Ian Roome MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 Sept 2026 · Water Sector: Public Ownership · Hansard source

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  Surfers Against Sewage’s submission to the independent water commission looked at five different public interest models for the water industry, each with its own strengths. Does my hon. Friend agree that there should be a culture of accountability to the wider public, not just to shareholders?

• 14 Jul 2026 · Coastal Communities: Isolation and Hidden Deprivation · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) for securing this important debate. I want to speak up for Ilfracombe in particular, and the challenges that will be familiar to coastal communities everywhere. Devon county council has identified Ilfracombe as one of the most vulnerable towns in Devon. Its remote location leaves it badly cut off from wider public services, economic opportunities and emergency intervention. That pattern will be all too familiar for those in this room. What I can never accept are shameless articles, such as the one recently published in a national tabloid newspaper that I will not name, punching down at Ilfracombe. Trashing a small town’s reputation for clicks is not journalism; it is monetising misery and it is not fit for tomorrow’s fish and chip paper. I have spoken with local business owners who pour their hearts and souls out into Ilfracombe trying to make things better, and the very last thing that they need is a hatchet job in the national press. Just yesterday, it was reported that a local teenager, Bradley Blackmore, bravely rescued another boy from drowning. Well done, Bradley. Ilfracombe can boast award-winning manufacturing businesses and several promising new housing schemes supported by North Devon council and the Ilfracombe Community Land Trust, delivering safer social housing for local people. Every year, crowds flock to Ilfracombe for the maritime festival. This August, a daring soapbox derby will again raise thousands for charity, and I am proud to say that Ilfracombe has just been shortlisted for the first ever UK town of culture awards, one of only 15 towns in the country on the list. I ask the Minister whether the Government will consider re-inventing the coastal communities fund or coastal revival fund for the new generation. How should we talk about challenges without damaging the reputation of coastal towns that deserve our help? How do we deliver what the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) called “good growth in every postcode”?

• 8 Jul 2026 · Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for securing this debate. There are moments in politics when delay is not just a mistake, but a danger. This is one of those moments. The truth is that the world has become more dangerous much faster than Britain has become ready. The strategic defence review mattered because it stripped away comforting illusions. From the end of the cold war, we enjoyed a peace dividend that offered more security and more money for public services, but war has returned to Europe. Hostile states challenge us daily with cyber-attacks and sabotage, flouting international law and the liberal rules-based order. The absolute supremacy of the western alliance is no longer absolute. The SDR set out the right ambition: a more integrated force, a more digital force and a more resilient Britain, ready to learn lessons from Ukraine and the middle east. The defence investment plan accepts that analysis, but next comes the hard part: not only recognising the problem but solving it. Does the plan move quickly enough to make Britain safer? I fear it does not. We lost nearly a year waiting for the defence investment plan to be published. Months of hesitation when industry held its breath, investments stalled, contracts went unsigned and momentum was lost. The SDR talks of mobilising “rapidly in the event of a crisis”. If only that sense of urgency were reflected in government. Capability delayed is capability denied. The pace matters as much as the decision. The review rightly placed at the heart of Britain’s future military capability the digital targeting web—the system that links sensors, commanders and weapons into one integrated force that can identify a threat and destroy it. The defence investment plan commits money for our armed forces to do more, but too much of that funding is still on the other side of 2030. The Prime Minister has said that NATO could face an attack from Russia before 2030. Yesterday, Lord Robertson and General Sir Richard Barrons pointed out to the Defence Committee that many of the capabilities deemed urgently needed in the SDR are only due to arrive at the end of a nine-year investment cycle. An example is air and missile defence, where the scale of the £790 million investment falls short of what was planned and arrives years down the line.