Speaker's Statement

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

On 30 April 2018, Mr Speaker said:

“It sounds as though mealtimes chez Brokenshire were enormous fun.”—[Official Report, 30 April 2018; Vol. 640, c. 6.]

That was when James said that he used to discuss local government with his father when his father was the chief executive in the borough that I then served. In that debate, James used seven words to describe his father, saying that he had a sense of

“focus and dedication as a public servant.”—[Official Report, 30 April 2018; Vol. 640, c. 10.]

James learned that lesson. He also said that private leaseholders should not have the costs of fire remediation passed on to them. In order to fulfil his dedication as Housing Minister, I invite the Chancellor and the Prime Minister to discuss how that can be fulfilled, because at the moment those costs are being passed on to those leaseholders.

Tributes to Sir David Amess

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford).

In 2010, David Amess made a speech in which he said it was extraordinary to listen to the then acting leader of the Labour party, now the Mother of the House. He said that she made a splendid speech, and that one of the jokes was fantastic and he was going to use it in the future.

David’s all-party group on fire safety and rescue worked with the all-party group on leasehold and commonhold reform—we had a number of meetings over the year. Alongside city status for Southend, may I put it to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that they could make his legacy the finding, fixing and funding of the problems on defective leasehold flats, while chasing those responsible and getting them to pay up? I think he would wish for that.

If we look around this Chamber, we can see the shields of those who have died—some in active service in the last world war. Ronald Cartland was the first. Other Members went forward knowing the risks. So did Police Constable Keith Palmer.

Jo Cox and her family are in our hearts, as we have been told, and we remember Andrew Pennington, the Liberal MP’s caseworker who also died in a constituency attack. A few of us were here when Airey Neave’s car was blown up. Robert Bradford and I were together in the Westminster Wobblers, the House of Commons’ football team. Tony Berry was my Whip, and Ian Gow and I canvassed together in Ulster. Gow’s death, I believe, was timed to make us forget the murder of the Sister of Mercy, Catherine Dunne, a few days earlier in July 1990.

In David’s first speech in January 1984, he said:

“Charity has been described as that amiable quality that moves us to condone in others the sins and vices to which we ourselves are addicted.”

When he made that first speech in the Commons, he was able to say that there with him were five people who had previously represented his own constituency, which must be some kind of a parliamentary record.

David was followed by the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), who cheerfully said:

“At the risk of inciting dissent from those behind me, I congratulate the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) on his maiden speech. I do not agree with what he said, but it was no worse than the speech of the Minister.”—[Official Report, 17 January 1984; Vol. 71, c. 219-20.]

That was the line that Douglas Jay used when he congratulated me in 1975, so the response must be in the Labour Whips’ booklet.

The right hon. Member went on to wish David well in the time that he had in Parliament. That time is well described by Trevor Phillips in The Times today. His leading words talked of

“the simplicity of a man who served.”

He said:

“He knew his constituents well and showed them what the Tory party could be.”

Mr Speaker, can we thank you and the party leaders for what you have said over the past three days? May I also add John Bercow who, in an interview I heard, represented the feeling of those who have served with David in this House?

Many of these attacks are done for calculated publicity and public reaction. We should try to make both act against the wishes of perpetrators. The only guarantee is that, when there is a gap, it will be filled. MPs are in the middle of a pack of people at some risk, including ministers of religion, mental health workers, public transport staff, lone shopkeepers, women police officers, journalists, fair employment builders in Northern Ireland and the judiciary, and especially women and girls going home and at home.

We should defend people in every walk of life, in politics and universities—here I mention mildly the philosopher Professor Kathleen Stock in my county of Sussex. St Margaret’s Church, Parliament Square, where I serve as parliamentary warden, is where we will gather later today and for the Roman Catholic service on Wednesday.

We have learned to stand with the Irish and the Northern Irish against violence. We stand with Muslims against Islamophobia, with Jews against anti-Semitism and with all the targets of fascists and white supremacists. We do have to be vigilant, but we also have to continue to be diligent in contact with constituents. Of course, we must review security risks, including the insecure location of the national holocaust memorial presently proposed in Victoria Tower Gardens.

At the opening of the Imperial War Museum’s holocaust galleries last week, I collected posters. David might wish us to remember their words, as if directed to us and to our constituents.

“Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your might.”

Another, which brings his face to my mind, says:

“Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution will bring us victory.”

I end with the then Prime Minister’s first speech to the House of Commons:

“Let us go forward together.”—[Official Report, 13 May 1940; Vol. 360, c. 1502.]

Afghanistan

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

While the best still apply to join our Royal Navy, the Army, the Royal Marines and the Royal Air Force, we can have hope for the future. We weep for the losses; we acknowledge mistakes; we will remember them. When I, like other MPs, have visited our armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Falklands and the former Yugoslavia, I was with ordinary people, working together to achieve remarkable results, of significance to us and often of lifesaving importance to others.

Those who were here for the Saturday debate on the Falklands found, I think, a rather different style of debate, when people were united on what we ought to try to achieve. As Enoch Powell said, the reason to intervene in the Falklands was not that we were guaranteed to succeed, but that the mission was capable of success. That would not have been the case if we were trying to resist, say, China taking Hong Kong.

Our experience in Afghanistan in the 19th century, and in the 20 years’ conflict that has now come to an end, will make people think about whether what was aimed for in Afghanistan after the initial targets were achieved was going to have an end that could be happy or content. I do not think it was an example of trying to resist nationalism, because the forces within Afghanistan are multifarious and have their histories, which I will not go into now.

The second debate, which I have read up on a number of times during my parliamentary service, was the Norway debate, where again there were some speeches of most remarkable intelligence and experience, and others that, frankly, I think people should have been slightly ashamed of. We have to learn that what this Parliament can do is not to be Government but to try to question Government, support Government where appropriate, and get them to change at times.

On the question whether there should be an inquiry, it would be interesting to hear the views of the Chairmen of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committees, either today or some other time, because I think that would be useful.

I do not want to spend too much time, because I want to make up some of the time that was used by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who when he said he was concentrating seems to have lost his concentration once or twice, and when he said he was being wound up, some of us thought ought to have been wound down. [Laughter.]

The key issues are obvious: what is happening now, what happens now and then what lessons can be learned. On what is happening now, the reports given by Ministers both in this House and to Members of Parliament across the Chamber are important and valuable; please can those continue? What can happen will be determined in large part by those who are presently in command in Afghanistan—whether they control Afghanistan is a separate issue—but people may look back and say that the speed of transition, in the end, might have been better than a prolonged start to a civil war. But that is in the future; we cannot judge that and I will not try to do that.

I end by saying this. If we decide that we are not going to get involved in world affairs, the world will be worse. If we decide that we are going to have the capability to work with others when we can, and occasionally on our own, that is fine. But as a Parliament, we ought to be aware that we probably made a mistake in backing Government over one of the Iraq wars. In my view we certainly made a mistake in not backing Government over Syria. If we look at the number of people who have died in Syria and the number of refugees around the world and make the comparison with Afghanistan, I think we probably should be ashamed of our vote over Syria.

I stop now, as an example to others.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

If we had followed the hon. Gentleman’s precepts—he campaigned vehemently to stay in the European Union—we would not have achieved the fastest vaccine roll-out of any European country or vaccinated a higher proportion than any European population. That is the reality. As for his criticism of the road map, I respectfully point out to the hon. Gentleman that the month is July, not January.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

It should be obvious that the Cabinet is as inclusive as the English football team, and I think that some of these criticisms are misplaced. Mr Speaker, I welcome your words at the beginning of Tuesday’s debate and the Prime Minister’s first paragraph on the Treasury minute from Monday. Can we agree that a vote in this House does not amend an Act of Parliament passed by both Houses? Are we expecting a similar debate in another place? Can I suggest to the Prime Minister that, instead of leaping from 0.5% to 0.7% at some stage in the future, we step towards it, because a 40% increase in one year would be ludicrous? Perhaps the Chancellor could consider going to 0.55%, 0.6%, 0.65% and then 0.7%.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for his opening point. On official development assistance, of course I can give him the reassurance that we will continue to follow the law, and he will have heard clearly what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor had to say from this Dispatch Box and what I have said. We want to return to 0.7% as fast as we can, and when fiscal conditions allow.

Debate on the Address

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Tuesday 11th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

On Advent Sunday 1978, I asked Archbishop Óscar Romero what he thought about the prospect of being killed standing up for the victims of human rights atrocities. With a half-smile, he said: “We can agree that worse things have happened to better people than me.” His death date, 24 March, is now International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims.

I think today we ought to recognise the 10 people who were killed between 9 and 11 August 1971 at Ballymurphy. They were Father Hugh Mullan, Frank Quinn, Noel Phillips, Joseph Murphy, Joan Connolly, Daniel Teggart, Eddie Doherty, Joseph Corr, John Laverty and John McKerr. The inquest was held after the Attorney General in 2011 said that the fresh evidence justified it. The coroner’s inquest started about three years ago and has now reported, and I hope that at some stage this House will have the opportunity to consider what lessons can be learned and how to treat the various other inquiries going on regarding those who died at the hands of all sorts of people, whether authorities or the paramilitaries —the disloyalists or the IRA.

Turning to the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who spoke for the SNP, my job is to try to make him smile, but with him wearing a mask, I cannot be sure whether I will succeed. He has taken one of my lines by saying himself that the separation parties got 48% of the vote. Some 51% or 52% said that they wanted the Union to continue, and it is worth remembering that in the 2017 general election, the SNP got a smaller share of the vote in Scotland than the Conservatives got in the whole of the United Kingdom.

[Ian Blackford]

rose—

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I give way to the right hon. Gentleman. It is nice to see that the smile is there.

[Ian Blackford]

I am grateful. I am very fond of the Father of the House, as he well knows, but for the purposes of being accurate, the SNP achieved 48% under first past the post. In the list votes, independence-supporting parties actually had a very small majority.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

It shows that we can go on having these exchanges. Sometimes I will speak before the right hon. Gentleman, sometimes afterwards. He has now done both, so I congratulate him on that.

I turn to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and congratulate him on the general success of the elections on Thursday. In trying to deliver the sorts of things that people want, we should recognise that there is good on all sides, and where the parties can overlap for progress it is best. If there is a contest of ideas, let the people decide.

In my constituency, the Labour party did better than some people expected. It is our job to try to find out what we can do to match it, although we took seats from other people, as well as Labour taking some seats from us. It is the kind of contest where if the Liberals are on the up in my area, Labour is down, and if Labour is on the up, the Liberals are down. Conservatives have control and responsibility for most of the decisions made for the quiet, undramatic provision of local services, which is what most of the local elections were about. They were not national elections. They were across the country, but they were about providing services to local people.

In this Queen’s Speech, there are many points to welcome. If I may say to the Prime Minister, one thing is not in the Queen’s Speech, and I am glad it is not there. When the Chancellor had to come to the House and announce he was cutting the official overseas aid budget, he said there would be legislation. I am glad that has changed. One of the points of leadership is being prepared to change one’s mind.

Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister lead his Government in re-establishing that target of 0.7% on aid and getting there as soon as possible? We know that the coronavirus epidemic has hurt us. It has hurt other parts of the world and hit the poorer people much, much harder, and our job is to try to help them to raise their standards.

Turning to building safety, there was a major fire at the end of last week. Three storeys caught fire. The builders who two years ago should have taken the dangerous Grenfell-style cladding off the building—that work actually started two weeks ago—said that the affected cladding did not catch fire. I think that was by chance, not design. The only people who have got no absolute right to sue the builders, the regulators and the component suppliers are the residential leaseholders themselves.

The only people who are being asked to pay the extra £10 billion—that is on top of the £5 billion that the Government have rightly started as their contribution towards the costs—are the leaseholders. They are left carrying £10 billion, with no right to sue those who are responsible. Will the Prime Minister kindly have a summit on fire safety with the affected groups—the cladding groups, the National Leasehold Campaign, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and the officers of the all-party group on leasehold and commonhold reform—and then put to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, together with the Chancellor, this simple point: provide all the money that is needed, whether the building is above or below 18 metres, and then find out who can sue those who are actually responsible?

What the Government are doing with levy and taxes is one thing, but that £10 billion outstanding makes people’s lives impossible. They have homes that are not safe, that are not saleable, that cannot be funded and that they cannot afford. If we want to know the effectiveness of the waking watch, we should remember that for a fire in daylight it was not effective. The Government have to step in, although not necessarily to say that the taxpayer will pay the money in the end—it can come from those who were responsible. It is partly a public responsibility on regulation, but it is mostly the responsibility of those who designed, built and went on selling components that were known not to be safe, or were not known to be safe.

I say to media people, “Do appoint a housing editor,” because when housing stories come up, it is too bad when each individual producer or reporter has to learn from scratch what is happening. This is as important an issue as health, so it needs an approach that is consistent, effective and fast, and that works.

I turn to some small issues. One is the VAT treatment of yachts that are being brought back to this country—it may be a small point, but I think that the Treasury or VAT people should look at it. If VAT is paid on a yacht that is then kept abroad for more than three years, it has to be paid again when the yacht is brought back. That will not produce any revenue, because no one will bring their boats back.

All our important nautical brokerage in this country depends on those yachts being here, so we should either bring in a marine passport or lower the rates that are above 5%. We should have talks with the Royal Yachting Association and get on with finding a solution, not just say, “It is the way the thing has to be.” It is not the way the thing has to be; it is not right, and it will not work. I confess an interest, but my boat is an open canoe, not a boat that is affected by the 5% rate or the 20% suggestion.

I know that many hon. Members want to speak, but I turn briefly to the importance of the Government’s approach to levelling up. More and more young families and households are coming to the south coast and living there as happily as those in more mature households, who may be of retirement age but are not inactive. All of them need the kinds of things that I think are now being provided with the support of all parties.

Education is now much better than it was. The prospects of people getting training and apprenticeships and moving on to further and higher education are good; I pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), who has been doing the media round today and putting forward the Government’s approach.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Is this Wales again?

[Chris Bryant]

No; I am sure that the hon. Gentleman was not going to ban Wales from the conversation, but this is on levelling up. I will ask the question that I was going to try to ask the Prime Minister, which is about acquired brain injury.

Children in the poorest houses are four times more likely to suffer a traumatic brain injury before the age of five years. The significant effects that that will have for the rest of their lives—and the problems with concussion in sport, which leads to so many sportspeople in this country suffering early onset dementia—surely mean that it is about time we had proper legislation to make sure that everybody gets a decent chance when they have had a brain injury.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I think that the House will approve that approach.

If I may, I will conclude with a sensitive issue; I say this having put it on record that in my extended family and connections, over 100 died in the holocaust. At some stage, a decision will be made by the Government on the inspector’s recommendations—the inspector was not allowed to make a conclusion—on the proposed holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens. The decision was supposed to be made by the Minister of State, because the Secretary of State is the applicant. I ask the Prime Minister to ask advice on whether the September 2015 specifications for the proposed memorial and learning centre are met in any way by the present proposal put forward by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. They are not.

Secondly, will the Prime Minister ask for a briefing on the area of central London that was then thought to be acceptable, which ran from the west of Regent’s Park across to Spitalfields and down to the Imperial War Museum? Will he then consider having a meeting with Baroness Deech, with the architect Barbara Weiss, and with the people who are proposing the present monument, which has a design very similar to one that was not accepted as the Canadian national memorial? Will they see whether it is possible to stop this system of trying to push something through when it is not justified; get a proper memorial and a proper learning centre, probably using the one at the Imperial War Museum; and make sure that we can be proud of what we do?

For the sake of those who died in the holocaust and in other genocides, I say in public to the Prime Minister what I have said to as many people as I can in private: what is being put forward now is the wrong proposal in the wrong place in the wrong style. I ask everyone to reconsider it, starting with the specifications made in September 2015.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The honest truth—I cannot remember when I last spoke to Dave, but if the hon. Lady wants to know whether I have had any contact with him about any of the matters that have been in the press, the answer is no.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Those who helped to develop, test, approve and manufacture the vaccines deserve our praise. Will my right hon. Friend also recognise that the successful roll-out of the vaccination programme has been based on the dedication of the NHS staff and the myriad volunteers who have made the process so easy for so many people?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is completely right. This has been a colossal team effort. It has been led by the NHS, with GPs very often doing the lion’s share of the work, but they have been supported by the Army, by local council officials, who have also been absolutely magnificent, and, as colleagues have said, by volunteers as well.

His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Prince Philip would have laughed at the Leader of the Opposition’s jest about finding a compass and comparing that with politics. The Leader of the Opposition, following the Prime Minister’s excellent speech, also spoke about the titles that the Duke of Edinburgh held. One was “the Maharaja of Not Very Much”. That is a translation of a title given to him by Sir Reggie Bennett MP when, at the Thursday Club, Prince Philip volunteered to join the Imperial Poona Yacht Club, to which I will return later.

There have been fair and full tributes in many of our papers. I pay tribute to the journalists, who, from a standing start have managed to go on providing interesting reading. I mention, not as the best but as some of the most recent examples, articles by Alice Thomson and Libby Purves in The Times today.

For those who think that only the House of Commons is having such a sitting, I point out that the House of Lords has had some really good speeches including those by, to mention just a few, Lord Boyce, Lord Alderdice, Lord Janvrin and Lord Dholakia. I hope that what we say here will be of interest to those who pay attention to proceedings in Parliament.

In your House, Mr Speaker, Prince Charles observed to George Thomas, later Lord Tonypandy, that if the Duke of Edinburgh or he never said anything interesting, they were accused of being dull, and if they were not dull, they were accused of being controversial. Each was willing to lead on issues that were not already fashionable or dominant among popular concerns. In 1952, on the death of his father-in-law, Prince Philip became patron of the Industrial Society, which followed on from the Duke of York camps. That then developed No. 3 Carlton House Terrace, for a time called Peter Ranch House, which is now known as Prince Philip House and is the headquarters of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In developing the fellowship of engineers and later the Royal Academy, Prince Philip gave attention and paid tribute to the successful endeavours of many people who should be considered as important as those who studied economics, politics or the classics.

Prince Philip was guest of honour at the Taxi Charity’s 1979 visit to Worthing, and, with Her Majesty the Queen, at Durrington High School in 1999, he met all kinds of members of the community. It is the sort of engagement that matters a lot in each of our constituencies. We remember that they did that in all constituencies, all over the country.

I referred to Reggie Bennett. He is quoted as saying that the Imperial Poona Yacht Club had 25 really excellent sailing members and that Prince Philip was an honorary member, which was a back-handed compliment to one of the best sailors around. In the foreword to the book of the club’s history—I will conclude with this, as it is quite a long quotation—Prince Philip wrote that

“it is true that all the members are serious yachtsmen in the sense that they are rather good at it, but what is equally important is that they all share a keen appreciation of the value of anti-seriousness. If you can bring yourself to read this book from cover to cover, you will be in a position to judge for yourself whether or not life can be significantly improved by not taking it too seriously all the time.”

Integrated Review

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, we have one of the toughest arms export regimes in the world under the consolidated guidance. Anybody listening to the right hon. and learned Gentleman would not realise that we are the second biggest international donor of aid in the G7.

It is absolutely preposterous to hear the Labour leader calling for more investment in our armed forces when this is the biggest investment in our armed forces since the cold war—£24 billion—and when it was not so long ago that he was campaigning very hard, without dissent, to install a leader of the Labour party as Prime Minister who wanted to withdraw from NATO and disband our armed forces. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) heckles me from the shadow Front Bench, but it is ridiculous for the right hon. and learned Gentleman to talk about our nuclear defences when the reality is that Labour is all over the place. The last time the House voted on protecting our nuclear defences, the shadow Foreign Secretary voted against it, and so did the current Labour deputy leader. They want to talk about standing up for our armed forces. Just in the last year, the Labour party has been given the opportunity to back our armed services, our armed forces, our troops and our soldiers in the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill. They had the chance to stand up for veterans. They voted against it on a three-line Whip. Those are the instincts of the Labour party—weak on supporting our troops, weak on backing Britain when it matters, and weak on defence.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has pointed out that the present Labour leadership is more on the side of Ernest Bevin, who was against fascism and against the left wing both at home and abroad, and that is a sign of some kind of unity.

The Prime Minister did not mention development much in his statement, and I ask him to meet us to have a discussion on it. The question of meeting the 0.7%—70p in every £100 of our income—has been agreed; the Government said that that would be maintained. They now say that there will be a gap and it will be restored. We want that gap to be evaporated—to go away and not to happen. The aid goes down with our income; it should go up with our income, and we should meet the commitment we made in successive manifestos. I leave it to the Prime Minister to say when those who are concerned for aid for Yemen, the Voluntary Service Overseas and others will get an answer as to whether they will be cut as well. I want to stand beside the Prime Minister as well as behind him, and we want to do what he wrote in our 2019 manifesto and proudly meet that commitment.

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his points. People listening to this debate might not grasp that this country is actually the biggest European donor to Yemen; we have given £1 billion over the past six years and £87 million this year. I do not think people grasp that we are giving £10 billion in international aid. We can be very proud of what we are doing. Of course, we will return to the 0.7% target when fiscal circumstances allow.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

It is tempting to say that I will not waste time on the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), but I think I will. He excited us all by the way in which he put down his beaker of water; we were not sure whether it was going to survive his speech, as he got over-excited. We enjoyed what he read, but he did not have time to look at the Office for Budget Responsibility, whose headline reads:

“Budget extends rescue measures, stokes economic recovery, and begins fiscal repair job”.

It continues:

“The economy is set to rebound thanks to rapid vaccine rollout, getting back to its pre-pandemic peak by the middle of next year. Extending rescue measures takes support for households, businesses, and public services to £344 billion. Generous tax incentives for business investment stoke the recovery over the next two years. Then medium-term tax rises and cuts to spending plans all but balance day-to-day spending with revenues and see underlying debt fall relative to national income. But risks remain from the virus, legacy costs for public services, and future interest rates.”

I think that balances what was said by the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, the leader of the SNP in this House.

I have not had time to read all the Budget documents, but I think I am right in saying that there is no mention of leasehold, commonhold, cladding, cladding loans or ways of coping with the excess property insurance premiums being faced by leaseholders. There has been no attention yet to the Association of Residential Managing Agents, who asked for a scheme to cover the excess costs. With premiums going up by 400% to 600%, action is needed.

May I just interrupt myself to take an opportunity to pay tribute to Canon Jane Sinclair, the first woman rector of St Margaret’s in Parliament Square, who died in January? She was greatly loved in this House. She worked to re-establish the parliamentary links with the Speaker’s Chaplain, and had a reputation for liveliness, humour and effectiveness. I understand that she was once nominated to be the Rotherham businesswoman of the year. We miss her, and send our sympathy to her partner, Gillian Cooper.

Returning to the Budget, I am glad that the Chair of the Treasury Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), spoke about the dangers of inflation. The Chancellor will be aware of this. There are two groups who matter a great deal when considering this, besides the question of who can get jobs.

By the way, it would have been kind if the SNP and the Leader of the Opposition had welcomed the news from the Chancellor that the number of people who were out of work did not rise to the levels predicted at the height of the pandemic. This is in part a reflection of Government measures, but in large part because of the way that people buckled down and got on with life as much as they could, and because of the Government’s courage in keeping things such as the construction industry open, which made a great deal of difference to the supply side as well.

Mortgage holders are one group affected by inflation, and the second are the elderly, many of whom are on fixed incomes. Although their incomes during the pandemic may have kept up, in real terms they will drop if inflation returns, so I hope that we do not get to the 2% inflation that is part of the Government’s instructions to the Bank of England.

Let me turn to leaseholders. I believe that, under the coronavirus powers, the Government should put a temporary stop to forfeiture of residential leaseholds. During that time, they ought to make sure that any substitute arrangements do not let the landlord—or freeholder, as it may be—take the whole of the equity in a forfeited lease.

That is scandalous. It is going back to William I in the worst possible feudal way. If a home or a leasehold has to be repossessed, any excess equity should and must in justice go to the person who is losing their home. I hope that officials will take note of that, discuss it among the Government and take action.

As the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said, we all recognise that the Government have done more to bring some of the self-employed into the support schemes, but it is not enough. I do not want to use all my time reading out all the points made on the website of ExcludedUK, but I do recommend that website to people.

In the same way, in the hospitality sector, I commend the website of CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, which asked for a number of things that the Chancellor has given in whole or in part, and we are grateful to him for that.

I know that motorists will be grateful for the fact that, with the cost of petrol and diesel going up, the Chancellor is not adding to that with extra taxation at the moment. As someone who drinks—I try not to do it when I am driving—my prediction is that the revenues from spirits, wine and beer are likely to go up. I believe that freezing duty rates is therefore a better way to get in extra revenue.

We ought to pay attention to what the tax rate is as well as what the tax take is. This is one of the curiosities of our national economic discussion. My former supervisor Professor Sir James Mirrlees—I was his worst pupil—did a calculation of what he thought the appropriate tax rate was: when he was young, he thought it was around 27%; by the time he got older, he had become a bit more socialist and thought it was around 33%. We are now running at 38%. Both the level of taxation and the rate of taxation deserve better public discussion, and I hope that the Chancellor can encourage forums for doing that.

One of my constituents suggested that the Chancellor should consider having separate tax codes for different key workers, as a way of recognising their contribution. I said, “You will always have a boundary problem, but then you always have a boundary problem, whatever you do in life.”

On one particular matter, my constituents have been my eyes and ears. A couple who ran a hospitality business on a river had to pay high fees to the Environment Agency for the ability to run their business. They do not pay business rates, but the Environment Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have not yet managed to discover who can say that they can have a rebate on the licence fees because they have not been able to use their business for most of the past 12 months. Just because someone does not have a shop front, that does not mean that there are not costs that could be waived by the Government or by Government agencies.

I know that many people want to speak in this debate, so I shall finish by making the point that if we can recognise the contributions that people are making in their enterprises, we are more likely to have a hospitality sector in particular in which landladies and landlords, who have put their hearts into their businesses and broken their hearts by throwing away stocks and gallons of beer twice in the past 12 months, will be able to come back into operation. I ask all my constituents not to have a drink on me but to go out and have a drink, whether alcoholic or not, with their friends when they can and put this country back on its feet in respect of our social lives as well as our business lives.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The House will know that the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) is a more cheerful person than his speech suggested. He gave us a 25-minute lesson in humility, for which we are grateful, and talked about ignoring popular votes. In the 2019 election, the SNP received 1,200,000 votes, and in 2014 the vote against independence was 2 million. That is a gap of 800,000—two thirds of the vote that the right hon. Gentleman leads in this House. He should be cautious both in predicting the future and in interpreting the past.

As Father of the House, I ought to recognise that the only significant speech ever made by a Father of the House was in the Narvik-Norway debate in May 1940, when in about his 11th year as Father of the House, David Lloyd George probably gave people the confidence to withhold their votes from the Government. I do not argue that today. We need to say, as many have said—except for the leader of the SNP—that this debate and vote is about whether we go for this deal or for no deal. In that, I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. I give my vote, although in the referendum I argued that, on balance, it was better to stay in. We lost and, unlike the SNP, one has to accept the result of a referendum.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

No, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.

When my father, who survived serious personal injury during the war, was involved in the first negotiations about joining the European Union, I asked him for his views on the economic impact. He said that, on balance, it did not make much difference. We joined in 1973— two years before I was elected to the House of Commons—but it did not make a big difference to our economy until after 1979, when the change in Britain resulted in us going from being the sick man of Europe to being people who were looked on with respect, with many asking, “How did you do it?” The answer was in part by chance and in part by freedom and a cautious approach to a free market economy, led by Margaret Thatcher, who also led the significant debates to stay in the European Union in 1975. That was one of the best speeches she ever made and it can be read via the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.

I was nominated, or vouched for, as a candidate by Sir Robin Turton, a leading anti-marketeer. Margaret Thatcher and I—and, I argue, the country—won the June 1975 by-election after Neil Martin, a leading campaigner against staying in the European Common Market, asked Conservatives to vote for me, even though he and I disagreed, in the same way that Sir Robin Turton and I disagreed when he supported me.

We are often taken down paths we do not expect—the Prime Minister can probably vouch for that himself. I believe that we have to make a success of our present situation, and we have to make sure, as one of my friends kindly said, that we open a new chapter in a vibrant relationship with our continental cousins. We can, some of us, look with affection on the past, with admiration at what has been achieved in this past year, and with confidence to the future.

We ought to stop using this as an argument for Scottish independence. We ought to accept that the Labour party has, in many of its proud traditions, put the national interest before party interest. I say to the Prime Minister, as I said to him in reasonable privacy one day, that we want a leader we can trust and a cause that is just, so will he please lead us in the right direction in future?