Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

AI is an incredible new technology, and it can help the NHS to save lives, but there are also risks, such as the danger of deepfakes. The Government have been warned about those risks, yet time and again Ministers have dithered and delayed, and the Government’s failure to act was highlighted in the Financial Times this week. Have the Government run out of ideas, or are they just scared of their own Back Benchers?

[Michelle Donelan]

As the hon. Member will know, we have the defending democracy taskforce, which is dedicated to this very subject and is led by the Security Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat). We as a team are actively participating in that, and we also work with social media companies and our international counterparts. It is something that I personally put on the agenda at the summit and that I have personally discussed in forums such as the G7. The Deputy Prime Minister is also leading the way with his AI compact. There is no easy answer to this, but we are working in a conciliatory and speedy manner to ensure that we address all opportunities and answers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is vital that Britain grasps the opportunity of AI to grow our economy and to modernise vital public services. That relies on having a supply of highly trained staff. However, the Government are failing in that. Their AI scholarship scheme is floundering, with Ministers finding only 21% of the funding they promised. Why has the Department failed? When will the Secretary of State authorise an urgent review of this vital policy area?

[Michelle Donelan]

Perhaps the hon. Member missed my answer to the previous question, so I will indulge him by repeating it. Since 2018, we have dedicated £290 million to AI skills. That does not sound like a Government who are failing on that agenda.

Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We have only about seven minutes, so the Minister really has to be a bit more cautious in how much time he is using.

I call the shadow Minister.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has said that terrorist groups could use artificial intelligence to build chemical or biological weapons, but he has still failed to act decisively to regulate AI, even though the US and the EU are both taking action. Will the Minister tell the House whether the Secretary of State is using her current trip to the US to learn from the Biden Administration, or will our country have to put up with yet more dither and delay?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Saqib Bhatti)]

The Government have always been clear that we will have a contextual and proportionate response to AI. I spoke to the Secretary of State yesterday, and it is very clear that the US sees us as global leaders and will be working with us.

Tributes to Her Late Majesty the Queen

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Saturday 10th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is an honour to speak today, and to pay tribute to Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II personally and on behalf of my constituents in Reading East. Queen Elizabeth was our longest serving and arguably greatest ever monarch. She was deeply loved and admired, and we all feel a profound sense of personal sadness and a great loss at this difficult time. Like many of us, I am still trying to take in the events of the last few days. We all knew that this day would come, but part of us somehow felt that the Queen would always be there, because she had been there throughout our lives. She was truly a constant for all of us in a rapidly changing world. Her reign covered a period of unprecedented social and technological change, yet she also linked the modern world to the wartime generation.

The Queen’s life was defined by service. As a young woman, during the war, she made a solemn vow to serve her people as long as she lived. She kept that promise over more than 70 years as our Queen, during a lifetime dedicated to our country and to the Commonwealth. She led by example in good times and in bad, through her kindness, humility, quiet determination and her dry sense of humour. Her Majesty was both our head of state and the head of the Commonwealth, but we also felt a deep personal connection to her, one which is difficult to put into words. She was a mother, a grandmother and a great-grandmother, and we sometimes felt that she was like a grandmother to all of us in this country and in the Commonwealth.

Locally, there is a deep and abiding love and respect for the late Queen across our community. She visited several times during her long reign, including opening the new Reading station in 2014. I can vividly remember the sheer joy and enthusiasm of children, families and older people at a local platinum jubilee street party that I attended—people of all backgrounds, all faiths and none, celebrating their Queen. It was a more than fitting tribute to Her late Majesty and the Elizabethan age.

May the Queen rest in peace. God save the King.

UK Energy Costs

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Although the solutions to this crisis may sound complicated in this debate, the choice is straightforward for the Government: who pays at the end of the day? Let us be clear what a windfall tax is. It does not tax profits that energy companies had planned for and could have expected in all reason. This windfall has come about, as the Government have said themselves, as a consequence of what is happening in Ukraine and the aggression by Putin. The question that I have and my constituents will have is: how can the Government reasonably come to a conclusion that it is okay for those energy companies to make these huge profits on the back of that aggression by Putin?

No matter what we do over the windfall tax, there will be a cost to the taxpayer because the Government are under pressure in other areas of expenditure. We only have to look at the newspapers today to see how, yet again, the number of people waiting for operations in the NHS has gone up to 6.8 million; and how the cost of living is forcing teaching assistants to question whether they can commit themselves to supporting children in schools or should move to higher-paid jobs, such as in supermarkets. Everywhere we look, the Government are under pressure over public expenditure on our vital public services. Yet they are prepared to wave aside the potential to pay for these increases through a windfall tax.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I am grateful that my hon. Friend mentions teaching assistants because one contacted me recently. Many low-paid workers and others on moderate incomes be staggered by the Government’s decision to put the interests of energy companies ahead of those of normal families.

[Clive Efford]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government are morally wrong to turn their back on a windfall tax when they are clearly under financial pressure in other areas of public expenditure.

In my brief contribution, I want to raise one specific issue relating to my constituency. I have a craft bakery that has survived for 100 years and is about to celebrate its centenary. It has been run by six generations of the same family. It kept feeding people in my constituency—I was not the MP at the time, I hasten to add—during the second world war, so even the Luftwaffe could not shut down this bakery. It employs 20 members of staff, in an industry where energy use is really heavy, and faces cost increases of 300% or 400%, so it is trying to renegotiate its energy contracts. As the statement published by the Government says—I have it here; on such an important crisis, its sheer length is 200 words—there will be assistance for businesses equivalent to that given to individuals, guaranteed “for six months”. The Prime Minister said—I wrote these words down—that businesses would be given some idea of what assistance they will get “within three months”, but they are negotiating now. We had no clarity from the Prime Minister in her statement. It was as though she was making a Queen’s Speech—“My Government will”—but she gave us no detail on what Ministers will be doing.

One thing I want a guarantee on is that, if we are to get a financial statement from the Government next week or before the conference recess, we will have a proper debate in this Chamber, as we are required to have. Or will the Government avoid scrutiny—as has been a repeated action—yet again?

Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

When I was door-knocking in Newcastle yesterday, a young mum of two told me that she had never found it so hard to manage. The cost of living crisis meant that she could barely afford to get her kids to school. The Government were doing nothing to help, and she and her friends had joked that they would have to start selling their kidneys. That is the gallows humour of a country in crisis; it does not belong in one of the richest nations on earth. I have no confidence in a Government who do not support working families in Newcastle.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. I would just like to add that the same issue can be found across the country, in every part of it including the south of England. She is making an excellent point, and I hope that the Government listen to her.

Functioning of Government

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

No matter who forms the Government of this country, the Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is of paramount importance, as the people of Scotland themselves decided in the referendum in 2014.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

The current situation is clearly unsustainable. As we heard earlier from my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), it is damaging crucial decision making and harming our reputation abroad. Could the Paymaster General please take this back to the Prime Minister, urge an urgent resolution and inform the House as soon as possible?

[Michael Ellis]

The Prime Minister will be speaking shortly.

Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western]

I thank the Father of the House for his intervention and I accept the point he makes, but I am not entirely sure that the Prime Minister has fully accepted that he has misled this place.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I appreciate the point made by the Father of the House, but surely the issue here is the persistent breaches of the rules that seem to have taken place, the fact that that contrasts in such an appalling way with the sacrifices made by the British people, and that we all expect so much better.

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am actually going to come on to that point. The first offence was in summer 2020, and by then in Warwickshire alone we had already had 436 excess deaths in Warwickshire care homes, 347 due to covid. Thousands of people were unable to visit their relatives. Of those many cases, perhaps I could just cite one—that of Jill. Her dad, who had been a naval commander in world war two, was a very proud serviceman, and she was unable to visit him between March and his death in July.

The Government claim that the Prime Minister was under exceptional pressure. I think we can say that about all the frontline services—all the people working in healthcare, our teachers; it was across the piece—working to keep us safe. I am sure many people here would not have celebrated their birthdays, did not have parties and did not have office parties. I certainly did not, and I do not believe the Prime Minister should have at all.

Ukraine

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to point to that risk. It is foresighted of him. We are investing massively in cyber-protection—I think we are putting in another £2.6 billion. In the past few years, we have tackled more than 3,000 cyber-attacks It is a risk, but a risk, I am afraid, that we must run in the cause of freedom.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I offer my wholehearted support for much tougher sanctions against President Putin and his dreadful regime.

As mentioned earlier, there are many historic Ukrainian communities in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and indeed I would like to commend the work of the Reading Ukrainian Centre. What additional support can the Government give to these very valuable community groups and centres around the country that offer such support to families, friends and relatives both in the UK and in Ukraine?

[The Prime Minister]

Perhaps the most important thing that we can do for the Ukrainian community in this country is thank them and recognise everything that they have done for us in the past decades. They have been an amazing addition to the UK, to the UK economy and to our cultural and artistic life.

Armed Forces Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Four minutes each. I call Matt Rodda.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill).

We have covered a wide range of welfare issues tonight. I want to highlight one in particular, which has great resonance in my constituency of Reading East and, I believe, in the Minister’s constituency of Aldershot: the case of Gurkha soldiers who retired before 1997. As many Members will know, the Gurkhas have served our country with distinction over more than 200 years. However, soldiers who retired before 1997 receive very modest pensions—far smaller than those of other British soldiers. Many veterans live in my constituency and manage to exist on a very small income in a high-cost part of the country, and that experience is common across parts of west London, Hampshire and other areas close to their regimental base in north Hampshire.

This unfair treatment has led to a determined campaign by both Gurkha veterans and other former British soldiers to make good this wrong. Sadly, in the last few months this led to a number of Gurkhas going on hunger strike. I visited the hunger strikers as they took their action outside No. 10, which was a very moving experience. I pay tribute to them, and to the others who have supported their campaign. I appreciate that the Minister, and indeed the Secretary of State, have now intervened and responded to the Gurkhas’ concerns and that they are about to have discussions with the Government of Nepal. I welcome that. I support the Minister’s work on this and look forward to a better outcome. However, I remind him that this issue has been dragging on for some time—some years, indeed—and for many of the families involved this is a very difficult time. Prices are rising. Many families are living on very modest incomes, as I said, often in relatively high-cost-of-living parts of the country, and we should be doing so much more for them. They are a wonderful part of our armed forces and have given such great and noble service to this country.