George Freeman MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Oct 2024 · Horseracing · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, which is well attended for a Thursday. He knows my family’s interest— I am about the only one who is not involved in racing; my father was a national hunt jockey. Does he agree that from the 2,000 Guineas and the Derby down to the small trainers, small tracks, point-to-points—Fakenham is just outside my constituency—the rural economy and pony clubs, there is an equine economy right across this country, but it relies on money trickling down from the top? Does he further agree that racing’s finances are not just unhealthy, but in crisis? The problem goes across a lot of Labour constituencies as well, so I support him in asking the Government—we will hear from the Minister—for a strong steer to prevent the further decline of racing’s finances.

• 8 Oct 2024 · SEND Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  It is a great honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. May I start by thanking the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for bringing colleagues from both sides of the House together? How we treat our vulnerable children seems to me to be one of those things that goes completely above and beyond party politics; we all see its importance. My family has never experienced this issue—our two young children were very lucky—but, as the Member of Parliament for Mid-Norfolk, I am lucky to have two great special educational needs schools in my constituency. Chapel Green school and Fred Nicholson school are both institutions the community hugely values and supports and is very proud to have. Under the coalition Government, I was very pleased—and rather surprised, I have to say—that I managed to secure £7 million to relocate Chapel Green into a world-class facility. Over the past five to 10 years, I have seen a huge rise in demand across rural mid-Norfolk. Data produced by the House of Commons Library shows that 18% of all pupils have serious special educational needs. We are providing support to 1.2 million of those 1.7 million, so half a million children around this country are not getting the support they need. I would suggest that quite a lot of them are in the east and in rural areas because, as one or two colleagues have mentioned, rural areas face a particular challenge. Every day during the election campaign, I did a school gate visit. Every month I do a heads’ forum. Scarning school, Dereham school, Toftwood school and Yaxham school—all my schools—have reported an increasing surge that is causing chaos. Parents are having to stop work, we see hugely difficult legal processes and the EHCP system is broken. When I talk to teachers, they also highlight that in the past few years we have seen a huge surge in demand caused by the pandemic, by rural poverty and the cost of living crisis, which has hit us hard, by diet—I know the Government have made some announcements about children’s diets—and by the wider challenge of mental health. I particularly want to highlight the rural aspect. I am sure that, at the heart of it, part of the problem is that the formula does not properly compensate for rural costs, or how the cost of living crisis has particularly hit rural families. The Minister is nodding—I know she understands this—and I ask her to put the needs of rural SEN at the heart of her work.

• 8 Oct 2024 · Farming and Food Security · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about young famers and mental health, and I know there is a brilliant project in his patch called Growing Well. Does he agree that the young farmers of this generation are very different from those who I grew up with, who were very much chemical farmers post-war? This generation believes in habitat and conservation, and all they ask for through ELMs is a strategic framework by which they can grow their businesses in the long term. That is the best security we can give them.

• 8 Oct 2024 · Farming and Food Security · Hansard source

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  As a distinguished vet, my hon. Friend is making a powerful case on welfare standards. Does he agree that one of the great prizes of British agriculture is that it sets such high welfare standards, and that one of the good things the last Government did was pass legislation on transporting animals, setting ever higher standards for UK farmers?

• 10 Sept 2024 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  Mid Norfolk is a profoundly rural constituency, with 130 villages and four towns, and in that very rural constituency, as with all rural areas in this country, people are paying a surcharge because of energy costs and because of rurality. There will be colder weather, and many of my houses are not on the gas grid, while rural areas traditionally have lower incomes and we have an elderly population. The Treasury, very helpfully—it is a shame Ministers did not read it—did a piece of work last year looking at the risks of rural poverty and the higher risk of rural areas falling into real poverty. The Treasury’s own figures showed that the average household at risk of poverty in rural areas needs an extra £800; or in layman’s terms, there is a two and a half times—or 250%—higher risk of rural houses falling into rural poverty. So I find it completely extraordinary that Labour, which in government professes to care about poverty and berated my party when in government about the risks of rural poverty and of pensioner poverty, has decided as their first act to punish people in rural areas. It is because of those rural risks that, earlier this year, I and a number of colleagues set up a fair funding alliance, supported by Action with Communities in Rural England, the Countryside Alliance and rural bodies. Higher fuel and energy prices are hitting rural areas, and we would have hoped that this Government might have listened. I am proud that the Conservative party in government upgraded pensions, protected the triple lock and took 200,000 pensioners out of poverty.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  It was my good friend the now noble Lord Willetts in a coalition Government with the Liberal Democrats, and I will happily debate with the hon. Member some of the brave decisions we took. The point is that this party, the Conservative party, protected pensioners, protected the triple lock and lifted 200,000 people out of poverty, but we see this Labour Government make this decision. The Minister put it very clearly earlier. This is an attack on people who own their own homes, people who have retired in rural areas and those just over the threshold, and in Labour world they are millionaires. This will not be forgotten by people in my constituency, the low-income rural pensioners who have saved up to be able to afford their own home and are now being clobbered. It is unfair, it is unjust, it is unjustifiable, it is unprecedented, and I urge and beg Ministers to think again.

• 9 Sept 2024 · Children’s Social Care · Hansard source

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  In Norfolk, as in many other areas, we saw during the pandemic some hugely complicated issues around early years, including lack of preparation and learning difficulties, which many of our schools are dealing with. Will the Minister reassure me that, in this forthcoming Budget, real attention will be paid both to supporting that network—supporting the previous Government’s introduction of early years—and to integrating better the mental health support, the learning difficulty support and the social care support? In the end, as these are children living one life, they surely need only one network of support.

• 5 Sept 2024 · Industrial Strategy · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Secretary of State and his team to what I think is one of the most important Departments in Government. As a sometimes lonely voice on the Conservative Benches advocating for industrial strategy, I signal support for his intention. I am sure that he agrees that the big challenge is to convert our phenomenal science and technology leadership into sovereign industrial supply chain leadership around this country. Having led the strategy for life sciences—quantum, engineering biology, fusion—may I ask whether he agrees that the key to this is cross-departmental Whitehall work, and ensuring that we do not end up with endless earnest, well-intended committees, but actually engage the small businesses, entrepreneurs and investors who are driving these sectors of tomorrow?

• 3 Sept 2024 · Healthcare Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making the point about dentistry that I think we all understand, particularly in the east. Does he agree that the real cause is threefold—the tariff did not keep up with costs and inflation, we have not been training enough dentists and we have been losing too many—and that the previous Government’s dental plan was a big step in the right direction? Does he support that plan? I am interested to know whether the Opposition intend to continue to implement it.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Healthcare Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is my friend as well, for giving way. How wonderful it is to see so many people present for this debate at the beginning of term. I point out gently that the NHS has also thrived under successive Conservative Governments and that, although it may be a great socialist idea, I believe it has come to be part of the fabric of our whole country and I think all parties present want to improve and support it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the NHS also underpins our enterprise economy? In America and other places, it is difficult to start a company when the healthcare costs of the staff have to be thought about; here, by underwriting the cost, we help entrepreneurs to start businesses. That point is often overlooked.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Healthcare Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes a really important point about productivity in the health system. I have been a Health Minister and I have observed that—not because of ministerial diktat, but just because of the way the health system works—if you deliver more for less, the Treasury and the Department of Health give you less, but if you struggle to deliver more for less, we give you more. If we ran a business like that, we would go bust. Does my hon. Friend agree that, ultimately, the east needs a much more decentralised, empowered system? In Norfolk, we have an ambulance trust, a mental health trust, three hospital trusts and five clinical commissioning groups. That is bonkers. We need one Norfolk healthcare system that provides what patients need: an integrated patient pathway.

• 23 Jul 2024 · Immigration and Home Affairs · Hansard source

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  It is a great honour to speak in this new Parliament, my fifth, and particularly to follow the hon. Member for Barking (Nesil Caliskan), who spoke with dazzling eloquence about her constituency, but also about the importance of diversity in our democracy. It is wonderful to see such diversity in the new Parliament. I congratulate the new Prime Minister and his team of new Ministers on that, and on their laudable tone of humility and public service. In the same spirit, I thank our Leader of the Opposition for both the fantastic tone in which he conceded on election night, and the tone in which he started his new role. One can say many things about the politics of the last few years, but our Leader of the Opposition was not doing this for money; he was doing it out of a very deep sense of public service in the finest traditions of this country. At a time when so many democracies around the world are struggling, democratic trust is under threat. I want to highlight what a wonderful 10 days it has been here, because we have seen the transfer of power with such peace and stability. The pictures from this Chamber that are going around the world show how this Parliament still stands for the very best of democratic civility. As a new generation of newly elected MPs and new Ministers take office with a mandate for change, all of us who have served in government and seen how hard it has become to deliver real, lasting reform will wish them well in the spirit of the late, great Jo Cox. As democratically elected parliamentarians, we do indeed have far more in common than divides us. Whatever our politics, we share a deep and urgent need to show that MPs, politics and Parliament can make a difference, that there is serious respect for Government accountability throughout this House and at the sweaty corners of the Dispatch Boxes, and that Government is not—as I fear so many have, sadly, come to believe—an inevitably unaccountable, bureaucratic machine that always wins, no matter who people vote for. For my part, in the field of science and technology, I stand ready to help this Parliament and this Government see through the vital work needed to unleash the science, technology, engineering and mathematics economy. Mr Speaker, you may be asking how I survived the Chernobyl meltdown of conservatism in Norfolk—we delivered not one but three Portillo moments on the night. I thank the people of Mid Norfolk for electing me for a fifth time, and I will quickly share with the House the key messages that they gave me as I knocked on 29,000 doors. They said that they wanted a politics of honesty, integrity and accountability first and foremost, and they wanted the new Government and the new Parliament to tackle three key issues. The first was immigration. It was very clear across the whole of my constituency that people feel that our security and our sustainability, both economically and in terms of public services, require the new Government to go further in tackling the wave of immigration that has hit this country in the last few years. The second issue mentioned was housing and planning. There is deep exhaustion with the way that too many big developers are running rings round our councils and dumping big commuter housing estates in the wrong places, with no investment in infrastructure. We need new towns on railway lines to drive a net zero and sustainable model of living. The third issue was the NHS and healthcare. People are fed up with our pouring billions of pounds into the system in London, because they are not seeing properly integrated mental health provision, social care and healthcare on the ground locally. As we debate the King’s Speech, it is important that we are honest about the legacy of the last 14 years. It has not been 14 years of failure and cuts, as one or two Government Front Benchers have portrayed it. The truth is that we were hit by an extraordinary legacy from the financial crash in 2008, which caused £700 billion of debt. Then we had the Brexit disruption, followed by the pandemic, which led us to spend £400 billion on relief. The war in Europe has cost us £40 billion. Any one of those events would have knocked the breath out of the great Lady Thatcher. This has been an extraordinary period of unprecedented shocks, and there is much in the last 14 years to be proud of. I would cite the introduction of universal credit; the tackling of welfare fraud; the school reforms; the 5 million apprenticeships; the degree apprenticeships; the huge reduction in youth unemployment, which was at a scandalous level when we took office; the progressive tax cuts for the lowest paid; huge improvements in life sciences, technology and innovation; green growth—we are the only country to have halved emissions while growing our economy; and the pensions triple lock. On a personal note, I am deeply proud of the work that we have done in the life sciences and in the creation of the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the 10-year science and technology framework, the creation of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, our re-entry into Horizon and our groundbreaking international collaborations. If we are to make this a decade of national renewal, the innovation economy is completely key to driving investment, opportunity and clusters around the country, and to harnessing the regulatory leadership needed for this country to be the dynamic innovation economy that we can be. In that vein, I welcome the new ministerial team and wish them all support as they seek to unlock that mission.

• 23 Jul 2024 · Immigration and Home Affairs · Hansard source

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  Does my right hon. Friend agree that there are different types of crimes and different types of prisoners, and that many people in our prison system at the moment, particularly those responsible for relatively low-level, non-violent antisocial behaviour, could powerfully serve much better and more rehabilitative community sentences? I do not want chain gangs in Norfolk and Lincolnshire, but good community service, where people can see that they are actually putting something back into society, would ease a lot of pressure on the system.

• 23 Jul 2024 · NHS Dentistry: Work Requirement · Hansard source

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  8. If he will make an assessment of the potential merits of requiring newly-qualified dentists to work for the NHS for a set period of time.

• 23 Jul 2024 · NHS Dentistry: Work Requirement · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for that answer and congratulate him and his colleague the Secretary of State on their appointments. All of us who are serious about the health service and the need for reform, about which the Secretary of State has spoken, have their back in pushing for reform. The hon. Gentleman has his moment of triumph, but may I gently encourage him to reach out and build a cross-party coalition of support for serious reform? The NHS is broken not by Tory cuts but by years— [Interruption.] For years we have been pouring money in; it needs to modernise for the 21st-century. In the spirit of which, on dentistry, may I encourage the Front-Bench team to reach out and have a meeting—a rainbow coalition meeting including the new hon. Members for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) and for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone)—of all MPs in Norfolk, which has suffered more than most counties? We desperately need that University of East Anglia dental school.