Desmond Swayne MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 16 Dec 2024 · English Devolution · Hansard source

  More

  What say will voters in the New Forest have if there are proposals to remove either their district council or their county council?

• 16 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  T3. Why did the Office for Budget Responsibility estimate that the Budget would cost 50,000 jobs?

• 3 Dec 2024 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  rose —

• 3 Dec 2024 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  rose—

• 3 Dec 2024 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  The manifesto said that Labour would not increase rates of national insurance contributions. The Minister is perfectly entitled to use the argument, “We never realised that it was this bad, so we have had to change what we said we would do”, but to pretend that Labour has not resiled on its manifesto promise is pure sophistry.

• 2 Dec 2024 · Migration and Border Security · Hansard source

  More

  What deterrent will the Home Secretary implement for those asylum claimants who have destroyed their papers and purport to come from regimes to which they cannot possibly be returned?

• 2 Dec 2024 · Chagos Islands: UK-US Defence Relationship · Hansard source

  More

  What is it in particular that the new regime in Mauritius have doubts about? It is that they want more money, isn’t it?

• 2 Dec 2024 · Bangladesh: Attacks on Hindu Community · Hansard source

  More

  Clearly, it would have been expedient to have had a special envoy for religious freedom in place; it is all very well for the Minister to say that such an appointment is under ministerial consideration. What is the problem? Do the Government not have anyone committed enough or talented enough to do it?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

  More

  May I prophesy too?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

  More

  To be fair to the Prime Minister, he made it absolutely clear that things would have to get worse. The difficulty is—this is my prophecy, if you like—that there is no prospect of them getting better thereafter.

• 26 Nov 2024 · “Get Britain Working” White Paper · Hansard source

  More

  To ensure that “if you can work, you must work”, will the Secretary of State familiarise herself with the works of Jeremy Bentham?

• 26 Nov 2024 · Tobacco and Vapes Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Can the Secretary of State imagine the plight of a shop assistant, some decades hence, when a middle-aged or elderly person presents themselves seeking to buy a packet of cigarettes? Is that shop assistant really expected to demand their bone fides?

• 20 Nov 2024 · Defence Programmes Developments · Hansard source

  More

  The Secretary of State presented the savings as no-brainers—the ships were damaged and obsolete—but in his closing remarks he told us that these would not be the last difficult decisions. He simply cannot have it both ways. It is all about the messaging in the end. What message will be received from this statement in Buenos Aires, Moscow, Peking and Tehran?

• 19 Nov 2024 · Jailing of Hong Kong Pro-democracy Activists · Hansard source

  More

  So long as we are limited to saying how cross we all are about our different perspectives and the Minister keeps sanctions under review, China will take not a blind bit of notice, will it?

• 12 Nov 2024 · Clean Energy by 2030 · Hansard source

  More

  What is the beef behind the Government’s reluctance to embrace with enthusiasm locally generated community energy? Why did they vote against the amendment tabled to the Great British Energy Bill by the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse)?

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

  More

  What estimate has the right hon. Gentleman made of the impact on capital investment, which will be reduced as farmers consider the inheritance tax implications of those investments and adjust their plans accordingly?

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  Much of it reannounced, and much of it put at risk by the behaviour of the Transport Secretary, but nevertheless an achievement. Of course I welcome any inward investment. What I think is a huge risk is a great borrowing binge for exactly the sort of investment that we saw throughout the 1960s and 1970s, which never delivered. Real investment—investment that improves productivity—is that which is undertaken largely by medium and small firms to invest in their own enterprises, but it is crowded out by the increased costs that are entirely a consequence of the Government’s great borrowing binge. On that basis, this Budget is a disaster.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  The reality, as the right hon. Gentleman knows because he wrote to his successor about it, is that he left us with a deficit that stood at fully 10%, as against the 4.3%—and in sharp decline—that we have bequeathed to this Government.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  rose —

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  It is an enormous pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Motherwell, Wishaw and Carluke (Pamela Nash). Until recently, my cousin was a minister in Carluke. Let me give the House a piece of Swahili wisdom. Howezi kuwafukuza swala wawili: you cannot chase two antelope. That, however, is exactly what the Government have been doing since they were elected. They announced immediately after the election, and repeated today, that their overriding priority was to secure economic growth by investing, investing, investing, but in reality their main effort was elsewhere. Their main effort was a creating a narrative in the public mind that they had inherited a wasteland, the worst inheritance of any Government since kingdom come: that the wicked Tories had operated a scorched earth policy leaving absolutely everything broken, nothing working, and a huge black hole. As a consequence, things would have to get worse before they could get better, and there would be implications for tax in the forthcoming Budget—and, of course, we have discovered that today. The reality is that investment requires an optimistic outlook. By pouring such a bucket of cold water on the British economy, what the Government achieved was to reverse what was soaring business confidence and turn it into absolutely collapsing business confidence; and business confidence is the key to investment, not the great binge of borrowing that the Government are about to enter into.

• 29 Oct 2024 · Economic Investment and Growth · Hansard source

  More

  Investment requires a measure of optimism, not the collapse in business confidence that the Chancellor has engineered. She would have done better to stress some of the positives that she inherited, wouldn’t she?

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  I congratulate the Lord Chancellor on recognising that for some prisoners, the shortcomings of short sentences are properly remedied by providing for longer ones. On the review and David Gauke, it is difficult not to like him and even admire him, but I am not alone in regarding him as a notorious wet, am I?

• 21 Oct 2024 · St Helena: UK Immigration · Hansard source

  More

  The opportunities available to any migrant are vastly greater in Rwanda, aren’t they?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  The Conservative Government introduced a comprehensive Bill involving the election of peers. I was the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary at the time. It failed—notwithstanding the fact that I thought it was awful—because Labour withdrew its support for the timetable motion, which meant, as a constitutional Bill, it would have taken the Government’s entire timetable. For that reason, the Government withdrew the measure.