Iran-Israel Update

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I join others in thanking the Prime Minister for his leadership in ensuring that the United Kingdom Government stand shoulder to shoulder with our ally, Israel, in the face of yet another attack. Does he agree that, in order to live in safety and security, the first and most pressing mission for Israel continues to be the necessity of defeating Hamas? The harsh reality is that that will require an operation in Rafah, in which every step is taken to protect civilian life. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is the path to peace in the middle east?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the threat that Hamas pose to the security and safety of the people of Israel. The Foreign Secretary set out in detail our view on the right approach to Rafah from this point forward just a couple of weeks ago.

Cyber-security and UK Democracy

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I, or another Minister, will be happy to meet him. That is precisely why we set up the National Cyber Security Centre, which uses GCHQ expertise to inform our approach to cyber, and engages with businesses and individuals. That approach is renowned and admired around the world, because we can give high-quality advice through the National Cyber Security Centre. Week after week, I receive delegations from around the world who want to see what we have done with the National Cyber Security Centre.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

The £2.6 billion in additional money to counter cyber threats is very welcome. This field is constantly evolving, and those who wish us harm are innovating further. I accept that my right hon. Friend will not comment on the exact detail, but will he at least assure the House that the £2.6 billion outguns what those who wish us harm spend on new threats?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The amount of spending compares extremely favourably with that spent in similar G7 countries around the world. I am confident that we have world-leading expertise, and we are constantly evolving our capabilities in this space.

Action Against Houthi Maritime Attacks

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

She is right: it is the Houthis who are doing that, and it is right that we call that out as being wrong, as the Government of Yemen themselves have done. It is absolutely right that we take necessary and proportionate action in self-defence against risk to British lives and interests. That is what we did last week and what we have done this week, and we will always reserve the right to do so. In parallel and separately, we are also doing everything we can to bring about more aid into Gaza and a sustainable ceasefire there that involves a release of hostages and the end of Hamas’s hostilities.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement and actions of self-defence against the Houthis as the right thing to do. Over the past 24 hours, the BBC has carried reports that senior IRGC generals have made extremist speeches to United Kingdom students that are riddled with antisemitism and the promotion of violence. This radicalisation simply must stop. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to end IRGC infiltration in the United Kingdom? While I fully acknowledge that he will not comment on proscription at the Dispatch Box, will he at least acknowledge the strength of feeling on both sides of the House and across the political divide for the proscription of the IRGC, which is behind so much of the violence in the region, including the barbaric attacks of 7 October and the continuing attacks in the Red sea?

[The Prime Minister]

I first stress that it is an absolute priority to protect the UK against foreign interference, and we will use all available levers to do that. On the particular matter my hon. Friend raises about those reports, I know the Charity Commission has opened an ongoing compliance case into trusts linked to the Kanoon Islamic centre, so it is right that that investigation happens properly. More broadly, universities have a duty to prevent people being drawn into terrorism, and where there is evidence that universities are failing in that duty, I am happy to reassure him that the Government will not hesitate to intervene to ensure that the right steps are taken.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I set up the community ownership fund when I was Chancellor and it is doing fantastic work funding hundreds of projects across the country, including, I believe, one in the hon. Lady’s constituency—the back on the map scheme. It is there to support local communities, take over assets—whether pubs, village halls or other community assets—and is doing a fantastic job. It is right that there is a competitive process because we want to make sure the money is deployed in the areas where it can make the most difference.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Q14. Over-crowding on Chiltern Railways has become a daily misery for commuters from stations including Haddenham and Thame Parkway and Princes Risborough in my constituency, the root cause of which is an ageing fleet constantly breaking down and shorter trains having to be run. There are proposals on the table for both short-term additional capacity and long-term fleet renewal. Will my right hon. Friend instruct the Department for Transport to fast-track those proposals so we can end overcrowding on Chiltern?

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with my hon. Friend that the performance on Chiltern has not been good enough in recent times. I know that Chiltern has recently begun engagement with the rolling-stock leasing market, which will help reduce overcrowding, but also, together with DfT, it is looking at providing additional capacity at peak times. I know that the rail Minister my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) will ensure that these plans continue to progress and keep my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) updated.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

This was an appalling tragedy, and my thoughts remain with all those concerned. I absolutely understand the strength of feeling on this. It was this Government who set up the inquiry, which I participated in, and we fully understand the need for action. The Government, crucially, have already accepted the moral case for compensation and acknowledged that justice needs to be delivered for the victims. My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office will update the House on our next steps on the infected blood inquiry shortly.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Q2. The tax cuts in the autumn statement were extremely welcome, but in order to go further and get the tax burden as low as possible, accurate and robust economic modelling is required. The Office for Budget Responsibility has been habitually wrong, and we had the spectacle last week of the head of the OBR saying that his latest forecast might be £30 billion out. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister commit to finding a better system of financial modelling, so that we can get taxes lower?

[The Prime Minister]

As my hon. Friend knows, the OBR has brought greater transparency and independence to the forecasting on which Government policy is based, but he is right. It is required to produce an assessment of the accuracy of its fiscal and economic forecasts at least once a year but, crucially, as he acknowledged, thanks to our management of the economy and the fact that we have halved inflation and controlled borrowing, we have now delivered the largest tax cuts in a generation, and they will benefit families up and down the country from January.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Government commissioned Nigel Boardman to review all those issues and strengthen the system following those recommendations. I am very confident that this nation will be well represented abroad by the former Prime Minister. He is a Prime Minister with unrivalled experience of foreign affairs and will help Britain to navigate an uncertain world in challenging times. In contrast, the Labour party would offer to the country a shadow Foreign Secretary who backed the Leader of the Opposition’s predecessor to be leader, was paid to appear on Russian television and even voted against Trident. Does that sound like a man who should represent Britain?

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Q12.   The inflation numbers published this morning were very welcome, but the tax burden continues to bite. Will the Prime Minister agree in principle that the concept of higher rate tax was never meant to drag in police sergeants, band 8 nurses, teachers with additional responsibilities and others, and that a priority for his Treasury Ministers should be to return fairness to the tax thresholds?

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with my hon. Friend and am pleased that the vast majority of people will continue not to pay the higher rate. I share his ambition to cut taxes for working people. Right now, inflation is falling and we are sticking to our plan, which is delivering a halving of it this year. That is the most effective tax cut we could have delivered for the British people this year, rather than making it worse, as the Labour party would do, by borrowing money irresponsibly and in a way that would just drive up inflation and interest rates. But I want to reassure him that I absolutely share his ambition to cut taxes for working people. As we stabilise the economy, that is something both the Chancellor and I are keen to deliver.

Automotive Industry

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I thoroughly agree—the scale of ambition that I see around the world daunts me when I compare it with this Government’s ambition. There are some incredibly exciting technologies out there, including sodium-ion batteries that would reduce our dependence on lithium and almost certainly cut costs in battery production. Hydrogen is clearly going to be extremely exciting, as are fuel cells, and there are markets for off-road vehicles that could be huge potential markets for the UK. We should also not forget buses: that is an area in which new technology could contribute to things like cleaner air, as well as better transport.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

Does the shadow Minister agree that on top of battery innovation and hydrogen innovation, the UK is leading in another field: that of synthetic fuels? However, giving the automotive sector a really strong future in this country involves a whole-system analysis, not just of how the vehicle is manufactured but how the energy that will run it is manufactured. That involves looking again at the zero tailpipe standards that are coming in, because if we have that whole-system analysis, we will get to green technology and greener transport but with a whole-picture effect.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I agree with part of what the hon. Gentleman has said. I agree about the whole-system analysis: many parts of the decarbonisation journey that industry will need to take on will be a much bigger question than simply unplugging one form of old fossil fuel technology and plugging in another. For instance, the steel industry will have to think about scrap if it is to make the conversion to electric arc furnaces; and if we are to move towards synthetic fuels, we will clearly have to look at where the feed stocks are coming from.

However, one of the most defining features of the past 13 years—I say this without any kind of partisanship—has been a series of very ambitious targets from this Government in areas that relate to decarbonisation, but with no real means to deliver them. That target is then pulled away, and confidence in the British state to decarbonise falls apart. I am thinking particularly about the famous “cut the green crap” comments from the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, regarding home insulation. When we talk about changing existing Government policy, we should not underestimate just how little confidence the international business community has in this Government’s promises at times. Broadly, the approach has been very ambitious targets but with no means to actually deliver them, which undermines the case.

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[Ms Ghani]

I could not disagree with my hon. Friend, who is a champion for all things technology and transport, as well as for his constituency. The investment made in R&D has enabled large manufacturing firms to work closely with our academic institutions, and to de-risk some of the technologies that are now becoming mainstream, and we continue to support that area. That leads on to my next point about the Advanced Propulsion Centre and the automotive transformation fund, which are key in us trying to de-risk and adopt new technologies to drive the sector forward.

On the Automotive Council, the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said that he was engaging with the sector, but I am not quite sure where and when. A lot of the comments he made will not go down well with the sector because they were not very positive on all the work it has been doing. I engage directly with firms to see how hard they are committed to the sector, and what they expect from their politicians is support, not to be talked down.

I put on record my thanks to Graham Hoare, the current co-chair, Mike Hawes, Neville Jackson, Ian Constance, Markus Grüneisl, Paul Willcox, Murray Paul, Adrian Hallmark, Michael Leiters, Tim Slatter, Alan Johnson, Richard Kenworthy and many other indispensable members of the Automotive Council. I thank them for all the work they do, considering how challenging times have been not just for us but for our counterparts in Europe. I recently spoke at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Trader’s parliamentary reception, and I welcome its “Manifesto 2030” with its five key priorities: green automotive transformation strategy, net zero mobility, green skills, made in Britain, and powering UK clean tech. There is a lot that we agree on, and I look forward to working with the sector to try to protect and strengthen the whole automotive industry. Car companies want to innovate, and we want to support them to do so. That is why the Government have an overarching goal of making the UK a global hub for innovation, as alluded to by the my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth.

[Greg Smith]

In embracing that innovation—this is further to my intervention on the shadow Minister—the UK is a leader in the development of the synthetic fuel sector. By that, I do not mean fuels made from feedstocks; I mean green hydrogen merged with atmospheric carbon capture, whereby what comes out of the tailpipe is the same volume of carbon that is then recaptured to make the next load of fuel. With whole system analysis, that will be shown to be net zero, but the zero tailpipe mandate gets in the way of that. Does the Minister agree that, to embrace this innovation properly and to give an eclectic future to the automotive sector, we need to embrace those innovators as well?

[Ms Ghani]

We do need to embrace those innovators. One of the reasons we have so much investment in the UK in innovation and the automotive sector is that we are often first out of the door in helping to de-risk and test that technology. The Minister of State, Department for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire, will touch on tailings, but just last week I was at the Lower Thames Crossing, which is putting out a pitch to ensure that all vehicles on the construction site have green hydrogen. The several thousand vehicle movements on and off the site carrying freight will also have green hydrogen. The site is a port, and given the level of construction that is taking place, it may be one of the largest construction sites to get to green hydrogen first. I am not sure, but I think it is pretty well on track to being a world leader in that.

The UK-wide innovation strategy sets out our long-term plan for delivering innovation-led growth. Our primary objective is to boost private sector investment across the whole UK, creating the right conditions for all businesses to innovate, giving them confidence to do so and ensuring that we are leading the future by creating it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

Exercises take place locally and nationally. The exercise involving the use of the emergency alert system for the first time ever, to ensure that we have that important pillar in our response, illustrates how seriously we take these issues. We will continue to undertake exercises to ensure that we are as prepared as anyone ever can be for the circumstances that we can plan for and try to project. But clearly, we never know the disaster that might hit us. That is why we take these things seriously.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

6. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the cost to the public purse of Government projects.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Jeremy Quin)]

The Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s standards, tools and training for Government projects and its expert advice and cost estimation guidance helps to ensure that Government projects are set up for success. I am pleased to announce that the IPA is launching its benchmarking data service later this year, which will significantly improve the pricing of Government projects through access to a detailed dataset of realised unit costs, delivering much more confidence to cost estimation.

[Greg Smith]

In reducing costs, the challenge for my right hon. Friend is the way that Government projects are set up in the first place. They blow their budgets because the people set up to deliver them always know that the taxpayer will bail them out. Will he look at introducing a new private sector viability test for Government projects, where a lack of private sector interest would be the warning light that the project is wrong? For example, the total lack of interest from any private sector investor should have been the flashing red beacon for the financial catastrophe that is High Speed 2?

[Jeremy Quin]

We take infrastructure challenges seriously. It is incredibly important to bear down on inflation for a whole range of reasons, including the impact on our capital projects. Clearly, inflation has had a dramatic impact over the last 18 months. The IPA is a force for challenge in Government projects. It supports HS2 delivery through advice and assurance, particularly through the annual assurance updates, which help to provide external challenge to the Department when it makes its regular reports to Parliament, which it will do this month.

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[Johnny Mercer]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. The Prime Minister has asked me to look at the issue. There are about 92,000 care leavers aged between 18 and 25 in the United Kingdom. They require and deserve pathways similar to those that we have created in the veterans space. I look forward to launching that strategy and speaking further to the House, before the summer recess, about the issue of children in care.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I noted, with interest, the update to the civil service headquarters occupancy data for June on the Cabinet Office website this morning. It shows a pleasing trend of more civil servants coming back to their desks, but with some Departments, such as His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, still below 50%, what is my right hon. Friend doing to ensure that more civil servants get to their desks?

[Jeremy Quin]

We are encouraging people to go back. That is an ongoing trend, and my hon. Friend is right about what he alludes to in the numbers. There are benefits in civil servants working together, as there are for those in other areas of the economy, in terms of innovation, teamwork and being able to bring on new members of a team. I welcome the fact that people are returning to the office and that they are working collaboratively in Government buildings across the country.

Northern Ireland Protocol

Greg Smith Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

There was a lot in there. My hon. Friend is right that long-standing arrangements have been in place to protect biosecurity on the island of Ireland, and indeed on the respect that the UK has had for the single epidemiological zone on that island. We will continue to respect all of those things. Nothing in the framework changes that. It is something that everyone has agreed with in the past. No one has objected to it and it is right that we continue to move forward with those procedures.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

The headlines of the Windsor framework make it clear that a great deal of progress has been made, and I commend my right hon. Friend for that. I look forward to getting stuck into scrutinising the detail. As I get on with the exercise of seeking to answer the question of whether this framework fully restores Northern Ireland as a full and equal part of the United Kingdom, can the Prime Minister help me to understand how it is that under the Stormont brake—unprecedented as that mechanism is—EU law is still presumed to take primacy with an option to opt out of it, as opposed to UK law being the primary law with an option to opt in to EU law, should that be right for Northern Ireland?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend should recognise that we are talking about less than 3% of EU law. That law applies with the consent of the people of Northern Ireland, and it is there because it avoids a hard border on the island of Ireland—something that I think everyone agrees with. It also preserves access to the EU single market for Northern Ireland businesses—something that we have heard from colleagues and businesses that they also value. The important point is consent. That is why the Stormont brake is so important; it ensures that it is the institution and the people of Northern Ireland who get to decide whether they think that those laws are appropriate for them. It is a powerful safeguard that ensures that the UK has, if needed, a veto over laws that cause concern. That is why the Windsor framework represents such a decisive breakthrough.

Illegal Immigration

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What I can tell my hon. Friend’s constituents and community is that we want to deliver on this as soon as practically possible. Our new deal with Albania will take effect in a matter of weeks, so we will be able to swiftly return people—those who are already here and any new arrivals—back to Albania. He knows that we are keen to press on with finding new sites as soon as we can commercially negotiate them to take people out of hotels. Of course, with regard to Rwanda, we are waiting for the latest court judgment, but he should be in no doubt but that we want to deliver on that policy.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Prime Minister for making this a top priority, and I look forward to backing the legislation in the new year. Turning to the legislation we already have, there are significant powers of detention in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. Will he look again at how we can implement those, at the very least for those who are accused of committing heinous crimes, particularly against children?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right. We do have new powers, particularly on the enforcement side. We are very keen to use them to strengthen the deterrent impact, but as he knows, we need to go further, and that is what our new legislation will do.