not answer questions at the Dispatch Box; they obfuscate on written questions; they try to ignore the Opposition; they dismiss the House of Lords; and they spurn their own Back Benchers. Loyal Labour MPs, concerned about disabled people, have been trying to get a hearing on this issue for months, only to be repeatedly rejected, and this has been the result. Three things follow from it. First, there are the immediate consequences. It will be next to impossible now for the Government to achieve meaningful reform of the welfare system. They have shown that they have no ability to make savings. Taxes will go up while the economy continues to stall.”
House of Commons3 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On Tuesday, we saw something that was almost unheard of in the 750 years of our Parliament—a Minister pulling out his chainsaw and disembowelling his own Government’s flagship welfare Bill in mid-air on live television from the Dispatch Box. Really, Mr Speaker, that outstrips my poor powers of description. We need the pen of a Shakespeare or a Thackeray to do it justice; it is the quintessence of cock-up. But, actually, Mr Speaker, this past week has been much worse even than that. Just as Nick Clegg was defined by his U-turn on student fees, so the Prime Minister will be defined by this moment: a new and supposedly reforming Government with an enormous majority have been unable not to cut, but to reduce the rate of increase in public spending on benefits, let alone make any serious actual reforms to protect people.”
House of Commons3 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“After all, they had had U-turns on winter fuel payments and the two-child benefit cap—each, in its own way, a little masterpiece of slow-motion dithering and indecision. But then, the other day, the Government upped their game significantly by executing a comprehensive 180° U-turn on their decision to hold a statutory inquiry into grooming gangs, having repeatedly said that it was not necessary. Brilliantly, the Prime Minister managed to U-turn at the same time on his own speech about the UK being an island of strangers. I naively believed that that was the state of the art—the Government had maxed out on U-turns and nobody could be more bewilderingly incompetent than that. How wrong I was.”
House of Commons3 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am sure the Leader of the House and all Members will want to join me in recognising this year as the 81st anniversary of the announcement by the Government of a national health service, by Sir Henry Willink in 1944. Most of us wishing to celebrate an anniversary would probably have a bit of a party—maybe get a few friends round, order in some pizza and put up decorations. Only the Labour party would seek to celebrate its first year in office with the kind of Charlie Foxtrot multidimensional legislative omnishambles that we have seen in the past few days. Given their three massive reverse ferrets of recent weeks, I must say I had thought that the Government had perfected the art of the U-turn.”
House of Commons3 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Of course, Ministers themselves do not mind—after all, 90% of them are reported to be union members. As far as I can see, the Leader of the House is an exception: she is not a union member, and all credit to her for that.”
House of Commons26 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Whatever else it may have been, NHS England acted as a firebreak on union lobbying, because it operated semi-independently of Ministers. By abolishing it, the Government have now removed one of the few means they had to face down extortionate demands for more pay and more restrictive practices. The same is true with the railways: as each one is nationalised—including South West Railway only last week—so the obstacles to the unions’ demands are progressively being removed. The House will recall the massive pay settlements given to the rail unions last year, with no attempt to negotiate any efficiency gains. It is only a matter of time before those unions come back for more, as the doctors are doing. These are not pay bargains; they are an abject surrender.”
House of Commons26 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Meanwhile, hospital consultants are balloting to see if they will strike as well. Doctors received a 22% increase last year after Labour took office, and now the junior doctors are apparently demanding a further pay increase of 29%. These are eye-watering numbers and, of course, we will all end up paying if the increases are granted, but I am afraid this is exactly what we would expect from a Government who have taxed and splurged the cash since the election. It is hardly surprising that the unions now think they have an open door to extract money from the Treasury, and the Government have actually made the situation even worse through their rolling programme of nationalisation, and by abolishing NHS England.”
House of Commons26 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Is it any wonder that the Prime Minister’s personal reputation has continued to plummet? Only yesterday, The Times of London said: “Not quite a year has passed since his landslide general election victory and already his political stock is trading at junk status, akin to a Zimbabwean dollar or Weimar papiermark.” Mr Speaker, you may recall from your intimate knowledge of German history that the papiermark was a monetary instrument that led to hyper-inflation and political collapse. That is coming from The Times of London. Shall we dig a little bit further into one specific reason why the Prime Minister’s reputation might have fallen so much? Following the record pay settlements of last year, the junior doctors have announced that they are “excited” at the idea of six months of strike action.”
House of Commons26 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Whatever one thinks of the merits of the issue, that is a scandalously bad way to make legislation. What else? Defence Ministers were left out of the loop on the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and were unable to say whether they supported this action by our closest ally. A Government Whip resigned, expressing her deep concerns over the welfare Bill, and the Government have promised to bring the Bill forward next week, as we have just heard—let us see if they do. Talking of U-turns, the Government, having only just U-turned on the winter fuel payment, and again on grooming gangs last week, have prepared themselves for a U-turn on the two-child benefit cap less than a year since they suspended seven Labour MPs for voting against the cap. This is just one week.”
House of Commons26 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am afraid to say that the past week has been another horror show for the Government. This is Armed Forces Week, as the House will know. It is a time to celebrate and champion all those who serve and have served in our armed forces, and nowhere more than in my own county of Herefordshire. We must also note that, far from celebrating the armed forces, this Government deliberately opened the door last year to unfair and vexatious prosecutions of veterans who served decades ago in Northern Ireland, and they have kept that door open. What else? The original Abortion Act was debated for more than a year, but the Government allowed no notice for public debate on the abortion amendment last week, and they gave just two hours of debate in the Chamber on the biggest change in abortion law in nearly 60 years.”
House of Commons26 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Ah, okay. I am very sorry to say that the Leader of the House has corrected me. She is, in fact, a union member and therefore fully complicit in the same problem. The Treasury itself is now the only hold-out against union demands. Little wonder the Chancellor has looked so unhappy and out of sorts—and that was before the Deputy Prime Minister started leaking memos calling for billions of pounds a year in tax increases. The unions know the Government are vulnerable, and they have come back for more. Labour Back Benchers also know that the Government are running scared and, led by their Select Committee Chairs, they are starting to get organised. Can the Leader of the House positively and personally now confirm that the welfare Bill vote will take place next Tuesday?”
House of Commons26 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Our position has always been that these matters should be worked through together, through the usual channels and with other senior bodies of the House in a spirit of consensus. In that spirit, I will not press the amendment in my name to a vote.”
House of Commons16 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will speak to the motion and specifically to the amendment in my name on the Order Paper. As the Leader of the House has said, successive Administrations, in collaboration with the House, have supported across this Chamber the development of the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme. It was initiated in 2017 under the then Conservative Government, and it has always been developed on a collaborative and cross-party basis. In that context, it is surprising, disappointing and a pity that the Government should table a motion on the business of the House when it has not been agreed in that collaborative and cross-party way. Indeed, they are whipping their own Members; that is highly unusual for a motion on the business of the House.”
House of Commons16 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There can be no proper suggestion of a delay in the implementation of decisions made by the assurance board, and therefore no reason—at least in my judgment and that of my colleagues—why this should not be a matter for the House to decide.”
House of Commons16 June 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗