Fracking Ban
Debate between Caroline Nokes and Richard Tice(1Â week, 4Â days ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. The hon. Lady did point out the conventions and courtesies of the House. She has to ask the hon. Member if he will give way. It might be helpful for everybody if I add that interventions should be through the Chair. Please do not face the back of the Chamber. It makes it incredibly hard for the microphones to pick up comments and, indeed, it is quite discourteous to the Chair to turn your back on me.
Richard Tice
I am most grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The hon. Lady asks a fair question as to the evidence. The evidence is from the experts I have just cited, who say that even if the price of gas goes to zero, our energy bills are going up and up. The next bit of evidence—
Point of Order: Rectification Procedure
Debate between Caroline Nokes and Richard Tice(1Â week, 5Â days ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call Richard Tice on a point of order in connection with the code of conduct to rectify a failure to declare.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would like to apologise to the House for my failure to declare an interest when participating in a Westminster Hall debate on 22 June 2026, on the topic of pro-Israel influence on UK politics and democracy. When speaking in the debate, I failed to declare the relevant interest, which was that I had been on a visit to Israel between 26 and 30 September 2025, funded by Reform Friends of Israel. Although the trip is properly recorded in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I should have declared it during the speech. That was a breach of the rules and I apologise to this good House.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Member for his point of order. There will be no further points of order on that issue.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Caroline Nokes and Richard Tice(1Â year, 7Â months ago)
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Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
Energy suppliers are now forecasting that the energy price cap will go up in April by another 5%, making for some 16% since last summer. Will the Secretary of State tell the House when bills will come down—or will net stupid zero mean that they will only ever go up?
VAT: Independent Schools
Debate between Caroline Nokes and Richard Tice(1Â year, 11Â months ago)
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Richard Tice
No, we are short of time.
As a former governor of an independent school, I know that that approach would have been welcomed by the independent sector. Instead, the choice that the Government have made will do the opposite of what they intend. It is not going to raise anything like the funding they think it will: almost 100,000 children will leave the independent sector, many of whom have special educational needs, so it will earn almost nothing.
I spoke earlier about the unintended consequences of this policy. A parent in my constituency has written to me. She has two children with special educational needs at private school, and she cannot afford the VAT, so they are going to go into the state system. The nearest place is an hour away, so now the local authority is going to pick up the cost of the taxi service of over £20,000 per child. Those are the unintended real-world consequences of this choice by this Government. Most shamefully of all, because there is such a lack of capacity in so many areas and so many local authorities, that choice is going to result in bigger class sizes. That means more pressure on hard-pressed teachers in the state system, at a time when we are trying to ease that pressure. This choice is going to damage the education of many hundreds of thousands of children—exactly the opposite of what is intended.
I say to the Minister and his Government that they could choose differently. They could pause this policy, work with the independent sector and gain much more universal support. Instead, we have legal challenges going ahead. As I finish, I ask the Minister to answer this simple question: if those legal challenges end up in the European Court of Human Rights and it rules that the policy is unlawful, will his Government comply with that ruling?