Call for General Election

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Edward, for allowing me to speak on behalf of the 1,892 people in my constituency who have signed this petition. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for expounding why this is an important debate. I am in my fifth Parliament now, and I do not recall the Petitions Committee having to call as many debates on calling another general election in any other Parliament. This debate follows last January’s, when 3 million people had signed the petition. Why are we seeing this appetite among our constituents to re-litigate the general election of 2024 so soon after it happened?

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

I believe I just heard the hon. Member say that there had been a petition with 3 million signatures last year and one with 1 million signatures this year. If that is correct, does that mean that the number of people calling for an election has fallen by two thirds?

[Dame Harriett Baldwin]

That is probably 4 million people who have, in that length of time, signed the petition. I encourage the hon. Member to dream on.

Why have we seen the robust signing of these petitions over the past two years? It boils down to the fundamental principle of our democracy, which is based around peoples’ manifestoes. We need to rely on political parties to set out a direction of travel in their manifesto and then to try to deliver it. The problem that has led to all these signatures is to do with not having been told in the manifesto about the Government’s plans for change.

I could go on for the whole of this debate about the tax changes alone because we were told in the general election that if they were to win, the Government had no plans to raise taxes beyond what was outlined in their manifesto. Within months, in the first Budget the Chancellor raised taxes by an astonishing £40 billion a year for the duration of this Parliament and public spending by a further £30 billion. In total, that is a £70 billion a year increase in public spending—something that was deliberately not stated during the general election campaign.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. It is lovely to see so many hon. Members on the Opposition Benches—that is unusual in a Westminster Hall debate.

I am a new politician, but I like elections. I like them very much, especially if I can talk about the health service. I like talking about hospitals, about our plans for our hospitals, about getting the waiting lists down and about our plans for neighbourhood health centres and for revolutionising the IT. I also talk up research. However, I do not think that now is the right time for a general election because, as the Health Secretary is fond of saying, although much has been done, there is much still to do. I am sure that we will see great changes as we bring the public with us and renew the NHS, as is our sacred duty.

I am an optimist, unlike the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover). Some will say that we are U-turners, but I say that we are a Government who listen—we listen. We listen to my constituent, Roxane Marjoram of The One Bull, Bury St Edmunds, who met the Chancellor of the Exchequer and then wrote her a personal letter about the difficulties of the rates revaluation for pubs. I understand that we will see some reversal of that revaluation. Just a few minutes ago, in the Lobby, I met farmers from Suffolk who told me they were so happy with what the Prime Minister had said about increasing the threshold for the inheritance tax. This is a Government who listen.

Some Opposition Members have been critical of the Prime Minister. They say that he perhaps lacks vision. I am not sure quite what they mean by that. I say that he is the right man at the right time. Mr Boris Johnson—hon. Members may remember him—was previously described as a man with the wrong set of talents for his particular crisis. Our Prime Minister is, I believe, exactly the opposite.

The situation of the world at the moment is as hazardous as any of us can recall. I met a man in a dinner jacket at a black tie dinner just a few weeks ago who told me that he is the chairman of a local Conservative association and that, given the way the world is at the moment, he believes that the Prime Minister is doing a brilliant job. I also believe that to be the case, so let us not have a general election right now. The hon. Members sitting on the Opposition Benches know very well that we must not have a general election.