Bernard Jenkin MP: speeches 2026

101 published records · newest first.

Speeches

11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source
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I welcome the speech from the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), who is an example of what we have seen throughout this debate, going back to the early 2000s: people peeling off from supporting assisted dying in principle and, certainly, peeling off from supporting this Bill. I am a case in point. I came into the Chamber to listen to Lord Falconer’s Bill in 2014 absolutely determined that I was going to vote for assisted dying. I sat through the debate and ended up voting against, because I thought that the arguments were not made in favour of the Bill. The second reason we should throw out this Bill is that it keeps changing. Even now, it is not settled. Even now, its advocates want changes to it. They are stuck with the reality that if the Parliament Act is invoked, they will only be able to invoke the Bill as it stands today. They will not be able to have their changes. So if in doubt today, the House must vote no. Thirdly, the question is far bigger, it turns out, than just a matter of conscience or an isolated matter to be decided. It is a massive question that affects public policy and has major public expenditure consequences. That has convinced me that we really should not see another Bill like this one until we have had a Government Bill go through the process of proper scrutiny within Government, with all the consequences laid out and dealt with. It must be a responsible and accountable Secretary of State that presents the Bill; it must not be a Back-Bench Bill. Maybe there should be a citizens assembly on this question—it is a subject that would lend itself to a citizens assembly. [ Interruption. ] Well, it would not take away any power from this House. This House would still be able to decide, but it would inform the debate in a way that the debate is still not informed. My mother and father passed away in recent years, and I am so grateful that my mother never had to confront this question. She often said, “Oh, I just want to die. I am just a burden on the family.” Though she would never have qualified for this Bill, I am so grateful that there were never any circumstances that would possibly have confronted her with this question. I advert to another conversation. I have a very dear friend—someone who has become a mentor—who is a very interesting, clever, intellectual, determined and courageous lady. She has scoliosis of the spine. The last time I went to see her, there she was, hardly able to sit up and in constant pain. We have open conversations, so I asked her, “If assisted dying were available to you, would you take it?” Without hesitation she said, “Oh, yes.” When I asked why, she said, “Because I am a burden to my family.” I said, “Well, I have been voting against assisted dying. I am going to have to rethink my position.” Then she said, without hesitation, “Oh, I don’t advocate it.” She understands the complexity of this, and she knows that it opens a can of worms that we really have not understood fully. I urge colleagues in the House to vote against the Bill today.
9 Sept 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source
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Despite long and historic disagreements between successive UK Governments and Israel, it has remained a steadfast ally in counter-terrorist efforts to keep our people safe in this country. We are now embarked, it seems, on a full diplomatic dispute with Israel and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats. What advice was the Foreign Office giving Ministers on this matter, and what advice were the security services giving about our national security interest before this decision was taken?
8 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source
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I would very much have liked to have discussed the medical devices questions arising from the Bill. The Minister made an incredibly short speech about that important matter. It is quite clear that these provisions are part of the covert dynamic alignment with the EU and the covert rejoin agenda being pursued by the Government. It raises all sorts of constitutional questions, but those are not for today. I will concentrate on HSSIB. I rise to support amendments 1 to 4, which would remove the abolition of HSSIB from the Bill. The Government have singularly failed to make the case for removing this crucial safety investigation function. It did not exist until recently, and now they want to scrub it out. I suspect that is because too many people in the health system do not like being held to account by an independent investigative body.
8 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source
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Will the Minister give way?
8 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source
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On the question of how the CQC leadership becomes conflicted, will my hon. Friend reflect on the fact that, in an Adjournment debate I held in July, the then Patient Safety Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), made it clear that the person responsible for deciding what safe space information might be released would be the chief executive of the CQC? If the chief executive of the CQC is to see all that information, how would he or she not be able to use it, or be tempted to use it, when he or she inspects hospitals for the purposes of the CQC? Would the safe space not then be hopelessly conflicted, and therefore lose public confidence?
8 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source
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Will the Minister give way?
8 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source
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The Minister shakes her head, but she is yet to give a good reason as to why this measure is in the Bill. When we had an Adjournment debate in July with the then Minister for patient safety, the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), she could not answer the question of who would conduct independent safety investigations in the NHS after the abolition of HSSIB. She said that safety investigations would be conducted by the Care Quality Commission, but she could not actually claim that they would be independent; as my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) demonstrated, they would not be. If, as it seems, it is intended that safety investigations should be carried out by the CQC unaffected by the transfer, why make the transfer at all? How much is this transfer going to cost? I asked the Minister, in a letter I sent her after the debate in July, to give us the information on how much the transfer of all this would cost. Nothing has arrived. I never had a reply to the letter. Of course, the Government have changed the Minister and the new Minister for patient safety, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), is not in the House today. I rather suspect that she is more sympathetic to this argument than the Minister sitting on the Front Bench today. In our earlier exchanges we discovered and once again exposed how the safe space will be brutally compromised by the fact that it will be housed in a regulator with, inevitably, other ulterior motives. The chief executive of the CQC is wantonly conflicted in terms of looking after the safe space, so he cannot be the one left in charge of that function. The real point here is that we are missing the opportunity to save so much money. Governments keep having public inquiries. The EPUT—Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust—public inquiry, affecting my constituency, cost in its first year £5 million, and in its second year it is costing another £5 million. The whole budget for HSSIB was only £6.3 million a year, yet it does scores of investigations, not just one inquiry. The Ockenden inquiry cost £14 million. If we could save just a fraction of the cost of medical negligence, which is £3.6 billion a year, HSSIB would pay for itself.
8 Sept 2026 · Artificial Superintelligence · Hansard source
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I am as keen as anybody to get on with discussing the Health Bill, but this topic is too serious an opportunity to miss, given that the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) has raised such important issues. I really commend his speech and his initiative. Everybody should read it. All I want to say is that a kind of unilateral disarmament on AI is not going to solve the international problem. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran: these are not respecters of international treaties or international laws, even if they were to sign such treaties or laws, and we do not want to disable our own industry. The jury is out on whether AI is an extinction-threatening phenomenon, but I really do commend the hon. Member for raising the topic. I hope he will forgive me for opposing the Bill because I want the debate to continue. Question put (Standing Order No. 23) and agreed to. Ordered, That Alex Sobel, Jess Asato, John McDonnell, Afzal Khan, Dr Allison Gardner, Bambos Charalambous, Sir Desmond Swayne, Charlie Maynard, Manuela Perteghella, Ben Lake, Yasmin Qureshi and Wera Hobhouse present the Bill. Alex Sobel accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the first time; to be read a S econd time on Friday 13 November , and to be printed (Bill 142).
7 Sept 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source
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I thank the Secretary of State for her announcement, which, however she dresses it up, is in fact a decision about common sense and listening. I put it to her that, in Essex, most of the district councils, the county council and most MPs want to stay with two-tier local government. Is that an option? Will she acknowledge that and listen?
2 Sept 2026 · EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK · Hansard source
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As a rather lone voice in this debate, I do not complain that it is not going to be a balanced debate, but somebody has to make the case.
2 Sept 2026 · EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK · Hansard source
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The referendum was in 2016, but all the legalities of membership of the European Union, including the Dublin convention, applied until 2021. The small boat crossings were rocketing before Brexit. They have nothing to do with it.
2 Sept 2026 · EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Member give way?
2 Sept 2026 · EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK · Hansard source
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Indeed, there are a few of us, but what we are hearing is a group of aggrieved remain supporters who have never come to terms with their grief and remain ideologically committed to rejoining. To anybody who wants to have another referendum, I do not say, “Bring it on,” because that is the last thing the public want, but I say that we would win again. When it comes down to the crunch, the British public do not want to hand back control of our laws to the European Union, and all the polls show that. If we ask them in a poll, “Do you want Westminster or Brussels to control farming policy?”, or whatever policy it is, people always vote for Westminster to maintain control.
2 Sept 2026 · EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK · Hansard source
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The question of scrutiny was raised by the Minister’s colleagues. In the absence of a European Scrutiny Committee, how is this stuff going to be scrutinised if he brings in direct applicability and direct effect of European laws?
2 Sept 2026 · EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK · Hansard source
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There are no tariffs.
2 Sept 2026 · EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK · Hansard source
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Which goods does the EU charge tariffs on? The hon. Member said that it charges tariffs; which goods are they on?
2 Sept 2026 · EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK · Hansard source
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I totally agree. Defence is a reserved matter for member states in the European Union. The European Union does not have any troops. NATO is the forum through which we operate, and it is NATO to which we should be committed, rather than setting up a rival defence organisation in the European Union. I will also point out the contributions. According to a table from the House of Commons Library, we were making a gross contribution of £16 billion or £17 billion a year, but, with the rebate, the net contribution was £9.4 billion in the last year of membership. Our latest contribution was £103 million. To all those people who advocate for rejoining or for the reset, where will the money come from? Will it come out of defence or welfare, or will there be more taxation to generate the extra revenue needed once we start making increased contributions to the European Union? There is also the myth-making. There is a myth that there were no small boats until Brexit—what rubbish. The small boats started in 2018, before we left, and by 2020 there were more than 8,500 crossings. That is not due to Brexit. The Dublin regulation was useless. It was in place during those years and it was never enforced. I will finish on the question of forecasts, which are all conjectural. They are all based on what the British economy might look like compared with a basket of other economies, including the United States, which has had a huge fiscal stimulus and an AI boom, and has more free enterprise policies. The fact is that since we left the European Union, Wolfgang Münchau, who somewhat reluctantly voted remain, has made it clear that leaving was an economic non-event. We were growing at about the same rate of France and Germany, and we still are. There has been no smashing disaster in the economy. There is a disaster in Scotland, where the SNP is campaigning against reopening the North sea and supports the high energy costs imposed by the ridiculous dash to net zero—the Government are doing that too—but the fact is that we are better off outside the EU in the long term.
16 Jul 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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May I refer the Secretary of State to Question 20 on the Order Paper? Can she explain when the A120 to Harwich will finally be upgraded? Is she aware that a community of some 20,000 people is served by this dreadful road, and that we dread another winter of subsidence and potholes as the existing road collapses, which is long past its renewal date? Given that this road is vital for growth in the east of England, as it serves the Harwich port and the freeport as well as this deprived community, when will we see some plans to upgrade it?
15 Jul 2026 · National Energy System Operator: Blackout Risk · Hansard source
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Can I just point out that the very fact that the Minister is at the Dispatch Box answering this urgent question is itself an indictment of the confidence that not only the public, but people working in NESO, have in the resilience of the system? Can I also point out that commentators have been warning for a decade or more about the risk to the security of supply from the over-reliance on intermittent renewables? While we in the Conservative party have learned that lesson, and are determined to have a much more robust and secure electricity policy, why are the Government doubling down on the risks they are creating by rushing ahead with renewables, vastly expensive grid investment that would otherwise be unnecessary and, of course, these absurd and obscene constraint payments to wind farm operators that cannot feed their electricity into the grid and get paid for it anyway, costing customers billions of pounds?
13 Jul 2026 · Death of Ann Widdecombe · Hansard source
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I thank the Home Secretary for her statement, and her tribute to Ann—it was extremely moving, if I may say so. Can I also point out the unfortunate statistical fact that a Member of Parliament is more likely to meet a violent death than a member of His Majesty’s armed forces or a member of the British police forces? I ask you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to assure Mr Speaker that none of us doubts his personal commitment to our security, but this remains a very relevant problem. None of us wants our homes to be turned into fortresses, but maybe more people need to be encouraged to, for example, put security gates on the front of their houses, and to have security cameras recording what is going on, rather than just relying on the Ring bell that happens to be on their front door. Can I also pay my own tribute to Ann? Much has already been said. I shared 18 years of her parliamentary life, alongside my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). There were disagreements about Maastricht, and about women candidates—my goodness, she loathed me trying to promote women candidates in the Conservative party. I maintain that she was wrong about that, but she was right about many things. Her maiden speech, about the Trident nuclear deterrent, was made at a time when the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats were a bit wobbly on that subject. What an emblem of her patriotism, and her fervour for strength and clarity of purpose! I served in the shadow Cabinet with Ann when the Government were introducing the Human Rights Act 1998 and pressing for close adherence to the European convention on human rights. She was the one member of the shadow Cabinet who said, “We should oppose this”; members of our shadow Cabinet were saying that we should relish joining the ECHR. Her prescience has often invited derision from others, but she was right on that score. We in the Conservative party are learning the lessons that she left behind during her life; maybe other parties will learn them, too.
13 Jul 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source
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May I draw the Minister’s attention to a poll conducted and published by YouGov? It shows that local government reform in Essex is really unpopular. What is more, the more people are questioned about it, the more unpopular it becomes. Why do we not have a referendum in Essex to find out whether we really want local government reform, instead of it just being imposed by politicians who think that they know better?
9 Jul 2026 · Jury Trials · Hansard source
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3. What advice she has given the Government on the potential impact of removing jury trials in certain circumstances on the rule of law.
9 Jul 2026 · Jury Trials · Hansard source
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Where is the evidence that jury trials are causing the delays? In the south-east and other parts of the country, the backlog is already falling. The Government should be commended for that, but what are the other causes of delays, and are they not much more significant than any delay caused by the fact that they are jury trials?
9 Jul 2026 · NATO Summit · Hansard source
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Could the Foreign Secretary say anything about the bilateral discussions between President Trump and President Zelensky, and can she shed any light on the discussions they had about the United States sharing its Patriot missile production licences with Ukraine? What can the Government do—apart from welcoming that, as I hope the Foreign Secretary will—to facilitate that exchange and ensure that it happens? It could be crucial.
9 Jul 2026 · NATO Summit · Hansard source
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On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. During business questions, I mentioned the interests of council tax payers in Tendring district. I probably should have drawn attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, where it says that I am a council tax payer in Tendring district.

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