Debate on the Address

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Wednesday 13th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady says that the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) is a symptom of the problem, but does she agree that she and he have something in common? She very loosely agreed that we should race with America into war in Iran, then just a week later she thought, “Maybe that’s not such a good idea.” Does that not prove why she and he are totally unsuitable for speaking from the Government side of the House?

[Mrs Badenoch]

That was a nice try, but it is not going to work.

You cannot solve the problems of the country unless you have a plan to fix the civil service, the regulators, the legislative straitjacket and the powers transferred from Parliament to the courts. Unless you fix the structures of Government, everyone will continue to fail. Britain is not ungovernable and it is not broken.

The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) asked what the plan was. We have published an alternative King’s Speech, and the reason is that we need to take tough decisions to get the country out of the mess we are in by cutting wasteful spending, funding defence, securing our borders and reducing the cost of energy. If you want to bring down bills for families and bring industry back to this country, you need a plan to scrap the net zero legislation that is strangling industry and making energy costs higher. That is why we are proposing a cheap energy Bill to do just that.

If you want businesses to employ people, you need to stop crushing them with thousands of pages of employment laws and stop handing power to the unions. You need to stop hammering businesses with tax rises. That is why we are proposing a get Britain working Bill, which would scrap laws that are no longer fit for purpose and are killing jobs.

If you want to get a grip on illegal immigration and remove foreign criminals from the country, you must have a plan to leave the European convention on human rights and repeal the Human Rights Act. Efforts to get control of our borders have been frustrated because power has been taken out of the hands of Ministers. We need to bring that power back, so that we do not have murderers staying in our country because the courts stop us from deporting them. Our alternative King’s Speech shows how it can be done, letting the Government, not the courts, decide who comes and goes. Prime Ministers are going to keep running into problems until they deal with activist lawyers and international agreements that tie the Government’s hands against the interests of the British public. [Interruption.] Labour Members are chuntering that this is “boring.” Does someone want to stand up and tell us who they are supporting: the plotters or the PM? I know that is what they really want to get to. They are not interested in hearing what the plan for the country should be, because they are too focused on Labour party problems.

Next, we must reduce welfare spending, which is eating every penny that we generate in income tax and more. We must spend much more on defence. Even former Labour Defence Secretaries are pleading with the Government to do so. That is why we are proposing a sovereign defence fund that will overhaul Britain’s defence industrial base. That is what the alternative could be. The alternative King’s Speech makes difficult choices, because that is what leadership is. We have laid out these plans now because we are more than happy for Labour to take them; they might be our political opponents, but we are all citizens of this country. We recognise the enormous challenges facing Britain. We want to see those problems solved, and so do our constituents.

Time and again, I have offered the Prime Minister support to pass difficult legislation. Time and again, he has turned it down. It might be too late for him now, but it is not too late for his successor. It is time to get serious—it is time to deliver. That is what the British public expect, and it is what the Conservative party will do.