Brian Mathew MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 6 Feb 2025 · Low-income Countries: Debt Cancellation · Hansard source

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  No, but it is in Wiltshire.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Low-income Countries: Debt Cancellation · Hansard source

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  I commend the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for organising this debate on a vital and extremely timely topic. As all hon. Members present are likely aware, we face the most acute debt crisis in history. According to CAFOD, more than 3.3 billion people are living in countries where they are forced to spend more on debt servicing than on providing for their citizens. Such high debt-servicing costs prevent those countries from spending on vital public services such as education and health, and investing in sustainable development goals. Private lenders make up the largest group of creditors, with many based in the UK and 90% of their contracts governed by English law. Many hon. Members will also be aware that 2025 has been declared a jubilee year by Pope Francis. It is 25 years since the last jubilee debt forgiveness, known as Jubilee 2000, when 40 countries called for the cancellation of third-world debt. Biblically, an important part of the jubilee celebration was the cancellation of debt to give those in need a fresh start. We are told in the Bible not to be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards others, but instead to be open-hearted and freely give what is needed. For this jubilee year, Pope Francis has made debt cancellation a priority, stating: “More than a question of generosity, this is a matter of justice.” We must act now to end the vicious cycle that these countries are trapped in. Without being able to invest in development, countries are unable to grow their economies or fully escape debt. Furthermore, while in debt distress, countries may look to quick solutions that involve exploiting or exporting their natural resources to do so—extracting fossil fuels, mining or logging—and, in the process, worsening climate change. That disproportionately affects those in the global south, but also affects us here at home. The UK has a significant role to play in solving this problem. As we have heard, 45% of all foreign sovereign debt is governed under English law. The Government have promised to tackle unsustainable debt and must hold private lenders and creditors accountable for that. Furthermore, the previous Government cut international aid from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income—an act that withheld billions of pounds from those most in need. We must restore our aid spending to what it was before, and restore our leadership in the field of international development; in doing so, we will restore our reputation as a kind and generous nation.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Money) · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Money) · Hansard source

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  There would be added expense. Social workers are trained in understanding family dynamics, and need desperately to be involved in these situations.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Money) · Hansard source

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  Let me start by saying that I am in in favour of the motion, so I will vote for it, if it comes to that. However, would the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) and the Minister consider the inclusion of two social workers on the group, made up of two GPs and a High Court judge, that assesses requests for assisted dying?

• 22 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Money) · Hansard source

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  I was making a point about the added expense.

• 20 Jan 2025 · Family Visas: Income Requirement · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree that if the Government feel that some minimum income requirement is necessary or appropriate, it should never be greater than that necessary to render an immigrant unable to claim benefits, as Theresa May’s original sum was intended to do?

• 16 Jan 2025 · Marine Renewables Industry · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his points, which of course are true. This technology could be employed right across the United Kingdom and its amazing coastline. A third advantage would be that ships could pass up and down the Bristol channel via large floating lock gates. Fourthly, the project could be upgraded over its life so that it would effectively be time-unlimited, even with sea level rises. A fifth point, which could well be applied to renewable schemes across the UK, is that the excess energy—or the energy that the grid cannot use at any particular time—could be diverted into the manufacture of synthetic fuels. That would be one way of dealing with the problem of what to do when we generate energy and there is no call for it. In short, this project is well worth further investigation.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Marine Renewables Industry · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and everyone who has spoken so far in the debate. Back in 2009 I was involved in an as yet conceptual tidal project known as the reef. It was projected to stretch from Aberthaw in south Wales to Minehead in Somerset, a distance of some 17 km. It was designed by Rupert Armstrong Evans at the behest of the University of Southampton, which asked Mr Evans to design a scheme that would be environmentally benign and would generate significant energy for the UK. You will no doubt be aware, Ms Jardine, that the tidal difference in the Bristol channel is the second largest in the world. The idea of a tidal barrage in the Bristol channel is not new, and the location of the reef on the Aberthaw to Minehead line was first suggested in the 1930s as being the best place to generate electricity and energy from the tides in the Bristol channel. In 2010, when the current Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero was Secretary of State for the then Department of Energy and Climate Change, he announced funding for investigations of embryonic tidal technologies. Rolls-Royce and Atkins won the contract to do the study, and their work showed that a tidal scheme on the Aberthaw to Minehead route would generate per year 30.4 TW hours of electricity, significantly more than the Cardiff to Weston-super-Mare line, which was in the region of 20 TW hours per annum. The Aberthaw to Minehead line has the added advantage that it has no mud—unlike Weston-super-Mare, as anyone who has visited Weston in the summer will know. Its seabed is rock all the way across and so has greater possibilities for locking tidal caissons holding large turbines to the sea floor. The design of the reef would allow for a maximum of 2 metres head on both the incoming and outgoing tides, which would mean that fish could safely swim through the large turbines without getting hurt. That is a big factor, and one reason for the rejection of previous tidal schemes in the Bristol channel. Other factors to consider are, first, that 30.4 TWh per annum is larger than the expected annual output of Hinkley Point C, which is 30.2 TWh. Secondly, a degree of energy storage from the reef would be possible.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Hospice and Palliative Care · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) for bringing forward this important debate, and all hon. Members for speaking with such compassion. Although the £100 million for hospice capital projects is to be welcomed, it is cash that is most needed. Julia’s House, a children’s hospice in my constituency that has already been mentioned, will find itself out of pocket by £242,000 per year because of the rise in national insurance. Dorothy House hospice, which is also in my constituency, will lose even more. That is a lot of sponsored walks and parachute jumps—perhaps too many—if the hospices are to avoid cutting their services. I urge the Minister to think again, and to provide the funds that our hospices need.