Graham Stuart MP: speeches 2024

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Speeches

18 Nov 2024 · Strategic Defence Review · Hansard source
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Further to the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford), I welcome the £2.9 billion of extra defence expenditure from next year. However, not only do we not have a timetable for meeting 2.5% of GDP, which the whole House would like to hear about; will the Secretary of State confirm that there will be no additional funding for the in-year pressures that this Department, alongside so many others, is suffering from?
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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What about on the Front Bench?
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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Will the Minister give way?
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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The hon. Lady makes absolutely the right point about the NHS and its interdependence with social care, but the Government have done more than be silent on social care: through the minimum wage and the NICs, they have imposed £2.5 billion of additional costs on social care while giving just £600 million to local authorities. They are taking an already difficult situation and making it rather worse.
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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Not when an intervention is happening. Every Labour Government in history have ended with higher unemployment than when they began. From the look of these measures, does it not seem that this one will be exactly the same?
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. We have heard fantastic maiden speeches from across the House, and I am sure that we have all enjoyed the insights from them. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Dan Tomlinson). I loved the way he set out his aspiration for the kind of country of abundance that we should seek. He is entirely right, but I am just not sure that this Budget is the way to get there. If the penny drops with him over time, I hope that he will be able to engage with us in coming up with a more constructive way of delivering the growth that this country needs. Not only is this a Budget of broken promises, but unfortunately—and this is an important issue—it is a bad faith Budget. I do not want to rehearse—although there is so much to rehearse—the 50 promises not to raise taxes or the bogus £22 billion that was not validated by the OBR, but those are serious points. It is good to see the engagement from Labour Members, because in politics one cannot afford to have a reputation for being dishonest and not doing what one says. [ Interruption. ] Labour Members who laugh at that should remember Cicero’s advice. He was always better at giving advice than following it, but he said: “The foundation of justice is…good faith; that is, truth and fidelity to promises and agreements.” Without that, we lose trust.
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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Yes. And with respect to the hon. Gentleman’s point, I think that the former Prime Minister and Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip was true to himself, true to his heart and true in his expressions—although, like all of us, he probably had his moments. What he never did was set out on a deliberate path to mislead people. He set out his honest view of the way the world should be. Unfortunately, 9.7 million people, including 15,000 of my constituents, believed the promises of the now Labour Government, and even 410 Members of Parliament thought that they were being honest.
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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No, it is relevant here. I wonder whether it is in order for the hon. Gentleman to have been given assurances by the Government that funding will be put in place to mitigate the impact on GPs, because that information has repeatedly been refused to this House. I know, Madam Deputy Speaker that you represent all Back Benchers, like me, in making sure the truth is out.
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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I know that my hon. Friend follows these things closely. According to the OBR, the £26 billion jobs tax bombshell actually nets only £16 billion because of reduced investment and other funds, and three quarters of the £26 billion falls on workers’ wages. Only this socialist Government could be so incompetent as to reduce wages by more than they will take from a tax that they have introduced. I have not heard that observation yet in the debate, but I share it with my hon. Friend.
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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The right hon. Gentleman will, I hope, be aware that the long-term economic growth of this country relies not primarily on public investment or indeed public infrastructure, but on a healthy private sector—the wealth creators from whom we can take the funding to deliver into those goods that he talks about and that are part of a balanced and successful society. This Budget does not help them. It does the opposite.
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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It is.
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said that honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the way that this Government are serially breaking all the promises they made during the election is corrosive for our politics?
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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No doubt?
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. It is good to see the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in his place. I hope he will take on board these arguments, and perhaps the overall settlement can be reworked to minimise the negative impacts that my hon. Friend outlines.
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. [Interruption.] Government Members do not like to hear this.
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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Will the Minister give way?
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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I will not. The very poorest pensioners are those eligible for pension credit, and nearly 900,000 of them will not get that £300. That is the truth—there is no point denying it. Finally, there is the awful betrayal of British farmers, many of whom work from dawn to dusk to ensure our supermarkets are full of fresh fruit and veg. According to my constituent William Hodgson, who runs a small family farm near Withernsea, it is a “rural catastrophe”. I ask the Government to think again.
6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source
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I think people do feel betrayed. We need to conduct our politics as honestly as we can. The Labour Government broke their promise not to raise taxes on working people, because, as the OBR has made clear, the NICs raise will overwhelmingly fall on working people. In fact, if we go through the numbers, as I did, it turns out that there is a bigger reduction in wages than there is net receipt to the Exchequer. That is quite a remarkable achievement—probably only a Labour Government could do that. Of course, the Government have also put up the cost of getting on the bus. If ever there was a symbol of working people, travelling from my constituency to a low-paid job in Hull, that is it. It will cost them £500 a year extra out of taxed income. I do not know why the hon. Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) is grinning—I know he grins a lot, but it should not be funny to him that someone in a low-wage job who travels into Hull every day will pay £500 a year more because of the decisions his Government are making. For a couple, it is £1,000 a year. That cost is real, and it should not be glossed over. There is just one train station in my constituency, and people who live in Withernsea have no choice but to travel 26 miles to get there. The Prime Minister’s constituents are blessed with a pick and mix of ways to get to the office: the tube, the overground, trains, Ubers, Bolts, and even Boris bikes. That is not the case in rural and coastal East Yorkshire: my constituents get the bus at 7 o’clock in the morning, and they get another bus at 6 o’clock at night. That is their lived reality, and the serious impact of this Budget should be recognised. Another broken promise was to pensioners, who were told that they would have security in retirement—that their benefits would not be touched. Taking £300 from the very poorest pensioners is not keeping that promise. [ Interruption. ] The very poorest pensioners are those eligible for pension credit.
5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source
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Cheekiness accepted. The hon. Gentleman is quite right that the £600 million extra is for both children and adult social care, whereas adult social care alone is expected to have a £2.4 billion hit, so does he agree that if the NHS, however well funded, cannot move its patients into social care, that investment and expenditure will not work?
5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source
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Does my hon. Friend agree that the absence on the Government Front Bench of anyone with any experience of running a business, when businesses create the wealth that pays for public services, may explain why the Budget is so financially illiterate?
5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Lady give way?

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