Esther McVey MP: speeches

174 published records · newest first.

Speeches

28 Jan 2026 · Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical Markers · Hansard source
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Order. I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called in the debate.
21 Jan 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation: Referendums · Hansard source
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Order. Before the hon. Gentleman replies, we have a Division. I think there will be three Divisions, so Members should come back in 35 minutes.
21 Jan 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation: Referendums · Hansard source
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I just wanted you to get to the end of your sentence.
21 Jan 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation: Referendums · Hansard source
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Well, we will leave it there anyway. There is a Division, so we will suspend the debate for 15 minutes—unless Members are back sooner. If you all leg it back, we will start again sooner.
21 Jan 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation: Referendums · Hansard source
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I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak and that interventions should be short. We will come to the Front-Bench speeches just before 3.30 pm.
21 Jan 2026 · UK Wine Industry · Hansard source
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It’s nearly over!
21 Jan 2026 · UK Wine Industry · Hansard source
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I will call Tristan Osborne to move the motion and I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they can make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
21 Jan 2026 · Waste Collection: Birmingham and the West Midlands · Hansard source
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The intervention needs to be short.
21 Jan 2026 · Waste Collection: Birmingham and the West Midlands · Hansard source
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Order. Before you do, I think we are going off topic. Can we keep to the topic?
21 Jan 2026 · Waste Collection: Birmingham and the West Midlands · Hansard source
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I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to speak in the debate. I also remind them that the latest that this debate can go to is 6.8 pm.
20 Jan 2026 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source
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Will the Minister give way?
20 Jan 2026 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source
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I asked the Minister what the reasons were for the Government signing away the Chagos islands. He could not give any reasons. The President of the United States says that the Government are giving the islands away “for no reason whatsoever”, so can my right hon. Friend give us any reason to sign off this deal today?
20 Jan 2026 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source
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This evening, the Minister is trying to convince us to vote for this Chagos deal. The President of the United States says that the Government are handing over the island “FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER”, so can he give us some reasons?
20 Jan 2026 · Chinese Embassy · Hansard source
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Answer the question!
20 Jan 2026 · Chinese Embassy · Hansard source
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No, you’re not.
20 Jan 2026 · Chinese Embassy · Hansard source
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Yes or no?
20 Jan 2026 · Chinese Embassy · Hansard source
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In the light of what you have said, Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope that you see this as short question and I hope that I get a short answer. Does the Minister know if the security services have any concerns at all about the proposed new Chinese super-embassy—yes or no?
20 Jan 2026 · Chinese Embassy · Hansard source
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That is condescending!
15 Jan 2026 · Covid-19: Financial Support · Hansard source
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I do not believe the evidence proves that. We can look to other parts of the world where that was not the case. This policy had unwavering and enthusiastic support from across the House, with just a few of us in this House —too few—raising valid concerns, but we were shut down. It should be obvious that some people cannot be damaged in the name of protecting others with interventions such as lockdowns that we do not even know will work. The moral mathematics never added up. And now we must live with the consequences of what we did. We spent in the region of £400 billion on the covid-19 response—a vast sum that will be clawed back through increased taxation and hardship for generations to come. Of course, the Conservative party had to put up taxes to pay for that £400 billion, and it was voted for by pretty much every Member in the House. For me, such a statist, socialist intervention would never work, and that is proving to be the case. Those businesses that did manage to survive after everything that was thrown at them in the name of covid are now having to face more gloom and doom from this socialist Government in charge of our country, with their two tax-rising Budgets and their removal of business rates relief without understanding it—
15 Jan 2026 · Covid-19: Financial Support · Hansard source
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I am concluding my remarks. I am pleased to have been able to speak today as one of a handful of 650 MPs who stood by “the Forgotten Ltd” and by many of our constituents whose businesses went out of business. I was one of the few in the House who stood up for them. Finally, as Professor Sunetra Gupta said, this was like taking a hammer to a fly on a pane of glass: you might or might not kill the fly, but you definitely shatter the window. It will take us a long time to pick up the pieces. Next time we face a similar crisis, let us not panic and reach for the hammer.
15 Jan 2026 · Covid-19: Financial Support · Hansard source
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Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I added on that sentence because I felt it was very relevant that those who did manage to survive the pandemic are now not surviving, because of the extra taxes that are being put upon them and the removal of business rates relief that was introduced during covid, and it seems that the Chancellor does not even know how that works. Those businesses are suffering twofold, because some of that covid benefit is now being removed. It is no wonder Labour MPs are being banned from pubs, as we see mass closures of pubs. I simply ask that we examine the bigger picture. Those 3.8 million people who were excluded from financial support suffered a terrible injustice, but so too did those who received support, because lockdown took from everyone: children denied education; mothers forced to give birth alone; people suffering heart attacks, strokes and sepsis but too frightened to burden the NHS; bereaved families unable to mourn the dead—the list of injustices goes on and on. None of it should ever have happened. The costs were always going to be too high, and worse, there appears to be no evidence that lockdown prevented covid infections. The covid inquiry recently made two incredible assertions. One was that lockdowns were harmful but should have started earlier, and the other was that the modelling should not have been used to justify major policy but simultaneously proved that 23,000 lives could have been saved. Finally, lockdown was, as Professor Sunetra Gupta from the University of Oxford said—
15 Jan 2026 · Covid-19: Financial Support · Hansard source
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I thank the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) for securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. There is no doubt that the hardship affecting families, businesses and communities as a result of covid-19 policies is ongoing. The depth of suffering is hard to read about. People have been pushed to their limits, mentally and financially, and have had to endure indignity and injustice through no fault of their own. I hope that we can now all agree that it should never have happened. It is something that we never want to see happen again. The various Government financial support schemes that were set up helped many people, but for the forgotten businesses and individuals who, for one bureaucratic reason or another, were deemed ineligible, the situation was patently unfair and unjust. Some 3.8 million UK taxpayers were excluded from support, while the rest of the working population were paid to stay at home. Why were they excluded? The reasons were arbitrary. Financial support was not forthcoming if a person was newly self-employed, a PAYE freelancer, a director paid in dividends, starting a new job—the list goes on. The rules were random and confusing, and they pushed so many people into desperate situations. Sadly, we should not have been surprised that that happened. Although some marvelled at the speedy roll-out of the Government’s schemes, the reality was that they were patchy, poorly thought out and full of gaps—of course they were. How could we ever expect to shut down our society and economy and be able to cover the gigantic financial cost of doing so while ensuring that every person was properly looked after? It was unrealistic —an unprecedented state intervention that was doomed to fail. I totally agree with Members present who are pushing for assurances that that will never happen again, but if we cannot look back with honesty and clarity about what was done, we are doomed to make the same mistakes again. Lockdown was the mistake from which all that injustice and suffering flowed. It was an unknown and unevidenced imposition that should never have been inflicted upon the British people. Many experts predicted from the start that it would cause misery and, horrifically, cost hundreds of thousands of lives through unintended but very real collateral damage.
14 Jan 2026 · Horse and Rider Road Safety · Hansard source
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I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. I am getting an increasing amount of correspondence from Tatton constituents concerned about careless drivers on country roads and the dangers they pose to horses and riders. Does she share my concern about the changes to planning rules by this Labour Government—a Government who show so little regard for the countryside, as we saw with the family farm tax—under which green belt will disappear and cities will bleed into the countryside, making the roads even more dangerous, city dwellers not understanding the etiquette of country roads?
7 Jan 2026 · Jury Trials · Hansard source
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You’re going soft!
7 Jan 2026 · Jury Trials · Hansard source
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Who would have thought that a Government led by a human rights lawyer would be leading the charge to remove one of our most basic human rights, trial by jury? The Government are removing the right to a jury trial for any offences that carry a likely sentence of less than three years, supposedly to reduce the backlog of cases waiting to go to trial—but let us look at the evidence. There is a backlog of 78,000 cases. There are around 1.3 million prosecutions in England and Wales every year, and 10% of those cases go before a Crown court. Of those, three out of 10 go to trial. These reforms mean that more than two out of 10 will still go before a jury. Given those figures, there will be no realistic change to the waiting times from removing that fundamental right. Who was doing the maths for this—the “Mastermind” Lord Chancellor? No wonder the Prime Minister appointed him. My constituents in Tatton, from school pupils to the leader of the northern circuit and barristers from the Middle Temple, urged me to speak today to say that this is an absolute disgrace, and they put forward some of their suggestions. A barrister at St John’s Buildings said, “Actually, I don’t believe at all that cutting trial by jury will get down these lists and sort out the problem. In fact, I’m deeply concerned that such proposals will further erode the trust of the public in our justice system. It will remove their participation in criminal justice. There is no evidence that it will have any impact on the delays. A better solution for the backlog would be to stop the cap on the number of sitting days and let courts sit around the clock, and also to sort out the failure of the prisoner transport system, which does not get defendants to court, or that gets them there late and wastes time.” Another barrister—a King’s Counsel criminal barrister at Lincoln House Chambers in Manchester—said, “I’m very concerned that curtailing jury trials is based on no credible evidence at all. In particular, there has been no pilot scheme. It appears that the suggested savings of 20% have been pulled out of thin air. Very importantly, it will erode a deeply entrenched constitutional principle that a jury may acquit as a matter of conscience in these cases. It will remove a bulwark against misuse of the criminal court by the Government and those in authority, and the ability of a jury to take a view favourable to a defendant for reasons other than evidence of guilt.” What about the Lord Chancellor? Until a few weeks ago, he believed in juries and trial by jury, too. This is one thing that Government Back Benchers should really be concerned about: constituents have said to me that for such an important change to our unwritten constitution, there should have been mention of it in the Labour party manifesto. One person said, “That would have factored into my voting decision, and it could well have been—if not would have been—a very different decision.” The debate has been revealing. There are no data, no impact assessments and no pilot. The Minister herself, who even suggests—

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