Andrew Griffith MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 9 Feb 2026 · UK-India Free Trade Agreement · Hansard source

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  I shall take good heed of those comments, Madam Deputy Speaker. We support having a sovereign trade policy, and this is an excellent example of where it could have advantages. We are talking about one of the largest economies on the planet, which is growing approximately five times faster than the European Union. However, the deal could have been better. We are passionate about supporting our investors, lawyers, engineers, scientists and the wonderful services industry. We believe that they can compete anywhere in the world, provided that the field is level and the rules are fair, but we did not need to get a “good enough” deal across the line. British businesses needed something with a really good kick in it to get this country growing. Instead of a vindaloo of a deal, the Prime Minister came back with a bag of soggy poppadoms.

• 9 Feb 2026 · UK-India Free Trade Agreement · Hansard source

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  I will defer to the Minister on prawn eyestalk ablation.

• 9 Feb 2026 · UK-India Free Trade Agreement · Hansard source

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  I hope that my right hon. Friend is reassured to a degree by the Minister’s response. I will move on now—you will be pleased to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that my speech is not as comprehensive as the work of the Select Committee. I would be grateful if the Government could clarify a few points about the position on food and agricultural products. There are protections for sugar, chicken, eggs and pork, and that has been welcomed by producers. However, there are concerns from the British dairy industry about opening the market, which describes the deal as a one-way street: dairy is excluded from UK exports to India, yet tariffs on Indian dairy coming into the UK are removed.

• 9 Feb 2026 · UK-India Free Trade Agreement · Hansard source

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  But you don’t like the States.

• 9 Feb 2026 · UK-India Free Trade Agreement · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that intervention; I drew some comfort from it, but we will have to see the detail of the exact crustacean protections we end up with. Finally, there is one glaring area that—even beyond the missing benefits to our important services industry—was a point of difference in the negotiations that we conducted and a reason why, when we were in government, we did not consummate that deal and why the negotiations remained outstanding. The Leader of the Opposition has been very clear about this: when she was leading the negotiations, she refused to sign this deal because of the double contributions convention. The Minister will know precisely what I mean by that. We still have not seen the detail of that convention, and every Member of the House should be concerned. This is a very limited part of the process of scrutiny of trade deals—the rights of Parliament are perhaps not fully discharged just by the CRaG process. However, we have not even seen what the Minister referred to earlier as the HMRC agreement on this. What it means in substance—I will choose my words very precisely—is that Indian workers who come here to work will not pay a penny in British national insurance contributions, and neither will their employers. The Government decided that they would open this deal—this two-tier tax system for India—at precisely the same time as hiking their jobs tax on every single British worker. I am happy to be rebutted or corrected, but by my calculations, under this agreement it could be up to £10,000 a year cheaper to hire a software developer on an average British salary from India than to hire someone from Britain for the same role, as employers will not be liable for those national insurance contributions. These are big numbers, and this will mean a big disadvantage to hiring an identical British worker at a time when there are 9 million people of working age not in work and when unemployment is rising—in fact, it has risen every month under this Government.

• 9 Feb 2026 · UK-India Free Trade Agreement · Hansard source

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  I am delighted to see not just the excellent Minister for Trade, but the Secretary of State. [ Interruption. ] I did; just bank the win. I read that the Secretary of State is being earmarked as a caretaker Prime Minister, so we are pleased that he has the time to spend with us—I think we have 10 minutes before Labour colleagues have to run upstairs. Richard Cobden said: “I believe that Free Trade will do more to civilise the world than all the treaties of peace that have ever been signed.” He was the former Member of Parliament for Stockport, but he was a resident in my own West Sussex constituency, near Midhurst. His advocacy of free trade, including in this House, was always about its benefits for ordinary people: cheaper food, higher wages and fewer incentives for people to wage destructive wars that had a huge impact on ordinary people. We Conservatives agree. Those on the Conservative Benches will always be the party of free trade, where it benefits our country. That is why it was a Conservative Government who signed new landmark trade agreements with the EU, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and negotiated the entry of the UK to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. It is why it was the Conservative Government who laid the foundations for this free trade agreement with India. And let us be absolutely clear: this agreement is a tangible benefit of the decision the British people made in 2016 to leave the political institution of Europe; the fruit of the independent trade policy we regained, allowing the United Kingdom to negotiate once again as a sovereign state, just like Canada, Australia and Switzerland —Britain first, not Britain hoping against experience that its interests would float to the top of a soup of 27 other conflicting flavours. Since July 2024, the Indian economy has grown by 11%. For context, the European Union has grown by 1.9% in the same period. Under this Government, the British economy has grown by just 1.6%. Exports matter, so this deal has the potential to be a key part of a growth plan for our economy. However, as any business leader will tell us, the devil is not just in the detail of such deals, but in what is not in them. I welcome the excellent report by the Business and Trade Committee, which is very thorough and an important part of the scrutiny process of this House. We are a nation for which services represent nearly half of our global exports. I am afraid it appears that the Government have accepted a deal that is disappointingly thin on the sectors where Britain leads the world. The inclusion of services in this deal was the No. 1 priority of the previous Government’s negotiations. Instead, this deal settles for locking in existing levels of liberalisation—all good—rather than breaking new ground on services. There is an absence of provisions for mobility to allow our service industries to really integrate in India, restricting our consultants, engineers and architects from practising on the ground.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Workers’ Rights: Bracknell Forest · Hansard source

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  Of course, it is not just Bracknell, and one day those on the Labour Benches will understand that there are no workers’ rights if people have no work. Youth unemployment is up significantly. That is a tragedy that everybody should be ashamed of, and it is going up on Labour’s watch. Small businesses, which provide so many jobs, are very worried about the administrative burden of trade union access. We are talking about the very smallest businesses—pubs, restaurants, garden centres and small catering businesses. They are the backbone of our communities. As the Minister tries to implement the Employment Rights Act, will she consider lifting the threshold for the trade union access agreements to a headcount of 250—that is recognised elsewhere in law as a threshold—which would protect our very smallest businesses from that administrative burden?

• 29 Jan 2026 · Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  The Minister has just heard from across the House continuing pleas to support the hospitality industry. It is always a good day when the Government U-turn and provide more support for pubs, so we welcome that. However, unless the Minister can explain to us when a pub becomes a gastropub, when a gastropub becomes a restaurant, and when a restaurant with rooms becomes a hotel and descends down that wormhole, will she make representations to the Chancellor to extend the same measures for pubs that she U-turned on this week across the whole retail, hospitality and leisure sector? The truth of the matter is that 90% of that sector will not benefit from this week’s U-turn.

• 28 Jan 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  The Deputy Prime Minister wants to talk about experience. I spent 25 years building businesses and creating jobs; he spent 25 years manufacturing grievance. If the Labour party knew anything about business, it would know that this is too little, too late. Our high streets—their high streets—are bleeding out, and the Chancellor is handing out— [ Interruption. ] Government Members do not want to hear this. Our high streets are bleeding out, and the Chancellor is handing out a box of sticking plasters. They cannot even U-turn properly. A senior adviser to Andy Burnham said yesterday: “The Chancellor just wants a cheap headline”. Meanwhile, our high streets are being decimated. He is right, isn’t he?

• 28 Jan 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  You do not make young people better off by putting them out of work. The Deputy Prime Minister’s MPs are already banned from pubs. Where next? Shops, restaurants, hair salons—that might not make a difference to him or to me, but it would for many of them. They should back our plan to scrap business rates, but they have not got the backbone to cut welfare to pay for it. It is not just business rates; under Labour, the cost of hiring is up. Can he tell the House how much more it costs to hire a 21-year-old under Labour?

• 28 Jan 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, you can feel the Deputy Prime Minister’s frustration. The Prime Minister is away, the Business Secretary is away, and here he is—left-behind Lammy, the designated survivor, having to defend the indefensible. It is very clear that he does not know the answer, so let me tell him. The cost will be up by £3,600 a year. Under Labour, businesses cannot afford to hire, and one in six young people cannot find a job. This Government are blocking people who just want to get on in life—ambitious people like Andy from Manchester, having his dreams crushed by Labour. Could the Deputy Prime Minister explain why unemployment has gone up almost every month that the Government have been in office?

• 28 Jan 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  The thing that the Deputy Prime Minister did not want to say is that every Labour Government leave office with unemployment higher than when they arrived. There is a reason for that: they do not understand what it takes to be an employer. They do not understand business. The Government are strangling business with their red tape, and they are about to make things infinitely worse. Will the Deputy Prime Minister tell us his Government’s own estimate of the cost to business of the unemployment Act?

• 28 Jan 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  I do not know what is in the Deputy Prime Minister’s head; it is our party that is getting stronger. Overnight we learned that the former Deputy Prime Minister has got 80 names. On Sunday we learned that the Health Secretary’s allies claim he has got 200 names. Oddly, 50 Labour Members want the Mayor of Greater Manchester, who is not even an MP. They are supposed to be running the country. Once again, small businesses across this country will see that the Deputy Prime Minister did not answer the question, so I will tell him. The burden to businesses of the Government’s Bill is £1 billion a year. There we have it: they have no answers for small business, and there is no relief coming. They do not care about high streets, hotels, restaurants, farmers or young people. Will the Deputy Prime Minister not admit what the Members behind him are thinking: that it is not the Prime Minister going to China that is the problem; it is the fear that he might come back?

• 28 Jan 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  May I start by echoing the Deputy Prime Minister’s comments about Holocaust Memorial Day? We must never forget. May I also associate the Opposition with the condolences expressed by the Deputy Prime Minister to the family of Captain Philip Gilbert Muldowney. I also offer the condolences of the House to the family of Lord Flight, one of my predecessors in Arundel and South Downs, who served in Parliament with distinction for more than two decades. After the Chancellor’s U-turn yesterday, can the Deputy Prime Minister confirm that over 90% of retail, hospitality and leisure businesses will get nothing?

• 14 Jan 2026 · Offshore Wind · Hansard source

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  A very independent source!