Horse and Rider Road Safety

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I thank all those who have written to me regarding this very important topic, particularly Sandra Downey at Talcarn Farm, who allowed me to have a ride in a horse-drawn carriage on a main road—believe me, that is really scary and it made me realise their vulnerability. Of course, we have the highway code and the guidance to pass wide and slow, but how do we get that message across more effectively? As our new road safety strategy says on horse rider safety,

“despite an investment of £2.4m in paid advertising raising road users’ awareness of the changes to The Highway Code, it is clear from research by external road safety stakeholders that more work is needed to embed these changes.”

Aspects of transport are devolved, and I am aware that the Welsh Government have taken action on this, including by incorporating key British Horse Society messages into the Pass Plus Cymru training for young drivers, but we all know that more is needed. Last week, on horse safety, the Minister said:

“We will look at what more we can do to strengthen the advice and guidance, and ensure that people are aware of those issues in the highway code.”—[Official Report, 8 January 2026; Vol. 778, c. 478.]

The question is: how aware are drivers of the dangers of rural roads? The speeds that we see drivers do are frightening, and drivers show no consideration for the lack of visibility on bends or at junctions where farm tracks come out on to roads. Could we put a greater emphasis on rural roads, and particularly horse rider safety, in driving tests? What other tools do we have? We can educate the willing and prosecute the transgressors, but that is likely to happen only when there has been a serious accident—when it is too late.

We absolutely cannot be complacent about this issue. I ask the Minister to use all the means at her disposal to identify the most effective ways of getting the message across; to implement a concerted, specific strategy on horse and rider safety; and to work collaboratively with the Welsh Government on any devolved aspects of such a strategy.

Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Tomlinson]

As the Minister with responsibility for tax, I am here answering questions about tax, and I am happy to continue to do so. The change that the Government came forward with last month—we will be legislating for it in the Finance Bill—will increase the threshold from £1 million to £2.5 million. We are doing that because we have listened to farmers and their representatives and to family businesses, too. We think that is the right thing to do, and we think it strikes the right balance.

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friends in DEFRA and the Treasury for listening to farming colleagues, including NFU Cymru and the Farmers Union of Wales, in making this welcome change to the proposals for agricultural property relief. It will mean that many more Welsh farms will not pay any additional inheritance tax. The Minister will know that the previous Conservative Government signed very detrimental trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand, which within 10 years will lead to limitless meat imports. Will he look carefully at what can be done now to help those Welsh family farms to maintain their farming tradition? At the moment, they will be open to severe competition, and we need to look at everything that can be done to help them.

[Dan Tomlinson]

The previous Government negotiated poorly when it came to trade deals. When the Conservatives negotiate, Britain loses. Labour has negotiated four new significant trade deals that will help to ensure that British businesses—farming businesses and businesses of all sorts—can access more markets, more easily. That is the right thing to do for long-term growth and productivity.

Independent Lifeboats: Government Support

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Harris, not least because you will be very familiar with many of the places I will mention. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) for securing this important debate on Government support for independent lifeboats.

I have the great privilege of serving as the MP for the constituency of Llanelli, which is surrounded by water on three sides. There is the Loughor estuary and the Burry inlet, which goes past Burry Port harbour to the stretches of Pembrey sands and reaches up to the estuary of the three rivers: the Gwendraeth, the Towy and the Taf. We enjoy spectacular views, including of the Gower peninsula--we have the best views of it, although my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) often disputes that. The peninsula is indeed spectacular, with its iconic Worms Head, which has itself been the scene of several lifeboat rescues this year alone.

However, it is important to note that that spectacular scenery hides the very treacherous waters beneath, which a huge tidal range, strong currents, shifting sands and mudbanks. There is also a lot of activity—notably the local cocklers and fishermen—as well as the usual range of leisure activities.

The area is served by three lifeboat stations. First, there is the independent Ferryside station. Although it came into my constituency only at the July 2024 general election—I visited it last year—it has served the area for almost 200 years. Just a few weeks ago, the station dealt with a very complex rescue involving three small fishing boats. Secondly, there is the independent Loughor lifeboat, which, although stationed on the Gower side of the Loughor, serves the whole area. Thirdly, there is the RNLI lifeboat in Burry Port, which is well supported by the local community there.

I pay tribute to the bravery and dedication of lifeboat crews. Their experience and knowledge of their local area is absolutely invaluable. They are willing to go out in all weather to rescue people who have got into difficulty. They are hugely professional, meaning that they can dovetail with the coastguard and the other statutory emergency services. Crews put in many hours of vital training to be ready for call-outs.

There is a significant amount of work and responsibility involved in maintaining a lifeboat station. Hours of work are put in by the crew and supporters to maintain buildings and equipment and to undertake training. That is, of course, in addition to the call-outs.

Then there is the cost. For example, running the Ferryside lifeboat costs around £20,000 each year. It costs £289 per year to buy and maintain a crew member’s drysuit, lifejacket, locator beacon and flare. The cost of a crew member’s helmet, which is absolutely essential for their protection, is £110. Those helmets have to be replaced every five years, and the helmets at Ferryside are shortly due for renewal. A can of petrol costs £16 and will power the Ferryside vessel in the water for about 30 minutes. Those are just some examples of the costs involved.

Our local communities are amazing in their fundraising efforts, whether that is the children of Ysgol Glanyfferi, the White Lion in Ferryside staging events for the Ferryside lifeboat, Llanelli Rotary club raising funds for the Loughor lifeboat, or the Burry Port community supporting the RNLI lifeboat there.

Then there is the valuable support from business, whether that is local businesses making donations in money or in kind, or specialist equipment companies providing supplies that are heavily discounted or provided for free. As the Ferryside lifeboat crew have said,

“It takes a team of people and industries to keep a lifeboat afloat. Beyond the volunteers are companies that support us with their generosity…such as Tohatsu Marine and Navisafe”

which supplied the crew with

“reliable navigation lights that can endure the elements”.

I pay tribute to the National Independent Lifeboat Association for the work it does on advocacy, advice and co-ordinating training. In total, NILA estimates that its members saved the taxpayer some £2.6 million in 2024. Of course, costs continue to escalate, whether it is insurance, repairs or equipment. As the Minister will know, the previous Conservative Government closed the rescue boat grant fund back in 2020. In spite of the entreaties from the chair of NILA and the warm words from Lord Davies of Gower, there was no commitment to reinstate it. The fund was not huge—£5 million over the previous five years—but the Ferryside lifeboat had a grant of some £7,000, and the Loughor lifeboat some £10,000. Again, those are not huge amounts, but it takes a lot of plant sales or pub gigs to raise that sort of money.

We all appreciate that financial times are difficult, but my plea this afternoon is for the Minister to look at whether there is any way additional support could be made available for lifeboats, to complement the valiant fundraising efforts of local communities and pay a real tribute to the dedicated and dangerous work of our lifeboat crews. We know that these small organisations manage funds very carefully and are good at making a small amount go a long way, so even a modest amount could make a significant difference. We also know that the public are very supportive of our lifeboat crews and would think that this was money well spent. So my plea to the Minister is, please look at this.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent question. She is right that it is not just the lowest effective tax rate for someone on average earnings since 1975, but the lowest headline tax rate and the lowest tax rate in the G7. That is the fundamental divide in British politics: taxes have gone up, and on the Government Benches we do not think that we have to accept the status quo; on the Opposition Benches they do. Why is that? Because lower taxes mean higher growth.

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

T7. A recent survey from the Debt Justice campaign has shown that 13% of adults have missed three or more bill or credit payments in the past six months, and 6.7 million people are now in financial difficulty. Does the Chancellor accept that for millions of people, getting from one end of the month to the next under the Tories is a nightmarish struggle, and that people feel worse off because they are worse off?

[Jeremy Hunt]

May I gently correct the hon. Lady? As I said, living standards have risen by £1,700 per household since 2010, and the number of people in absolute poverty is down by 1.7 million. She is right to talk about the debt pressures that people face, which is why in the Budget we abolished the £90 fee for debt relief orders, having talked to Citizens Advice.

Budget Resolutions

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

At last week’s Budget, the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box like a smiling, villainous fairy tale character holding out a shiny apple glistening with national insurance cuts, while all the while knowing that inside it was a deadly poison: the fact that we will all pay 10p more tax for every 5p we get back. The Chancellor is supposedly giving back, but people across the UK are suffering from the highest tax burden in 70 years, with the stealthy drip-feed of the poison of freezing tax thresholds.

The freezing of the basic threshold has brought 3.7 million more people into paying tax, and more taxpayers are squeezed by now having to pay the higher rate of tax, as more of their income is in that bracket, often because of a pay rise that has not even kept pace with inflation, so there is a double whammy of more tax and less purchasing power. The freezing of the tax thresholds affects many pensioners too. They do not need much of a workplace pension topping up their state pension before they are in that tax threshold country again. Of course, freezing the tax threshold hits those on the lowest income in particular.

And all this while we have had rampant inflation. Although inflation may now be calming down, prices are still rising, with higher food bills and higher energy bills—the Government’s failure to roll out renewables more quickly has made that all the worse—and higher mortgages and rents.

This Government have also devolved economic woes, including through cuts to council tax budgets in England. The Welsh Government settlement is some £3 billion less than if it had grown with GDP since 2010, meaning that they have to pass on cuts to Welsh councils. Across the UK, people are being asked to pay higher council tax for fewer services. We have had the biggest fall in living standards in our history. People in Llanelli and across the UK are worse off under this Conservative Government.

This Conservative Government have been squeezing household incomes for 14 years. Back in 2011, the Tories increased VAT to 20%, putting up household bills. They have cut and cut and cut the benefits paid to the least well-off in society—many of whom are, of course, in work—leaving many without enough to live on. Back in 2011, the Government started using the retail prices index instead of the consumer prices index to calculate benefits, which worked out as a cut. Then, there were cuts to health and pregnancy grants, Sure Start maternity grants and the baby element of child tax credits, leaving the parents of newborn babies with less money to fend for them. Then, in 2013 we had the bedroom tax, which was a cut in housing benefit that had originally been calculated as what people needed simply to cover the cost of rent. By 2022, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported that in eight out of 10 benefit changes between 2013 and 2022, unemployment benefit had lost value, either through freezes or increases that were worth less than inflation. Then along came rampant inflation. People are even poorer, and even more are now having to turn to food banks.

In all of that, we lost the child trust fund. Anyone turning 18 used to be able to claim money that had been put by for them by the state and their family. In 2011, however, the Tories cut it, meaning that 18-year-olds do not have that to look forward to. England lost the educational maintenance allowance as well, but in Wales we managed to keep it for the very poorest pupils.

We desperately need growth in the economy. This has been a complete Tory failure. At 22 Budgets, Tory Chancellors have promised growth, but they have failed. There have been seven consecutive quarters of falling GDP per capita and now officially we are in a recession. With cuts back in 2011, the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition choked off growth with swingeing austerity, and the incompetence continued with that disastrous mini-Budget in autumn 2022, leaving people facing years and years of increased mortgage payments. There has also been the failure to give business and industry the confidence they need to invest, including in renewables and to reform the energy market.

People in Llanelli and up and down the country are desperate for change and desperate for hope of a better life. That is why we need a Labour Government, who will slash energy bills for households and industry, invest in the new green technologies of the future, and invest £3 billion to ensure that we develop primary green steelmaking here in the UK. And the sooner, the better.

UK Economy

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Monday 19th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami]

I believe that the right hon. Lady asked a similar question of the Chancellor at the last Treasury questions, and the Chancellor responded by saying that he was absolutely clear about the need to compensate people in the way that she has described. He will update the House in due course and indeed update her with further details in response to her question.

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has failed to get growth and industry has completely lost confidence in this Government. With projects cancelled, HS2 cancelled, Building Schools for the Future cancelled, hospitals never built and an absolute failure to bring down high energy prices, it is no wonder that business investment forecasts are down. With the US and the EU incentivising investment, what is the Minister now going to do to get the investment we need in the green manufacturing industries of the future?

[Bim Afolami]

To increase investment we brought in full expensing at the last fiscal event, which should represent an increase over the forecast period of £14 billion of investment and deal with the chronic weakness of our economy over generations. That is what we are doing to increase investment. In relation to green investment in particular, what we are not doing is having a huge unfunded £28 billion plan—or maybe now it is not Labour’s plan; maybe it is a secret plan or maybe the Labour Front Benchers have stopped their plan. We have a responsible costed plan to increase investment; the Opposition do not have one.

Silicon Valley Bank

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our actions demonstrate that we are on the side of business. We mean it when we say that we want to make the UK the best place to start, grow and run a business, and, I will add, to list a business, because he is quite right that HSBC is an enormously successful global business that is headquartered in the UK and proudly listed on the UK stock exchange.

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

In the light of recent events and the risk of contagion, can the Minister spell out exactly what action he is taking to ensure that we do not see a contraction in the availability of credit to these specialist, fast-growing companies? What more will he do to facilitate access to appropriate credit to help our groundbreaking tech industries to develop?

[Andrew Griffith]

It is a core focus for the Government to ensure that our scaling-up businesses get access not just to credit, but to capital at every level through their life: the Prime Minister has made that a core priority. That is why we are bringing forward many reforms that will open up capital markets to growing businesses, and it is why we will continue to look at reforming packets of trapped capital, whether that be in respect of insurers, through the reform of solvency II, or through looking again at pension arrangements to make sure that savers and potential future pensioners can benefit from the wonderful opportunities from emerging businesses in the tech and life sciences sector.

Non-domestic Energy Support

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend is a stalwart champion of the steel sector, which I know is so important to him and his constituents. I absolutely agree with him. Of course, we are aware of the differing levels of support. In fact, with schemes such as this, it is difficult to make a comparison internationally because of the variations. On the additional discounted support for energy and trade-intensive industries that we have announced today, international comparators were a factor in considering the greater generosity of that support. Obviously, in the long term, what we need is secure energy supplies so that we can have choice and secure energy. That is the most important thing in the long run, but across Government we want to see what we can do to support the steel sector.

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

In the long term, we need to reduce the reliance of energy-intensive industries such as steel on fossil fuels, and for that we need further investment in innovation. On 17 November, the Chancellor committed to write to me about whether the Government would earmark the £200 million contributed by steel producers and now returned to the UK Government from the EU research fund for coal and steel to set up a UK steel innovation fund. Will the Minister now tell me what the Government’s policy is and when I can expect that letter?

Autumn Statement

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I am happy to do that. My hon. Friend is quite right to raise those issues. We are doing a lot of short-term things, including help with energy bills as well as business rates. As we move to a new business rates system, we are freezing the levels at which business rates can increase and introducing a 75% discount next year for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses. Fundamentally, as a Conservative Government, we know that we cannot flourish as an economy without flourishing small businesses, and we will back them to the hilt.

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The Chancellor mentioned innovation, and a modern steel industry is vital to our future prosperity, so will he earmark the £200 million originally contributed in good faith by steel producers and now returned to the UK Government from the EU research fund for coal and steel to set up a UK steel innovation fund to develop the steel technologies that we need to drive growth and work towards net zero?

[Jeremy Hunt]

I will happily look into that issue and write to the hon. Member. She will know that one of the growth industries that I identified was advanced manufacturing. There is much that we can do to ensure that the steel industry is competitive in this country, and we want it to have a bright future.

The Growth Plan

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Friday 23rd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have a dynamic population of highly skilled people. Our job in Government is to empower people to grow, to achieve and to thrive in the ways he suggests.

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

During the last 12 years of Tory Government, public services have been cut to the bone, and they now face rampant inflation and an escalation of costs. Following his announcement, what reassurances can the Chancellor give that there will be no real-terms cuts to the budgets of our public services?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am not going to make any statement about a budget this morning.