Economy, Welfare and Public Services

Debate between Christopher Chope and Nick Timothy

Monday 22nd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

I congratulate the other new Members on their excellent maiden speeches, in particular the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash), where I know his predecessor, Lord Mandelson, recommends the mushy peas.

It is an honour to be called to speak for the first time. I pay tribute to the last MP for West Suffolk, Matt Hancock, who oversaw the delivery of the covid vaccines, a vital achievement for our country. Less well known is that Matt once rode in, and won, the Blue Square Cavalry Charge horserace in Newmarket, a feat that required him not only to be propelled forward by a thoroughbred horse at 30 miles per hour, but to train for three months and lose 2 stone. For all these reasons, not least the dubiousness of the idea that I have 2 stone to lose, I can assure the House that I will not be stepping into my predecessor’s stirrups.

Newmarket is the best-known town in my constituency. It is most famous for horseracing, an international success story that brings thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of pounds to the local economy every year. From Charles I to Charles III, racing gives West Suffolk its long connection to royalty, but unfortunately ours is not an unblemished record, for Newmarket was once the home of Oliver Cromwell’s new model army. Old Ironsides championed free expression yet persecuted his enemies. He attacked aristocratic privilege and patronage, but handed power to his cronies. Censorious, joyless and puritanical—it is like he wrote the Labour manifesto.

Fortunately, we have left those days of self-denial behind, and from the Star in Lidgate to the Queen’s Head in Hawkedon, the Affleck Arms in Dalham to the White Horse in Withersfield, and many others, we have some of the best pubs in Britain. And we have plenty more besides: beautiful villages, vibrant towns and farms that feed the country; Anglo-Saxon settlements and ancient churches; rolling countryside and big Suffolk skies; dense forest and the world-famous gallops; businesses doing everything from seed drills to particle engineering; charities such as Reach in Haverhill and the day centres in Brandon and Newmarket; Highpoint prison near Stradishall; the airbases at Lakenheath and Mildenhall; and public servants working for their communities every day.

I look forward to championing them all and addressing our challenges too, including dealing with flooding in Clare, Cavendish and elsewhere, and fighting the appalling decision to approve the Sunnica solar and battery farm, due to be built on high-quality agricultural land. In Brandon, lorry traffic is a problem. We need the Ely and Haughley junctions sorted to get freight on to the railways. In Mildenhall, where 1,300 new homes are coming, we need a relief road. We are not against new house building in West Suffolk—we have had 3,000 new homes built in the last five years—but we need attractive family homes in the right places. We need services and infrastructure to keep pace. We need to get tougher with the developers and reform the construction market. We need to drastically cut immigration, not just for the economic and cultural reasons that should by now be obvious, but to limit new demand for housing.

Our largest town, Haverhill, has doubled in size in only 30 years, to almost 30,000 residents. It has an incredible community spirit, but the town centre is struggling. We need a new start for our high streets, and I will fight for a railway linking Haverhill to Cambridge. The development of Cambridge looms large for us, but I want us to embrace the opportunities, not just fear the risks. If we get it right, we have the chance to get better infrastructure, new investment and more jobs. That is why I wanted to speak in today’s debate.

From potholes to public sector pay, the thread that runs through all our challenges is an inconvenient truth. While it is plainly incorrect to claim that the new Government have the worst economic inheritance since the war—[Interruption.] It is incorrect, but we are less prosperous than we often tend to assume. This is not a question of party politics, but of the decline and failure of our country’s long-established economic model. Put simply: we do not make, do or sell enough of what the world needs.

Our £33 billion trade deficit—1.2% of GDP—means we sell off valuable assets and build up external debt to limit the current account deficit. We end up with less control over our economy, and more exposed to global risks and shocks. From low pay to regional inequality, poor productivity to the funding of public services, all the things we worry about are symptoms of this wider problem.

We need to question economic theory, challenge Treasury orthodoxy and think beyond the intellectual limits of ideological liberalism. Theories like comparative advantage have led us to offshore industry and grow dependent on hostile states, like China. But international trade is neither free nor fair, and net zero cannot mean sacrificing our prosperity and security. Being a services superpower is a great advantage, but alone it is not enough. We need a serious strategy to reindustrialise, narrow the trade deficit and rebalance the economy. We need to change and, in the months and years ahead, I look forward to debating how we do so.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Christopher Chope)]

I call Alan Strickland to make his maiden speech.