Richard Holden
Main Page: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)Department Debates - View all Richard Holden's debates with the HM Treasury
Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work
Richard Holden Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
There is a huge amount to welcome in the Queen’s Speech this year. The core of it is our levelling-up agenda to unite the country, and that has particularly been the case in North West Durham. We have already seen people really getting on board with that in our recent local elections; we have gone from zero to six seats in the council elections and fourth to first in the share of the vote over the last four years. There is some other great stuff as well, including our commitment to the NHS; safer streets; getting immigration under control; modernising our criminal justice system, including reforming bail; reforming leasehold; online safety; a higher education Bill to ensure that there is free speech on our university campuses; and a real push on our violence against women and girls strategy, which I will hopefully be working cross-party on in my push to get virginity testing and hymenoplasty banned.
The core of the Gracious Speech for me is really three things on the levelling-up agenda. It is about skills and post-16 education; getting the subsidy control Bill in the UK, which means that we are making our own decisions about that; and the procurement Bill, which means that we can finally put British at the heart of everything that the Government do.
I would like to say a couple of small things to the Front-Bench team. It was great to hear my hon. Friends the Members for Dudley South (Mike Wood) and for Clacton (Giles Watling); we have spoken to the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury about beer duty and how we want to see a differential for draught to help our pubs build back. I also want to see the gambling review come into legislation, if not this year, then in the next Queen’s Speech, because I am very passionate about that, along with other members of the all-party group on gambling-related harm.
Finally, I just want to say that this is a Queen’s Speech that really helps deliver on our levelling-up agenda, a one nation agenda. I will be supporting it at Divisions in the future.