Winter Fuel Payment

Debate between Josh Simons and Alison Griffiths

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Josh Simons]

I will not.

The Conservatives knew that the winter fuel payment needed to change—they said so in their manifesto in 2017—but they did nothing about it. They knew that NHS England was duplicating, wasting taxpayers’ money and failing to drive up standards, but they did nothing about it. They knew that flooding was getting worse in places such as Platt Bridge, Ashton and Abram in my constituency, but they did nothing about it.

Let me give an even more egregious example from this week. The shadow Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), has stomped his feet and shaken his head about new guidance issued by the Sentencing Council. The Lord Chancellor has been clear that independent agencies should not make policy; this Chamber should. However, what the shadow Secretary of State for Justice is unwilling to confront is the fact that his party welcomed that guidance. The unequal treatment in the guidance has not changed, and he knows that. The shadow Secretary of State for Justice typifies what the Conservative party has become, and that has been exemplified in this debate. Conservative Members come to this Chamber shaking with outrage and spoiling for a spat, but they forget that they have been in charge.

[Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Josh Simons]

I will not give way, as I am coming to the end.

Today’s debate is another reminder that Conservative Members are growing comfortable with opposition. They prefer shouting, stomping and shaking with outrage to running the country, and that is the difference between us and them. We believe in calmly but doggedly driving the change this country voted for. We believe in standing alongside working people, and delivering change that benefits them. Conservative Members can put on their Britney mics and prophesise about abstractions, they can stomp their feet, they can wave bits of paper and they can get buzz cuts in a bid to convince working people that they have changed, but they have not. We are the party of working people and of change, and change is what we will continue to deliver.