George Freeman MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I will make a slightly different point, which is that there are huge opportunities for good growth in this country. Speaking as someone who has had a 16-year career backing the industries of tomorrow, whether it is in fusion, SMR nuclear technologies, agritech, bioscience, the bioeconomy on Teesside, or the satellite economy in Glasgow, we have an opportunity to turn these into the industries of tomorrow. I welcome the Government’s industrial strategy commitment to do it, but it is at 50,000 feet; we need to drop down to some more tangible and bolder policies to back those industries. I know the Secretary of State gave a tub-thumping speech about the 1980s, but the truth is we have made a lot of progress over the last 20 years. I was doing my work as the Minister for Life Sciences, for agritech and for Science and Technology following in the footsteps of Paul Drayson and David Sainsbury. In life science, fusion, AI and quantum, we have built an unbelievably competitive economy, but other countries are moving fast. Our competitors are more agile. We are terrible at adopting technology in the public services. Our scale-ups are not getting the finance they need in the city. Kate Bingham in The Times today is right. How do we unlock this? I want to suggest a ten-point plan for renewal. I support the Government’s ambition. I say this because if all of us fail, the Benches to my left of pub populists who are promising everything will win, and we will see even deeper disillusionment. I am calling in this speech for, first, real honesty of a 1979 scale about the extent of the emergency; secondly, bold devolution to the people, cities and mayors who know how to do it better—frankly, they could not do worse than Whitehall—thirdly, serious Whitehall reforms, so that we end the juvenile process of His Majesty’s Treasury playing Departments off against each other for funding, which in the end comes very late and is taken back; and fourthly, a serious backing for the innovation economy. I welcome the £20 billion of R&D, but how we allocate it is key. We need to allocate it in a way that attracts private investment. Fifthly, we need a bold revolution of tax incentives for enterprises—a new deal for new business. There should be no national insurance or VAT for a couple of years for someone starting a company and growing it. Sixthly, we need regulation for innovation. That is not just cutting regulations, but leading in setting the regulation. I welcome the Government’s work in setting up the Regulatory Innovation Office. We then have skills and patriotic capitalism. I do not think it is communism to get the city investing in British business. Boldness—

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  There is no more important issue for the country than the stubbornly low growth rate and the structural barriers to the growth, productivity, enterprise, innovation and investment that this country so desperately needs, solutions to which have defied successive Governments since the coalition and the political crisis that Brexit unleashed in 2016. It gives me no pleasure to highlight that, for my constituents in Mid Norfolk, the King’s Speech is irrelevant without real delivery on the ground. In Mid Norfolk, the small businesses on which we rely are shedding jobs; disposable incomes are falling; high streets in market towns such as Dereham, Watton and Attleborough are struggling; pubs are closing; farmers are moving away from farming food to take the Government incentives for solar panels and commuter housing estates; and public services are being overwhelmed by rising demand from new housing and an ageing population. This is fuelling a surge in political anger, which explains a lot of the election results last week. Across Suffolk, Norfolk and the fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, rural deprivation, rural poverty and the disproportionate impact of high energy prices on the rural economy—where, according to Treasury figures, every cup of coffee, schoolbook, pencil, lesson and journey costs 20% more than in cities, yet rural areas are underfunded—are driving real anger, based on real grievances. People are now paying European levels of tax for American levels of public services, and they are fed up. Unless we—this Government, this Parliament, this media, this Whitehall—respect and understand the grievance and set out a truly bold plan to deal with it, I fear that the rich will continue to leave this country, that the middle classes, the engine of growth, will conclude that it is no longer worth putting the work in, and that the poor will turn to the black market and crime.

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend makes an important point. The King’s speech that my constituents loved was the King’s speech in Washington, in which he spoke for the very best of this country. My point is that it is in all our interests—I say this as a friend of mainstream politics and democracy—that we tackle this challenge more boldly. I welcome the speed with which newly elected Labour MPs have realised the scale and urgency of the problem of public and voter anger, stubbornly slow growth, rising unemployment and demand for public services exceeding capacity, but they are in danger of going for the wrong prescription. What we need is a renaissance of enterprise and innovation across the public and private sectors. Convenient though it may be for my party politically, the idea that the answer is a regicidal political infighting crisis and a leadership contest in office is for the birds. Take it from me: my party has tested that idea to destruction, and we have all paid the price. We do not need a Labour party beauty contest. We need a Parliament and a Government that get more urgent about the many laudable things they have set out to do, but we do not have 10 years to deliver it—we have a couple of years. If the Labour party knifes this Prime Minister, he will be the seventh who will have been got rid of because of the structural deficit. I remember, when I first arrived here in 2010, the brilliant Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies explaining what the structural deficit is, and it is worth repeating. The normal deficit is when a Government do not earn as much as they are spending; because the economy has taken a downturn, they borrow a bit to keep spending and then pay it back. The structural deficit is that bit of the deficit that goes up every year even when the economy is growing, and it is driven by four things. In 2010, it was being driven by welfare, public sector pensions, and—the big one—health, and debt interest was remarkably low. After the coalition, we had capped off the rise in public sector pensions, incredibly painfully, and we had capped off the rise in welfare, incredibly painfully. Health has continued to defy reform, and it is bankrupting the public sector. We are now spending more than 50% on health, welfare and social support. That is simply not affordable. We cannot cut, borrow or tax our way out of this. The only way out is to grow, not through dumping cheap housing across the countryside, but by backing the industries of tomorrow.

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State is making a wonderful speech about the 1980s. While I agree with many of his points, the truth is that the country today has come a long way in all sorts of sectors, and I am proud to have done my bit to help that. On regulation, the Secretary of State agrees that leadership on regulating new industries, and having sandboxes and testbeds, is a great UK strength. He also wants us to get closer to the European market; is he worried that if we do, we may end up losing our competitive advantage in a number of areas where we could genuinely attract investment into new industries, such as agri-tech and gene editing?

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making a really important point. I was previously the Minister responsible for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. Traditionally, the MHRA’s influence has been in denying proper companies permission. It seems to me that now, in a digital age, we have a different problem, which is people coming up with rubbish and selling it over the counter unofficially—digitally. Do we not need a much more powerful set of legal and financial disincentives to really hammer the people selling these sorts of products?

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes an important point about regulation in Northern Ireland. When in government, I championed the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023, which gives this country the ability to grow disease-resistant and drought-resistant crops—the potato that typically requires 14 applications of high-carbon toxic fungicide can, with technology developed in Norwich, be grown without. Does the hon. Member agree that the Act is a big opportunity for Northern Ireland? It could be growing those potatoes without the fungicide, with huge environmental benefits, but under the European partnership Bill, it will be denied that opportunity.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Ground-mounted Solar Panels: Alternatives · Hansard source

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  On the important point that the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) made about connections, what we are discovering in Norfolk is that the grid connection investment is an open door to much bigger solar applications. We have an 8,000-acre one that I am dealing with today. Land agents tell me that 20,000 acres in Norfolk are now being released because we have the grid connection. Much of that will be good land. The danger is that the connectivity driving the investment means, unfortunately, that the land use argument gets distorted.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Ground-mounted Solar Panels: Alternatives · Hansard source

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  On the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) made, I can say that when I was the Minister for Space, I strongly supported space solar, which is a genuinely exciting British breakthrough. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) is making a really important point about food security. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on science and technology in agriculture, I know that we are hugely vulnerable to the geopolitics of the strait of Hormuz and global supply chains more broadly, so we need to do more to support UK agricultural production. In my patch, we have an 8,000-acre solar farm on farmland, which will see good, productive land taken out. This Friday, I am chairing the Central Norfolk Solar Factory Farm Alliance. We are very keen to see solar on reservoirs, motorways, council buildings—on any surfaces we can—but not on good farmland.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Draft Warm Home Discount (England and Wales) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  What provision do these measures make for the disproportionate impact of fuel poverty in rural areas? Treasury figures show that cost of energy increases have disproportionately hit rural households, rural public services, rural charities and rural businesses, including in my Norfolk constituency. The risk of fuel poverty is 15% higher in rural areas. Do these regulations include any provision that tackles this traditionally overlooked injustice?

• 18 Mar 2026 · Flooding: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  The Minister has mentioned Aviva, one of Norfolk’s great companies and the biggest insurer of houses in the country. Has she seen its recent report, in which it calculates that about 4.78 million houses are at serious risk of flooding over the next 10 years? I congratulate he on securing the funding in the autumn, which I think was going to protect 60,000 houses, but does she agree that the Treasury should be thinking very deeply about the scale of this challenge in the context of national resilience?

• 18 Mar 2026 · Flooding: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. On the point of insurance, I have just come from chairing a meeting with Aviva—a great Norfolk insurer, the biggest insurer of houses in the country. It made the point to me that this is the tip of a major iceberg of uninsureability, unmortgageability and then unsaleability, and that the Treasury should be looking at this as a major problem on the balance sheet of this country. It is a Horizon Post Office-sized scandal in its scale, risking serious economic damage to our economy. Does my hon. Friend agree that that elevates this issue to one of national importance?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making an interesting argument that voting should be defined not by age, but by a contract of citizenship. Could he share what he thinks those criteria might be—living in the country, paying tax or working here?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  This is an important Bill, and I support some of the aims and aspirations that the Secretary of State set out at the beginning. I also share many of the concerns raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly). All Members take representing children seriously. In the five times that I have been lucky enough to be elected, my first pledge has been that I will serve everybody in the Mid Norfolk constituency, including and particularly those who do not have a voice and need to be spoken for, and I always reference children. With the gentlest and greatest respect, I say to colleagues who are in danger of suggesting that if we do not pass this Bill, we are signalling that we do not care about young people that that is not the case. I was elected to this House quite a long time ago, and I know that there is the danger that well-intended legislation can have unintended consequences that we later regret. Given that time is short, I will focus my comments on my own experience of having been, I think, the first parliamentary victim of an AI deepfake video attack. I will point out some of the obvious gaps in the law that that has made clear to me, and the danger of political disinformation and serious disruption to our politics. Having consulted widely in the past four or five months, I want to make a particular point about the importance of protecting all people—not just politicians—against having their identity stolen. That is a fundamental issue in a digital age. For colleagues who were doing other things on that day in November, let me say that when I found myself the victim of an AI deepfake attack, my phone went hot and I suddenly found myself being called all manner of names that I could not possibly repeat to this House. It was quite clear that I was suddenly at the heart of a media storm, and I had no idea what had caused it. I then saw the video. It was indeed a video of me in my Westminster office, wearing my customary tank top, waving my hands around and speaking—not dubbed—about my decision that, because the political party that I am proud to represent and serve had let this country down, I was joining Reform. Leave aside for a minute the ridiculousness of that proposal and the insulting suggestion that somebody who prides himself on taking his politics seriously and thinking about the philosophical basis of it would join a rabble based only on pub populism, the more serious issue is that my constituents were deeply confused and democracy in my constituency was disrupted. When I contacted Meta, the platform on which that scurrilous, mischievous and disinforming information had been published, it said to me, “Well, it doesn’t breach any of our guidelines.” I understand the importance of protecting our vulnerable young children from grooming and protecting people from economic fraud, but I put it to the House that seriously misrepresenting an elected Member for the purposes of political misinformation and disruption is an important issue and should not be allowed. It should be a breach of Meta’s guidelines. When I spoke to the police, they admirably did take it seriously. In fact, they encouraged me, with the Crown Prosecution Service, to bring a test case, but I would have had to have made the case compellingly that I was suffering psychological damage. Now, I may well be suffering psychological damage, but I am not going to tell the people of Mid Norfolk that I cannot take a joke. It is really important that we in this House defend humour and satire—they play a really important role in our democracy—but this is different. I support the amendments that the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), a fellow member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, is tabling to stop political disinformation, but is it not time that we passed a law to protect all citizens against having their identity stolen? Everybody in this country should go to bed at night not worrying that they may wake up in the morning and find that somebody has stolen their identity, whatever the purpose.

• 28 Jan 2026 · Flooding · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the responsibilities and duties of certain authorities and agencies in respect of inland flood prevention; to make provision about the powers of local flood authorities and Internal Drainage Boards; to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the funding of local flood authorities and Internal Drainage Boards; to provide for the designation of Internal Drainage Board pumps as critical national infrastructure; to require the Secretary of State to prepare and publish a report on the potential merits of establishing a Flood Compensation Fund to support homeowners whose primary residence has become unsaleable as a direct result of flooding; to make provision about flood reinsurance schemes; to make provision about the responsibilities of developers and water companies in respect of the provision of drainage for new housing developments; to make water companies statutory consultees for certain planning applications; to place a duty on fire and rescue services to respond to flood events; to make provision about national and local digital mapping of flood incidence and risk; and for connected purposes. Mr Speaker, when you hear “Norfolk” and “floods”, I imagine that, like most, you think of coastal flooding, salt marsh flooding, storm tides eroding our cliffs, river flooding and the broads, but not inland flooding from surface water run-off overloading drains and sewers, which is all too often overlooked, and which is why I am introducing this Bill. Like many, Mr Speaker, you are probably wondering why Mid Norfolk is flooding. It is Breckland; it is dry, sandy, and inland—the clue is in the name—and it should not be flooding, but over the last decade or so we have seen a spate of inland surface flooding in 23 of my 130 villages, and the problem is increasing every year. Why? Yes, climate change. In 2022-23, we had the wettest October, November, December, January, February and March on record, but there is also a lack of maintenance of council highway culverts, a lack of maintenance of farm ditches, inadequate funding of internal drainage boards—who, by the way, have been doing a really good job since about 1560, when they were created—and local flood authorities, and the relinquishing of riparian rights. I am sorry to say that I think the Environment Agency is rather more focused on rivers as habitats, than as channels for getting water off the land. However, these issues are happening in many areas. Why is there a problem in Mid Norfolk? The big factor in Mid Norfolk is new housing. Along the A11 corridor, in the last 10 or 15 years, we have seen 5,000 houses built at Thetford, 5,000 at Attleborough, 3,000 at Wymondham, and 1,000 at Silfield. A 5,000-house new town is planned at Snetterton, and in commuter villages like Yaxham, Mattishall and Ellingham, big national developers and their agents like Gladman are using—or abusing—the five-year land supply to land-bank, and then to dump massive commuter housing estates on the outskirts of towns and villages without making proper infrastructure investment, against the wishes of the local council, the local plan and communities, who are too often powerless. I want to make it clear that I am not against house building, or all developers. We have excellent local developers in Norfolk, like Abel Homes, which builds excellent homes and estates in many of my towns and villages. They are not the problem. The problem is the rush to dump massive commuter estates on the outskirts of towns and villages, and the scale of new housing without adequate infrastructure investment. In 2020, my eyes were fully opened to the scale of the issue. I spent Christmas week helping residents in my villages to clear out sewage water from their houses, and on the telephone lines to try to get Anglian Water to send tankers to pump out the villages. The problems continued, and in 2023, Mill Lane, Attleborough, was hit by a significant flooding event affecting 100 homes. Spare a thought, please, for Lynn and Hans Short, who live next to the culvert, which was, by the way, wrongly installed by Anglian Water before it handed over the riparian responsibilities. Lynn and Hans have been flooded in four out of the last five years. That is why I have set up the Mid Norfolk Flood Partnership, worked with the county council to set up the Norfolk Strategic Flood Alliance, ably led by Henry Cator and Fiona Johnston, convened our first Norfolk flood summit last year, and established and supported local flood action groups. My first instinct was not to come to Parliament or Government for help, but to lead locally. Something has become very clear, not least through the case study of Mill Lane, Attleborough, where a culvert was built under the river, inappropriately blocked with a grille that was never properly checked, and is at the wrong angle, so that it piles up waste, flooding the houses next to it. We ended up having to put together a multi-agency taskforce. We removed 30 tonnes of debris from the whole river. There was an illegal housing development lower down the watercourse, inappropriate development, and a lack of catchment work all the way through. It was a huge multi-agency project, but this is happening all over the country. Norfolk is only sixth in the top 10 inland flood counties, and that is why there are, I think, four new flooding all-party parliamentary groups in this Parliament. MPs across the House recognise the issue, and given the new house building target of 1.5 million homes in the next three years, it will only get more serious. I pay tribute to the new flood Minister, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), who is present, and Peter Bonfield for his flood review. I welcome the comprehensive spending review funding announcement of £2.6 billion for flood and coastal erosion management to protect 65,000 homes. The insurance sector tells us that 18 million homes will be at risk—one in four—over the next 10 to 15 years, and flooding is costing £66 billion a year to the economy. [ Official Report , 29 January 2026; Vol. 779, c. 10WC.] (Correction) We will not solve the problem unless we really deal with the fundamental, structural, systemic problems causing misery and chaos around the country. Inland flooding is often overlooked, as funding goes to the higher-profile coastal areas, rivers, towns and cities. There is a serious lack of clear responsibility; there are over 30 agencies in Norfolk alone that have responsibility for flooding. We must deal with the disempowering of local bodies, such as internal drainage boards. Local flood authorities have no power or funding. There is continued building on floodplains without adequate infrastructure. There is no enforceable requirement to upgrade existing drainage, and no funding for drainage upgrades because most section 106 money goes on important local services. Residents in district council areas where there is an IDB are seeing funding for flood services cut. There is tonnes of data, but no proper mapping of where and when floods are likely to happen. We have the technology and the data to do that mapping, but we do not use it. The vital Flood Re scheme is limited in time and scope, and is set to expire. There is also an insurance, mortgage and saleability time-bomb in our housing market. Sadly, there was nothing to deal with those issues in the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, despite multiple amendments being tabled, including in the other place. The Bill that I am introducing has been designed with and around the advice of frontline bodies, and deals with the practical reality of flood prevention in four key areas: responsibilities, funding, planning, and national and local data and flood mapping. I developed it in a spirit of non-partisan, practical politics, to embolden the Minister to take this opportunity to make the key reforms that are essential if we are to avoid a growing crisis worsening to calamitous levels. I thank the many agencies and organisations in the water sector that have helped—in particular, local residents Liz Witcher in Watton, Hans and Lynn in Attleborough, and others too numerous to mention. I thank my councillors, agencies such as the Norfolk Strategic Flooding Alliance, and Aviva, a great local Norfolk insurance business on the frontline of this crisis. Most of all, the Bill is shaped by and for those poor people, up and down this country, who, like Hans and Lynn Short at Mill Lane, Attleborough, live in fear of going through the hell of their homes being flooded, not through any fault of their own, but because the system has failed them. The planning, drainage, sewerage, insurance and flood-prevention system has evolved without design. No single body or person is responsible; that is the problem. The system is not fit for purpose today, let alone for three years’ time, when 1.5 million new homes are set to be built. We were all sent here to make the system work for the people who pay their taxes, pay our wages and expect us to deliver. We owe it to them and to the next generation to fix this. That is how we repair public trust in our politics and in this Parliament. The Bill is designed to help the Minister do just that. I commend it to the House. Question put and agreed to. Ordered , That George Freeman, Nick Timothy, Jerome Mayhew, James Wild, Lee Pitcher, Helen Morgan, Dr Roz Savage, Steff Aquarone, Adrian Ramsay, Blake Stephenson and Dr Ben Spencer present the Bill. George Freeman accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 10 July, and to be printed (Bill 368).