Debate on the Address

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am deeply sorry that—

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition, said about 10 minutes ago, “In conclusion.” I fear, as time has passed, that he may be in danger of inadvertently having misled the House, and I thought you might want to take the opportunity to set this right.

[Mr Speaker]

No. Some people may think that the hon. Gentleman is fastidious and others may conclude that he is pedantic. You pay your money and you take your choice, but there is no disorder here, although if people persist in raising what they know not to be points of order, that would itself be disorderly, and I know that the hon. Gentleman of all people would not want to stray into such misdemeanour.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Blackford]

I fully agree. This matter was much debated in the previous Parliament. It has demonstrated the hardship that many of my hon. Friend’s constituents will face, and those in other constituencies in Glasgow. It would be an act of compassion by the Conservative Government if they were to do the right thing and remove the threat of closures to the Glasgow jobcentres.

With the threat of a hard Brexit and the loss of access to our most important markets, our exporting businesses will not be feeling stability and certainty. “Strong and stable” is what the Prime Minister offered the country, but “uncertain and unstable” is what she has delivered. Nothing in the Queen’s Speech changes that.

That is most true in respect of the United Kingdom leaving the EU. This is the biggest issue facing the United Kingdom, and it will be the greatest challenge in this Parliament. A strong and stable approach might have involved the Prime Minister seeking consensus and working to protect the country from the most damaging potential impacts of a hard Brexit. That was, after all, what the Prime Minister promised us last year. Instead, we have a Prime Minister who called an unnecessary election designed to crush any opposition to her. Well, how did that work? Her gamble having backfired, she has—[Interruption.] I have to say that it is pretty remarkable to hear the gibes coming from Conservative Members, because we have a Government who are going to have to rely on the DUP to get any of their legislation through. When it comes to the position of Scotland, one cannot get away from the fact that the Scottish National party still won this election. Unlike the Government, we have a majority of the seats in Scotland—something that the Conservatives could only ever dream about.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

May I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on becoming leader of the SNP group in Parliament? He is widely respected across the House and will, I think, be a brilliant leader for his troops. Does he not find that actually the SNP and the Tories are in the same position, because we both did less well than expectations but we both won more votes in our respective areas?

[Ian Blackford]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. The Conservatives have still got to realise that we have a stable Government in Scotland concentrating on the day job. If anyone wants an example of strong and stable, look to what has happened in Edinburgh. One cannot get away from the fact that there are 59 parliamentary seats in Scotland and 35 of us who will stand up for Scotland in this Parliament. When it comes to defending the rights and the interests of the people of Scotland, I want to see every Scottish MP following the lead that we in the Scottish National party will give.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell). I was particularly delighted to hear that she had a birthday on election day, because so did my son, and cake was all over the Rees-Mogg household on that day, as I hope was the case in Newcastle upon Tyne North. I particularly want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) on her absolutely brilliant maiden speech, and on being the first new Member to make a maiden speech in this Parliament, which shows a wonderful courage.

As it happens, the Chelmsford seat is the one I know from my earliest days politically, because my godfather, the late Norman St John-Stevas, represented it—and got down to a majority of about 300 in his last election. I am glad to say that my hon. Friend has done a good deal better in her election. I listened to her speech, and her affection for her constituency, and her note at the end that it puts up statues to its most distinguished denizens, and I am sure that one in due course will appear to her. We are also very lucky to have somebody joining our House at this time who so thoroughly understands European politicians.

I now want to move on to the tragedies that have affected this nation in recent months: the terrorist outrages. We must never assume them to be routine. They have happened with increasing frequency—four of them in such a short time—but we must not allow their repetition to lessen our horror or our determination to win through.

Then there was Grenfell Tower, which I happen to think is an even greater tragedy as it seems to me that it was preventable. There is such deep sadness and horror at what happened there, and all of us in public life must ensure we work out how that can never happen again. Although it is often said that something should never happen again, it is not always within the power of man to ensure that that is the case, but with Grenfell Tower it ought to be possible to ensure that something of that kind never happens again.

I am sorry for that long preamble, Mr Speaker, but I thought it was important in these circumstances, before I move on to the Queen’s Speech in the context of the general election.

We basically fought the general election in the way Stanley Baldwin fought the 1929 general election. He ran on the slogan “Safety first”, and we ran on the slogan “Strong and stable”. I think the two are the same, and they are both deeply unappealing. He lost in 1929, and we underperformed in 2017—I use the word “underperformed” for the sake of accuracy rather than as an effort at spin.

We have to ask ourselves why the safety first approach underperforms. I think the answer is that the voters do not feel that we are on their side; they feel instead that it is business as normal. Yet we know from the Brexit vote and the vote at the last election here—not to mention the United States and what has gone on on the continent—that voters are fed up with business as normal.

We must look to the Queen’s Speech to decide how business is going to be changed: what are we going to do to make people’s lives better? One of the titles of the Pope is “servus servorum Dei”: the servant of the servants of God. That is how we should view our role —as the servants of the people of the United Kingdom, whom I happen to think are also the people of God. We must work to ensure that we can help them lead better, more prosperous lives.

Brexit presents a great opportunity, and one that we are not talking about enough. The lessons of free trade are that we produce better standards of living for people because they can buy goods more cheaply. The biggest burdens that the EU imposes are on food, where the tariffs are so high that we cannot really import any, and the biggest generators of revenue in this country are clothing and footwear. Therefore, what is attacked by the protection in the single market and the customs union are the things that are the most important part of the basket of goods bought by the poorest in the land. We want to get rid of that, so that they can keep more income in their pockets to spend on the things that they want, or to save, with all the concomitant economic advantages that that leads to. People can then buy other goods or deposit money. Money can be invested and business can grow. If we move away from this protectionist European approach, people will have a higher standard of living. That is essential.

This is not about having bad regulations and a free for all. Many countries in the world that we trade with have higher standards than we do. The United States has different standards but it does not poison its people, and the Australians do not poison their people, but the goods that we buy from them would be cheaper, and that will help the poorest in our country.

We need to look specifically at some of the things in the Queen’s Speech, and to stand up for those who have big business weighing down on them. I am not anti-business. I have been in business all my life—I am pro-business—but I note the statement that Her Majesty graciously read to us about tackling

“unfair practices in the energy market”.

Even I had Scottish Power writing to me to say that it would send in the bailiffs when it had sent me a bill that was nearly 15 times what it was meant to be. Frankly, it is all right for me as I am quite capable of writing back to the company and making sure it does not send the bailiffs round, but when such companies do that to our constituents, those people do not necessarily have that easy ability to get in touch with the right person and stop that sort of nonsense happening. Some of these companies are aggressive and skew the contracts in their favour. That does not mean that I want to see a price cap, but I do want to see fairness and to see us being on the side of our voters.

I want to finish on the subject of housing. Grenfell Tower has really brought this home to all of us. The problem with Grenfell Tower is a very deep-seated one. It goes back to the point at which it was popular to put up tower blocks as an exercise in social engineering. There are opinion surveys going back to the 1940s, and when people are asked what type of property they want to live in, 80% of them say houses; only 2% or 3% say tower blocks. But what did the politicians and the bureaucrats give to the people? We gave them tower blocks that they did not want, and there are now 4,000 of them blighting our landscape. We then decided that those tower blocks should be refurbished, and that refurbishment was very expensive. Hardly a penny seems to have been spared, except on safety. Those buildings might now be very environmentally friendly and they might look a little prettier than they did before, but although £8 million was spent on refurbishment, the £5,000 to make the panels fire-secure and the £200,000 for sprinklers was not spent.

This is the worst type of bureaucratic imposition, and we should be saying to any family that goes to sleep in a tower block tonight frightened because the building has the same cladding and whose children are having nightmares that, whatever the difficulty, we will find somewhere else for them to live. The numbers may be great and the problem may be vast, but we must show that we are on people’s side. Then, we must recognise that people want houses, not tower blocks. We must build them houses and get rid of the tower blocks, and then we must allow them, as Margaret Thatcher did, to become homeowners. If we do that, we will be on people’s side. We will support our electors, and we will be, like the Holy Father, servus servorum Dei.