Debate on the Address
George Freeman Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I support the Gracious Speech, except the proposal for a Bill on HS2, which I shall oppose, as I have done so far. I will support my constituents relentlessly on that matter.
I turn to Brexit. [Laughter.] What a surprise! Leaving the European Union is a given, even for my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). It follows that we will leave the single market and the customs union, as stated in the article 50 notification letter and in our manifesto. I disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend on the question of the single market and the customs union. The European Union Referendum Act 2015 was passed by a massive majority. In the referendum itself, there was a clear majority for leave. The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 passed in this House by 498 to 114 Members. At the general election, 85% of all constituencies voted for Members of Parliament to deliver the referendum result. We will soon debate the repeal Bill—I think it is somewhat based on a Bill I put forward a few months ago—which is the consequence of our leaving the treaties, as laid down in the 2017 Act. We will not now be governed by other member states, or by any cohort dominated by one in particular: Germany, which we increasingly find is the EU in all but name. We will regain our sovereignty, law-making powers, borders and money, and we will run our own affairs, as we did for century after century before 1972.
The economic, political and constitutional nature of our leaving provides us with a historic economic and political opportunity. As the Chancellor rightly said in his Mansion House speech—as well as on “The Andrew Marr Show” last week—during the general election campaign insufficient attention was paid to our success on the economy. Despite the commentariat’s recent reports on his speech stating that there would necessarily be a loss of sovereignty, I can find no explicit reference to that in his speech. He was completely right to emphasise the great economic progress we have made since 2009: we grew faster than any other major advanced economy bar Germany; business has created 3.4 million more private sector jobs; and the deficit is down by three quarters. At the same time, we have lowered income tax for 31 million people and taken 4 million people out of income tax altogether.
I do not think the Chancellor mentioned our foreign direct investment, which soared to £197 billion in 2016—up from £33 billion in 2015, according to the OECD. That is an incredible record, and we are now the primary foreign direct investment destination in Europe on the back of our successful economic policies. At 4.5%, unemployment is at its lowest since 1975. Compare that with unemployment in other member states and, in the context of those who voted Labour in the general election, with the massive 40% youth unemployment in so many other member states.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
My hon. Friend referred to our stunning economic success in Europe. How much of that inward investment does he think can be attributed to the fact that we are a gateway to the European market?
Sir William Cash
That is a terrific question to which I shall return emphatically in a few minutes. The basis of my hon. Friend’s argument is completely wrong, as I shall explain in a moment.
The reckless spending alternative—the false alchemy of the Labour manifesto—would, in contrast with the Government’s economic success, simply bankrupt us and wipe out our success, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies made clear the other day. The Chancellor was right to say that stronger growth is the means by which reasonable taxation can be raised to deliver better public services and better living standards. We need sound money to go with that growth.
The Chancellor mentioned the European Investment Bank, in which we have a massive 16% shareholding, worth more than €10.2 billion. He and others should bear in mind very carefully indeed the fact that the EIB was set up under articles 307 and 308 of the European Union treaty, along with article 28 of protocol 5 on the statute of the EIB. That demonstrates that, as far as I can judge, the EIB is within the jurisdiction of the European Court. I am convinced that that is the case. We should find an answer to the question without surrendering our commitment to insisting on our own Westminster jurisdiction and not that of the European Court. We are going to have to think through this matter very carefully.
The Chancellor discussed the importance of free trade and how the Prime Minister’s Lancaster House speech made clear we would seek a comprehensive free trade agreement. He also confirmed—I repeat: confirmed —that we were leaving the customs union, for which there is a good and fundamental reason. I shall now address the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman). When we leave the EU, our independent trade policy will be made by our Government, elected at Westminster, not by the unelected European Commission and by majority vote, which, as with all decisions taken under the European Communities Act 1972—as the European Scrutiny Committee made clear in its report in May last year—is made by consensus behind closed doors, with nobody knowing how the decision is arrived at. There is no public record, as we have in Westminster. It is all far removed from the democratic, transparent accountability of our procedures, our Hansard and our parliamentary system, in which people know who is deciding what. Furthermore, most EU business is done through the aegis of covert decision making in unsmoke-filled rooms. The EU is intrinsically undemocratic, as the recent Malta declaration of the 27 clearly indicated. I note that the Chancellor stated that as regards our trading policy he believes that we must negotiate
“mutually beneficial transitional arrangements to avoid unnecessary disruption and dangerous cliff edges.”
This mirrors, I think, what has been said by the CBI, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the manufacturers’ group EEF and a number of other trade bodies, some apparently and some actually seeking to keep us in the single market and the customs union for up to five years, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe indicated and with which I disagree.
The Chancellor also emphasised that we need an implementation period and frictionless customs arrangements, albeit, he said, outside the customs union. That poses a serious problem. Against this background, we need to understand where we are with the customs union and the single market and why it is important we leave both on leaving the EU, on which the Labour party is completely confused.
I want to draw attention to our trading within the single market, and ask our friends who are still at heart remainers to please take note of what I am saying. The Office for National Statistics and the House of Commons Library tell us that last year we ran a trade deficit with the 27 member states of £71.8 billion, up £9 billion in that year alone. In the same year, Germany ran a trade surplus with EU countries of £98.9 billion, up £16 billion in that year. Yet we enjoy a trade surplus with the rest of the world of £34.4 billion, which is accelerating rapidly. Yes, 44% of our trade is with the EU, and our trade with it will continue if we leave the single market and the customs union, but our global trade is where our successful economic future lies as soon as we leave the European Union and we have to get real about that.
Furthermore, although many describe leaving the customs union as a cliff edge, if done wisely it will be a launch pad for new and greater opportunities for growth and prosperity, providing trade deals with other countries, improving our regulatory environment, achieving a free trade agreement with the EU with zero-for-zero tariff deals, dealing with rules of origin, mutual recognition of goods, including agricultural products, and allowing expedited customs arrangements based on new technologies.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
Since the House prorogued, the nation has experienced some deeply shocking events: the appalling terrorist atrocities in London and Manchester, and the terrible tragedy at Grenfell Tower. I want to take this opportunity to send my condolences to all who were affected and to salute the extraordinary bravery and courage of our emergency services.
As we gather around the anniversary of the brutal murder of Jo Cox, her inspiring message that we have—and must celebrate the fact that we have—“more in common” has never seemed more relevant. As we seek to tackle the extremism in our society, the fact that this Parliament is the most diverse ever—with more women, more ethnic minorities and more Members with disabilities than ever before—is a good thing. We are, indeed, a House that has “more in common” with the people we serve, and that can only strengthen our ability to speak for them.
I think it is an understatement to say that this election result was inconvenient for all of us who wanted to be given a clear, loud and unambiguous mandate to get on and do all the things that we wanted to do. The truth is that the mandate is now in this House. It is in Parliament. We should not be afraid of that, and we should not seek to hide from it. The Prime Minister is absolutely right to have set about forming a Government, given that she leads the party that has the largest number of seats and that won an enormous 42% of the vote, which would in any normal election have been an overwhelming result.
It is also clear to me that we must listen to the grievances so brilliantly and, if I may say so, mischievously harnessed by Comrade Corbyn in his campaign. Above all, we have to listen to this message: the British people want us, as my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) pointed out, to get on with it, but also to listen and to lead. There is no appetite in this country for another referendum, another election or, dare I say it, a change of leadership. Nobody will thank us for indulging in partisan politics or parlour politics when the country is calling out for leadership. I strongly support the Prime Minister in seeking to provide it in very difficult times.
I welcome the signals that the Prime Minister has given that she is listening, and I thank her for them. She is taking personal responsibility for the events of this nation, as we all should in public office. She has shown humility and contrition—not easy for the leader of a nation—and she has shown phenomenal personal resilience and duty to nation. Those are qualities that will stand her and us in good stead in the negotiations ahead. I welcome strongly her appointment of a First Secretary of State and a parliamentary chief of staff.
I welcome the fact that in the Queen’s Speech the Prime Minister revisited—oh, if only we had stayed on message during the election campaign!—the inspiring message of one nation compassionate conservatism that so electrified the electorate last summer, not even 11 months ago. I welcome that message loud and clear today. I particularly welcome the measures in the Queen’s Speech concerning industrial strategy—investing in the jobs, businesses and companies of tomorrow, and in skills and education—which will spread opportunity to those who have felt, hitherto, as though we were building an economy that did not work for them.
It is clear to me that we need to do more to tackle the grievances that were so loudly aired during the election campaign and harnessed by the Opposition. There are three that we need to address. The first is that the youth of this country, who were awoken from their political stupor by the EU referendum, are confronted by personal debts and an intergenerational debt transfer—they have inherited from us £1.7 trillion of debt—and they are struggling to buy houses. That has become almost the sole model in this country for building up equity and wealth, and they are largely excluded from it. They were casually assumed not to vote. Well, they did vote, and they are demanding that we listen to them. This party and this Parliament must do so.
Secondly, we heard a very loud message about an exhaustion with a particular model of public service austerity. I bow to nobody in my support for the conviction we showed in tackling the horrendous public finances we inherited from the Labour party, and I will never stop reminding people that Labour thought it was funny. Its Chief Secretary to the Treasury left a note saying, “There is no money. Ha, ha! Good luck.” Well, it was not funny; it was a moral outrage and I am proud that we tackled it.
However, it is clear that after seven years of a particular model of austerity, we have heard a loud roar from public service professionals—the doctors, the teachers, the consultants—that they have tightened their belts and they need a different model. I think that we need to set one out and that it needs to be based more on supporting innovation, on leadership, on rewarding public sector leaders who deliver more for less, instead of punishing them, and on unleashing public sector growth. The public sector could do a lot more to support inward investment and jobs. We must ensure that we skill and train our public sector leaders to take part in a 21st-century economy.
Thirdly, in an election that explicitly sought a mandate for Brexit, there was a clear and strong message from many, including from the young and from business, that they reject the shrill and divisive tone in which Brexit has been presented—the sort of “come on if you think you’re hard enough” approach to Europe. They reject the suggestion from some, particularly those on the extreme of the Brexit debate, that there is some magic trade deal tree, in the same way that some on the Labour Benches suggest there is a magic money tree. I think that the people of this country are reconciled to Brexit. Like me, many people in this country who voted for remain want us to get on with it, but they want us to be hard-headed, hard-nosed and soft-tongued. I think that we need to focus more on the life chances and prosperity of the people we serve.
What do we need to do? On the youth, I think that we need to look at a new deal for the next generation. It is clear to me that we need to look at tuition fees, the rate of interest and the structure of the loan book. We need to look at speeding up their access to rented housing. We need to look at a new model of saving for a generation who will not benefit from the post-war model of national insurance. We cannot duck the deep issues; we need to address them on a cross-party basis in this Parliament.
On public services, we need to embrace a new model to replace austerity 1.0 with innovation and efficiency 2.0. We need to embrace a whole series of reforms to drive the innovation we need in our public sector.
On Brexit, we need to be more business-like. I am delighted to hear the Chancellor say that the electorate did not vote to be poorer. We need to stop treating those who voted for remain as though that is some badge of shame. We need to respect the concerns they have aired. We need to engage this Parliament. Far from hiding the issue from Parliament, I would immerse this Parliament in the detail of Brexit—every Select Committee, every Committee, every Member should be immersed in it. The Government do not need to be bound by everything this House asks for—they seldom are—but it would help to make sure that every Member of this House is fully aware of the issues we are dealing with. In the end, it will come down to three Ms: money, markets and movement.
As a former Minister for life science, a former entrepreneur and somebody who has been proud to work with great entrepreneurs in this country, creating businesses, jobs and prosperity, it is that constituency and the prosperity of my constituents in the relatively poor, rural backwater of Mid Norfolk that I am focused on through this process.
If we are to make this work as MPs, as a Parliament and as a Government, we need to approach it not in the spirit of ideological, partisan or nostalgic, backward-looking yearning for some ideal form of sovereignty, but by being quite hard-nosed about this country. In the best traditions of our foreign policy, we must put British interests first. I am reconciled to that. I think that a Brexit driven in the best interests of this country internationally could be a proud and wonderful moment. Is this the moment we turn in on ourselves, turn our backs on Europe, turn our backs on our allies and our great trading partners, or is it a moment when we respect their project and negotiate a new relationship as their best friend, their nearest neighbour and their biggest trading partner, while allowing ourselves to go off and access the emerging markets? Get it right and we will be thanked by the generations to come, but get it wrong and this party, this House and this Parliament will pay the price. If this becomes a narrow cultural cul-de-sac that appears to a younger generation to have shut off their access to the opportunities of the world, of globalisation and of the new economy, we will not be thanked.
In the end, it is up to this party, this Government and this House to unify this nation, and we can only unify a nation if we are unified ourselves. I hope that you will allow me, Mr Speaker, the indulgence of reminding the House that Abraham Lincoln’s family came from my constituency. He famously said:
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
The same is true of a Government and a party.
Article 50
George Freeman Excerpts(9 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
I say to the right hon. Gentleman that I am well aware that Scotland is a constituent nation of the United Kingdom. The point is a very simple one and it was made from the Bench behind him earlier: different parts of the United Kingdom voted in different ways. Different constituencies voted in different ways. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland voted in different ways—Wales voted to leave; Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain—but the overall response of the United Kingdom was a vote to leave the European Union, and that is what we are putting into place. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that we are looking at the arrangements that need to be put in place, whatever the impact—whatever the decision that is taken at the end. But crucially, what I am very clear about—I was clear in my letter to President Tusk—is that we should work to get that comprehensive free trade agreement, so that we are not in the position of having no deal but we have a deal that is to the benefit of everybody in the UK, including the people of Scotland.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
May I congratulate the Prime Minister on the cool, constructive clarity and conviction that she has brought to this momentous period in British politics, and on her commitment today to negotiate on behalf of everyone in this country—the 48% as well as the 52%? Does she agree that we must also redouble our commitment to domestic reform—that compassionate Conservative programme—which is so key to industry and to skills and infrastructure, both for our post-Brexit economic prosperity and for the unity we will need to succeed? She wrote in her excellent letter to Mr Tusk:
“The task before us is momentous but it should not be beyond us.”
Does she agree that that applies to Members of this House as well, and that we should reject the shrill voices of Scottish and English nationalism so that we pull together, not pull apart?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The question people responded to in the referendum was about leaving the European Union, but I believe the vote to leave was also a vote for wider change in this country. That is why it is so important that we put forward and deliver our plan for Britain, for a stronger, fairer society for all—a country that really does work for everyone. It is important that right now we pull together and recognise that the task ahead is to ensure we get the right result for the whole of the United Kingdom.
London Attack
George Freeman Excerpts(9 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady speaks well on this. When I was Home Secretary, two events always brought home to me the commitment, bravery and dedication of police officers. One was the National Police Memorial Day service, when the police recognise those who have fallen, and the other was the police bravery awards, where groups of police officers are recognised for brave acts that they have undertaken. What always struck me—and, I am sure, other hon. Members who have been at that ceremony—was the matter-of-fact way in which our police officers, whatever they had done, whomever they had dealt with and whatever injuries they had suffered, would say that they were just doing their job. We owe them a great deal.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
I thank the Prime Minister for the tone with which she has reacted. She has genuinely spoken for the nation in this moment. Yesterday, many of us from the House were gathered in Westminster Abbey, in lockdown. In a stunning moment, people from left and right, of the Muslim, Hindu, and Christian faiths and of none, gathered in Westminster Abbey, in sanctuary, surrounded by luminaries of our political past, of left and right. I support others who reminded us today that what happened was not an act of faith, but the distortion of faith and that, in the strength of all our faiths coming together in this country, we will defend the values we cherish.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That shows the importance of all our faiths working together, recognising the values we share. As he says, this act of terror was not an act of faith. A perversion—a warped ideology—leads to such acts of terrorism, and it will not prevail.
Oral Answers to Questions
George Freeman Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
12. What steps his Department is taking to ensure that scientific advice carries appropriate weight across government.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (George Freeman)
UK leadership in science advice to Government is well recognised internationally. Most Departments have a chief scientific adviser, and many have science advisory councils and specific scientific advisory committees on selected subjects. My Department supports the work of the independent Government Office for Science, which works with Departments across Whitehall to ensure that their advisory systems are fit for purpose. The Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Mark Walport has close contact with both the supply and demand for science advice across government, and the Government Office for Science publishes guidance on the use of scientific and engineering advice in policy making and a code of practice for scientific advisory committees. Science advice is one of the things Britain does best.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the Minister for his response and welcome him to his post, but the fact is that the science budget has been eroded in real terms. The Minister with two brains was removed, and he had the support of the scientific community. Can the Minister explain how the Government Office for Science can be effective when the chief scientific adviser posts in the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Transport—two crucial Departments—remain unfilled?
George Freeman
I thank the hon. Lady for her welcome. She talks of cuts in the science budget. Let me put on record again the fact that the Government have protected and ring-fenced the science budget. Let me also take this opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), who achieved that success in conjunction with the Chancellor. As for the two Departments that currently do not have scientific advisers, Sir Mark Walport and the Government Office are actively in the process of recruiting and putting in place arrangements to ensure that adequate scientific advice is available.
Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)
Scientists at Teesside university have come up with a unique method of detecting and ageing blood traces at crime scenes. Will the Minister ensure that that technology is fully used throughout the criminal justice system, and will he join me in congratulating Teesside university on once again being a finalist in the entrepreneurial university of the year awards?
George Freeman
I certainly join the hon. Gentleman is congratulating his constituents on the work that they are doing. Let me also emphasise the importance of Government procurement in supporting innovation, which is one of the Government’s key priorities.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
The Minister rightly spoke of the importance of having scientific advice available, but it must of course be based on scientific evidence. As he will know, last year the Government consulted on proposals to stop local authorities gathering evidence on the scientific effects of air pollution in their areas. He will also know that, just this year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said that it will not collect any future scientific data on the badger culls that are taking place. Will the Minister ensure that data that are important as bases for scientific advice are collected across Government?
George Freeman
It is a bit rich for Opposition Members to talk about cuts when we have protected the science budget. We inherited one of the worst crises in the public finances, and we have a duty to correct it.
This country is internationally respected for the level of scientific advice that we put into policy making. Across the board—on badgers, on genetic modification, and on all the other difficult issues that we face—we are basing policy on the best scientific advice. [Interruption.] It ill behoves Opposition Members to criticise our approach. They set the standard in taking advice from spin doctors; we take advice from scientists.
Mr Speaker
I have a sense that the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) feels an Adjournment debate application coming on.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
T5. As my hon. Friend knows, Plymouth is the host of the Peninsula medical school. In the light of the Ashya King case, in which Ashya’s parents had to flee to another country to get treatment for him that was not available in the UK, what plans does he have to accelerate research into new drug and medical technology?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (George Freeman)
My hon. Friend makes an important point. That case highlights the importance of Britain remaining at the forefront of medical innovation. To that end, we have set out our groundbreaking 10-year life science strategy, and I pay tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), for that. My central mission in this new role is to ensure that Britain leads the world and is the best place in the world to develop 21st century medicines and health care technologies.
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
From his talks with north Staffordshire MPs the Secretary of State knows the importance of the proposed European directive on origin marking. People need to be able to find out exactly where a plate has come from by turning it over, and the directive will be of great importance to the competitiveness of the ceramics sector and to public health standards. The next meeting of the working party on consumer protection and information will take place on either 16 September or 1 October. Will the Minister review his position before that meeting and abandon his opposition to this proposal? Will he also ensure that his officials are working on a full appraisal in order to enable the proposal to go forward?
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
What is the Department doing to make the UK a better place to do business for our already strong pharmaceutical sector? I am particularly thinking about encouraging clinical trials and bringing forward new medicines, which of course will benefit not only our economy, but patients receiving treatment in our NHS?
George Freeman
My hon. Friend makes an important point. As a Minister in the Department of Health and in BIS, it is my job to make sure that we are building a landscape in which the UK is the best place to get quick access to patients, tissues, data and trials. Unless we can get innovations to patients more quickly, not only will we let them down, but, more importantly, we will not attract the investment into 21st century health technologies that we and our patients need.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
The Secretary of State rightly highlighted the importance of re-shoring to revitalising our manufacturing and rebalancing our economy. Innovative companies such as Gloucestershire’s Future Advanced Manufacture Ltd discussed with aerospace customers how to manufacture locally parts previously made in the far east, and has done this with success. Does he think that there are more opportunities, with his Department leading, to discuss with the aerospace industry how the big contractors can look at their supply chains and consider re-shoring opportunities through small and medium-sized enterprises?
G7
George Freeman Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I cannot see any sort of point in trying to draw some moral equivalence between Russia’s totally unacceptable action with respect to Ukraine and the fact that NATO, as a defensive legal alliance, has sent extra forces to the Baltic states or indeed Poland to demonstrate our belief in collective defence. If we do what the hon. Gentleman has just said in his question, we would actually let Russia off the hook for everything that it wanted to do anywhere, and that is a terrible basis on which to conduct foreign and security policy.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and his tribute to the inspiring sacrifice of our forebears who gave their tomorrows for the freedoms that we enjoy. I particularly support the PM in his insistence that the EU Commission and President must support the case for reform. Is it not the case that Europe and the UK’s diplomatic and military strength is fundamentally linked to our economic strength and that we need to become more flexible, more entrepreneurial and more outward looking?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will only count for something in the world if we can demonstrate that our model of democracy and open markets can deliver a strong and growing economy, and stability and security. I agree of course with what he says about the top jobs, but we should beware that I am sure all the candidates will suddenly make absolutely loving declarations about deregulation, the importance of growth and the importance of jobs, and they will even use great words such as “subsidiarity”. The point that I would make to everyone on both sides of the House is that we should not get too excited about these declarations; we have to focus on the principle that it is very important that the European Council keeps its right to suggest who should run the European Commission. That is at the heart of our argument.
Cost of Living: Energy and Housing
George Freeman Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
It is an absolute pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), who spoke yesterday in proposing the Loyal Address. She gave a glittering speech on the Navy, on Portsmouth, and on the role of women in Parliament and in the armed forces. It was touching, witty and profound. It was a speech that my great aunt, the first British Conservative woman in Parliament, would have been very proud to hear. It was a speech that should make us all redouble our work to smash the glass ceiling that still holds back so many women and girls in this country and around the world.
In the week of the D-day commemorations, I want to join my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, who rightly paid tribute to the D-day generation who gave their tomorrows for our today and our democratic freedoms. It is a salutary reminder, at a time when public disillusionment with politics is so high, making it fashionable for people such as Russell Brand and others to attack and dismiss mainstream politics, of the great privilege and prize of democratic politics: free and fair elections that those in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and other places in the world have fought and died for.
As the Leader of the Opposition said in the thoughtful first few minutes of his speech yesterday, highlighting the growing public disillusionment with narrow, shrill, unduly dogmatic and self-interested politics before disappointingly reverting to type and failing his own high test, recent elections have shown us the strong public groundswell of anger at a politics and a model of big government people increasingly feel is not working for them. The Queen’s Speech is about specific Bills, but it is also a moment to reflect on the causes and implications of that. With the Scottish and the EU referendums looming, there is a real risk of disillusionment fuelling support for secessionist, pessimistic, backward-looking politics and leading potentially to the break-up of this great United Kingdom and the loss of the irreplaceable richness and strength in the union of our historic nations, so brilliantly described recently by Simon Schama, to be replaced by a smaller, shriller, narrower politics of self-interest within the disempowering bureaucracy of a centralising European Union. That is why I welcome the Prime Minister’s strong support for the United Kingdom and his insistence on governing for the nation not in narrow party interest but from the progressive centre, ambitious for a globally competitive and influential Britain. But to do that we need to understand—indeed harness—the causes of the disillusionment that we are seeing.
I do not claim any special insight on this, but it is a subject that has long been of interest to me. In 2003 I founded an independent movement called Mind the Gap! to look at the causes of disillusionment and, in 2005, a campaign called Positive Politics. I have written and spoken on it widely elsewhere. I want to make three quick observations.
The first is that this problem has been incubating for a long time, over the last 20 years. The inconvenient truth that we need to face is that it has done so under both main parties; from some of the sleaze in the early ’90s, through the spin of new Labour and the culture of anything-goes irresponsibility. That was enhanced by the former Labour Business Secretary, who said that he was profoundly relaxed about people getting filthy rich. He should not have been; he should have been profoundly exercised in building a culture of enterprise, philanthropy and respect for wealth creation. There was also the abuse of the democratic process in connection with the Iraq decision, some of the scandalous excesses of the expenses scandal and the public disillusionment with the way in which the bank bail-out was conducted and the way in which bank bonuses continue to be paid without so much as any criminal sanction. In America, people would be behind bars. That has fuelled the sense among the public of “one rule for us and another for them.”
My second observation is that this is not apathy; the people of Britain are not uninterested in their politics. It is anger, fuelled by an increasingly depressed and devastating combination of powerlessness and a sense of an unaccountable governing class, particularly in Europe but also in London. There is a sense that the citizens of this country are less and less able to take power and influence over their own lives at a time when, in their domestic lives as consumers, technology is empowering them evermore.
The third observation is that the United Kingdom Independence party, while successfully riding this wave of anger, has no answers or solutions, no serious policy programme and is in fact a toxic and divisive influence in British politics. The British people are not lurching to the right. They do not necessarily want to leave the EU today and they certainly are not racist and xenophobic. But they do yearn for a politics and a Parliament in which those in positions of power and responsibility take and exercise their responsibilities for those who are without them. We must set the highest standards of conduct not just in public office but in senior positions across our society: football, the media and in business. We work always in the interests of the people whose Parliament this is, who pay our bills and whose ancestors gave their lives 70 years ago to secure the freedoms we cherish.
It is in that context that I welcome the important steps taken in this Parliament to begin to put this country back on its feet: restoring the public finances; tackling the deficit; rewarding work and responsibility; our reforms to welfare, to pensions and to tax breaks for the lowest paid; empowering citizens; our long-term economic plan for a resilient economy; the localist reforms to give power back to communities; the reforms in the Home Office, in defence, health and education; our historic commitment to begin to tackle the problem of public disillusionment with the EU with the Prime Minister’s pledge to reform and to give the British people a referendum on the EU.
In the Queen’s Speech, I welcome in particular the measures on the economy, society and politics; the recall Bill, the slavery Bill, the social action responsibility Bill and the small business and pensions Bills. The truth is that the extent of the economic, social and political hollowing-out that we inherited will take more than four or five years to fix. It will require a better politics, economy and society, which has at its heart, as this Queen’s Speech does, an insistence on the notion of the reciprocal responsibilities that bind us. It requires a culture of political discourse that values what the decent majority of British people do—a culture of fairness and decency with universal values and standards that apply equally to all citizens. I believe that this Parliament and this Government have started to put this country back on its feet through key reforms to promote work and responsibility, citizen empowerment, more responsive public services and a sustainable model of growth and public finance.
I welcome this Queen’s Speech as a first step on a long hard road. The Leader of the Opposition began yesterday to point the way down that road, but I do not believe that the public think he has a serious programme of reform to deliver what we need. I believe that the people of Newark today, and the country next spring, will reward the only party that does.
Debate on the Address
George Freeman Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the real damage to public trust on immigration was done under the last Government? After years of this country happily accepting roughly 40,000 people a year, the last Government deliberately did not take out the exclusion when the new nations joined the European Union. Levels of net immigration rose dramatically to more than 250,000 a year in an illegitimate cheap-labour policy. We are now reaping the whirlwind that that caused.
Keith Vaz
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman heard what I said to the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), but we have already had the mea culpa. There is a limit to how many times even a Catholic can say “mea culpa” to the House of Commons. We get what we did wrong and it will not happen again; I do not think any more countries will be joining the EU at this rate.
Let me tell the Prime Minister about the importance of what he does with his European partners as he pushes forward the reform agenda. I am thinking about the issue of illegal migration from outside the EU. The Home Affairs Committee has been to the border of Greece and Turkey; 100,000 people cross illegally to Greece from Turkey every year. They want to live in the UK or western Europe. Some 40,000 migrants are camped in Morocco waiting to come to Spain. Only last week, the French authorities, under a socialist Government, disbanded the camp at Calais. Eight hundred people were trying to come from Calais to the United Kingdom. As we hear on the news so frequently, people are literally dying as they seek to come from Libya and north Africa to enter the EU through Italy.
This is a big issue for the EU. It cannot be confronted by the United Kingdom on its own and there must be support for our EU partners on the southern rim of the EU. Greece, Italy and Spain need the support of the British Government and Brussels to ensure that they can deal with illegal migration. It cannot be fair that people are risking their lives to come here. We need a new partnership with EuroMed to ensure that there is that support.
Mr Redwood
Indeed. That is part of the strategy and, as we can see, it is beginning to work, with more house building now being undertaken and more people being able to afford a home.
The next thing we need is more domestically supplied energy and cheaper energy. The two go together, felicitously, so if we can get a bigger energy sector extracting oil and gas in Britain—onshore and offshore—we will have more jobs, some of which will be higher-paid jobs, but also access to cheaper energy. I am very pleased that the Government are going to get behind the shale gas revolution. It is already transforming the American economy, creating higher living standards for many and producing the much lower gas prices that are pricing Americans back into competitive jobs in industry vis-à-vis Europe and Asia, where the price of energy is high. We need the same here.
We need to make sure that all people setting up their own business, or who have already set up their own business but have not taken on many or any employees and are now thinking of doing so, should feel that that is possible and feasible. If we have too much regulation and control—much of it well intentioned, no doubt—the very bright or able can still run a business, because they know how to handle that regulation and control and can get proper advice, but other people find it far more difficult. They are put off, thinking, “I really do not understand all this. I don’t know what it’s all about.” Anything that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister can do to make it much easier for people to start their first business and then to take on their first employee will be extremely welcome and will promote the recovery.
George Freeman
My right hon. Friend is making a very eloquent case about how the best and most sustainable means of raising the standard of living is by developing sustainable jobs. Does he agree that one of the most damaging things we could do is to raise the tax on jobs as represented by employer’s national insurance contributions? That is being considered by Labour Front Benchers, but it would be hugely damaging.
Mr Redwood
That is quite right. The point has been made before. Lower taxes on enterprise and effort are generally a good thing. We want people to keep more of the money they make or earn when they set up businesses or get good or better jobs, and we also want to make sure that the Government do not deter employers from creating more jobs by over-taxing work.
I am pleased that the Gracious Speech refers to the need for more and better roads. In the past 15 years, our road building has fallen well behind what needs to be done to support the economic recovery and to promote industry, commerce and more jobs around the country. I look forward to seeing the detailed proposals.
What I primarily wish to do this afternoon is to speak for England. [Interruption.] I am glad that at least two hon. Members agree with that proposition. We speak too little for England in this House of Commons; yet a majority of us are English Members of Parliament.
European Council and Nuclear Security Summit
George Freeman Excerpts(12 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for what she says about Britain’s support for the 40% carbon reduction target. It is important to get the EU to sign up to that deal, so that the EU can provide global leadership at the Paris summit.
The reason why I do not support total decarbonisation of our energy sector—[Interruption.]—our electricity sector is that until we can prove that carbon capture and storage is a workable and deliverable technology, setting such a target could mean the closure of every gas-fired power station in the country, which is not a sensible approach. I know the green movement pushes this, but, frankly, until we have worked out carbon capture and storage properly, it would not be a sensible thing to do.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and his continued diplomatic success at EU Councils, which suggests that his leadership of the EU reform agenda is strengthening the UK’s hand, while our reliance on economic sanctions makes that drive for a more competitive Europe all the more important. I also welcome the steps to reduce our energy dependence on Russia. Does he agree that UK geopolitical energy security should now be the No. 1 feature of our energy policy for the next Parliament?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes the important point that in looking at considerations within energy policy—security of supply, making sure that there is capacity, contributing to the decline in carbon emissions, and national security—there is no doubt that the national security part of the picture for Britain and for Europe has become a much more pressing issue. We have good, diverse supplies of electricity; we are reinvesting in nuclear; we have the world’s leading offshore wind industry, which I saw for myself in Hull yesterday; but we obviously need to help Europe to diversify away from Russian gas, and we should recognise our strategic interests in helping it to do just that.
Tributes to Nelson Mandela
George Freeman Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak today and to follow some extraordinarily powerful tributes from across the House.
Like many of my generation, it is no exaggeration for me to say that my political consciousness was framed against the backdrop of the fight against apartheid and the collapse of the cold war and the structures that it propped up. For the previous generation, it was perhaps the second world war and for some the civil rights struggle in the 1960s. But for me and many others in the Chamber, our political consciousnesses were awakened by the struggle to free Mandela and the tsunami of freedom from an age of cold war repression for which it served as a trumpet call around the globe.
I do not want in any way to claim or suggest that I was a leading light on the barricades of the 1980s—far from it—but I remember my first mini campaign in school. Like generations of morally indignant sixth-formers before me, I was smarting against all forms of lazy privilege, and I remember blasting out “Free Nelson Mandela” at the South African cricket team visiting my school from some speakers that I had erected on the clock tower for that purpose. My teachers did not share my enthusiasm, but I was glad to have done a little for the cause. It seemed to me that sports sanctions would be a way to put pressure on the regime without harming the most vulnerable in that country. I remember well the looks on the faces of those privileged young cricketers from one of South Africa’s elite public schools—confusion, anger, resentment and a little shame. It was a heady taste for me of what politics can do.
Three years later I graduated from university and saw, as we all did, his release in 1990, and was struck, after a lifetime behind bars, by the quiet dignity of his freedom, not determined for revenge, but eager for reconciliation. I also watched, rather sadly, as the party of which I am now proud to be a member found itself on the wrong side of that history and unable fully to grasp the scale of the yearning for new freedoms that followed the cold war certainties that had so shaped it—a misjudgment that I am pleased the now Prime Minister went out of his way to correct on becoming leader.
The next year I went to see South Africa for myself, hitch-hiking from Kenya to Cape Town, a 5,000-mile trip on which I was lucky enough to see that great continent in all its beauty, simplicity—then, poverty—and to see, in many impromptu games of football with groups of young African children, the love of sport, which Mandela was later to harness to such extraordinary effect.
When I arrived in Cape Town I was lucky enough to meet the grandson of a former Prime Minister of South Africa, the young Bool Smuts. I had the extraordinary experience of being taken back to the Smuts family homestead in the Drakensberg mountains, standing with Bool and seeing the homestead and Voortrekker Bible, and visiting with his brothers the local Afrikaans rugby club, where I entered into what can only be described as ambitious banter, as a young Englishmen, with those from a culture that I did not understand. I remember well the intensity—nay, the ferocity—of their belief in their way of life, and I remember reflecting later that if only the vastly more numerous Anglo or English South African white population had had the similar moral intensity to speak for their own convictions, the drama that was the late collapse of South African apartheid might have been avoided.
I remember very clearly my last three lifts one day on my way out of South Africa as they seemed to capture the story of that land: a priest, rather early in the morning and rather the worse for wear, taking Bibles up to Zambia; a young black business man in a suit and tie wanting peace and prosperity for his family and to build a career, representing the force of an aspirational, moderate black progressive middle-class that is today having such an effect across sub-Saharan Africa; and, my last and most shocking lift, a fully paid-up member of the AWB, a farmer in a pick-up truck, who at the end of our two-hour journey lifted the bench-chair of his pick-up and showed me the guns with which he promised he would fight for what he saw as his freedom, saying, “Boy, when they come for me, they’ll take me out dead.”
I left a country on the brink of civil war, with cities poised to convulse in violence, and it was evident to me then that the triumph of Mandela was the stuff not of Hollywood and red carpet leadership, as it can sometimes seem in retrospect, but of the brutal realities of township politics, because Mandela was, above all, a politician, answering the ultimate test of leadership: how to heal a broken nation, how to avoid civil war, how to unite a deeply divided set of peoples.
I saw during my visit that South Africa did not just require symbolism, however valuable that was; it also needed statesmanship, and few other than Mandela could have fulfilled what history demanded of him at that time. Who can forget the sight of him dressed in that Springbok rugby top cheering the South African rugby world cup success, healing a nation and resetting it towards the path of a better future? Having seen for myself the intensity of the association between the Boer culture, rugby and apartheid, it was a stunning act of generous reconciliation. For me it marked a personal end-point, from demonstrating at the departing all-white schoolboy cricket team, to visiting the Afrikaans rugby club, to watching him clad in green that day, I could see the power of reconciliation work its magic through the medium of sport. Rugby, once a symbol of division, was now a symbol of unity, an iconic image for South Africa, for sport and for the world. And we can all remember his historic decision to stand down from the presidency after one term, a single action which spoke more than any words.
In an age of disillusionment with politics, when voters in this country and elsewhere all too often unite in distrust of the political process, Mandela stands out as a shining example to us all of what we can aspire to: a politics not of tit-for-tat, back-stabbing, plotting and skulduggery, but of statesmanship, empathy, hope and vision, and most of all a statesmanship and politics founded on the quality Aristotle called “ethos”, which is what we define as character, and in him was a duty to people, place and country before party.
Few figures light up an age as Mandela did. His courage, his courtesy and his character must remind us of what politics can achieve. Let us, as parliamentarians, all be inspired by his example.
EU Council
George Freeman Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I do not think that enough attention was paid to the problems of regulation and red tape, but I think that proper attention is being paid to them now. We are showing that it is possible to win allies in Europe, including the European Commission, and to ensure that red tape is cut.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
I strongly welcome the Prime Minister’s leadership in regard to the small business deregulation and the business taskforce, and particularly welcome the delaying of the badly drafted EU data protection directive relating to e-commerce. The UK is plainly leading the way in the use of data transparency to drive the empowerment of citizens, taxpayers and consumers, and the creation of new markets. May I encourage my right hon. Friend to continue his strong resistance to the EU’s attempts to do for our data pioneers what it would have done for our currency?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend has made a good point. A single e-commerce market requires proper rules on data protection, but if those rules are much more onerous than what we have today, they will add to costs, destroy jobs and send those jobs elsewhere. That is why, although we are the biggest enthusiasts for the completion of the digital single market, we must get the directive right rather than just signing it through, as the Labour party would have done, without caring about the consequences.