Jack Rankin MP: speeches 2025

230 published records · newest first.

Speeches

28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source
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In preparing for this debate, I was thinking about my history when it comes to stamp duty. I recall quite vividly going to see a mortgage broker on Dedworth Road in Windsor—I am not quite sure what year it was; perhaps I was in my late 20s. I had been quite dutifully saving for some years in order to achieve my aspiration, which a lot of young people have, to get a foot on the property ladder. I remember that I dutifully took my payslips and bank statements, and the mortgage broker turned to me and laughed. He said, “Congratulations on saving that, Mr Rankin. You have now saved the stamp duty; we just have to save up for a deposit.” It was a joke, but it was kind of true. There has been lots of criticism of our record, but one of the things we Conservatives did in office that I was most heartened by was removing first-time buyers from stamp duty. That was incredibly powerful for young people in this country. I might have to declare an interest that is not just historical. I am a father with a young family—we have two boys under the age of four. Housing is incredibly expensive in my constituency, with the average house costing around £750,000. We are considering a third child, and just like families up and down the country we are discussing what that means. The particular limiting decision for my family, despite us wanting a third child, is housing. We live in a wonderful home in the village of Sunninghill that is probably okay for three babes and tots, but it would not be okay for a growing family. That is the kind of decision that is being made up and down this country. One of the things that has made me proud this afternoon to sit on the Conservative Benches was listening to some Labour Members, because from some there has been a sneering assumption that stamp duty is a tax for the rich. When I think about myself and many young people in their early 20s trying to put together their stamp duty, I do not think that is a tax cut for the rich. When I think about families trying to get another bedroom in order to grow their families, I do not think that is a tax cut for the rich. That is not going into any of the other dynamic effects at all. I am proud that on the Conservative Benches, we stand up for aspirational people. If we think about the crowded field of all the taxes we might want to cut, to my mind stamp duty is where we might start. We have heard from many Members who have quoted distinguished economists—much more distinguished than anything I might come out with—but it is clear that stamp duty is one of those taxes that destroys almost as much wealth as it raises. It is anti-growth, anti-ambition and anti-free market, and as I have already articulated, I think it is anti-family. It is a significant part of the reason why this country has such a lethargic housing market. This is all despite the fact that home ownership is not only key to our prosperity; perhaps even more so, it is important to people’s pride and the security of millions of families around this country. It is the foundation of this great property-owning democracy, but as a nation, we are not in a great state when it comes to housing. For my generation and the generation behind me, home ownership sometimes looks quite impossible. To fix this, our focus must be on supply, supply, supply, but we also need a market that flows freely. Frankly, today’s housing market is gummed up.
22 Oct 2025 · Scottish Independence Referendum · Hansard source
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I thank the Secretary of State for his unequivocal rejection of separatism. He will always find on the Conservative side fellow colleagues who treasure this United Kingdom and want to shout about the most successful alliance in political history. What specific steps can he take to prevent more taxpayers’ cash being squandered as the SNP pursues its doomed dream?
22 Oct 2025 · Scottish Independence Referendum · Hansard source
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5. What his policy is on holding a referendum on Scottish independence.
13 Oct 2025 · Manchester Terrorism Attack · Hansard source
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When we allow Islamist hate preachers such as Sheikh Alafasy to do speaking tours, it is no wonder British Jews in the UK no longer feel safe. In January, he had a platform at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, despite the Jewish Representative Council raising its concerns. They were ignored. In the follow-up meeting, described as an appalling “tick-box exercise”, the chief executive could not have cared less. It now turns out that this Sheikh was one of only 10 people that the terrorist perpetrator of this attack followed on Twitter. There was a chance that he was at the event in January. Can the Home Secretary advise what her Department is doing to hold the chief executive Andrew Bolt and the trustees of Bridgewater Hall to account for completely failing to take the concerns of Manchester’s Jewish community into consideration? It is not just the hate marches.
16 Sept 2025 · Prison Safety · Hansard source
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4. What steps he is taking to improve the safety of the prison estate.
16 Sept 2025 · Prison Safety · Hansard source
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Thousands of drones are being used to smuggle contraband such as weapons and drugs into prisons. Locally, I have met leading security company Preventive Concepts Security. The shadow Lord Chancellor was good enough to visit it in France to see its technology in action, detecting and disabling drones. What specific steps is the Department taking to roll out drone detection capabilities across the prison estate? Is it currently engaging directly with private stakeholders such as Preventive Concepts Security?
4 Sept 2025 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source
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Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The point I am trying to make to those on the Government Benches is that if a Government can expel their political opponents from the other place because the majority in this place says they are not elected, while placing no limit on the Prime Minister’s patronage, so can a new Government—so take the compromise. Be careful what you wish for.
4 Sept 2025 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source
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My right hon. Friend is right. Our national story has brought us to a place where this House is rightfully dominant among the three parts of Parliament in exercising the sovereignty of the King in Parliament, but we should be careful of the wholesale execution of one of those arms. Let us be clear: that is what the unilateral removal of the hereditary peers would do. The other place without them is no more a House of Lords than my terraced house in Sunninghill is. A Cromwellian purge, it would leave that place the preserve of political cronies and failed advisers. Is that what we want? Is that progress? The House of Lords today is difficult to justify, but it works. This place has the attention span of a TikTok-addled teenager, as we jump to half-hourly news cycles driven by Twitter and rolling news.
4 Sept 2025 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source
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Declare an interest!
4 Sept 2025 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend’s point is right, and I thank him for it. We walk through the Division lobbies, directed by the Whips, often having had no time, because of the impossible juggling act, to develop real knowledge of the topic in question or to think through properly the implications. Some of the stuff that leaves this place with a massive majority might have well been written in crayon. Thank God for the other place. Do not remove long-serving public servants and outstanding legislators. Do not pick at the threads of our constitution. The other place is one of the parts of our constitution which works best. We should retain Lords amendment 1 and 8. I talked of a tension, a conflict in my thinking. I have tried to articulate a deeply conservative instinct, but I also feel excitement, as I will explain. My view is that the British state is way off course, dangerously off course. It needs deep and radical change. To take one issue, immigration, almost nothing is now too radical to consider. Whether we look at the asylum system or legal migration, the radical change that the country needs will be of significant scale. None of that will be possible in the Blairite constitutional straitjacket that is at direct odds with our historic constitution.
4 Sept 2025 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source
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I rise to speak to Lords amendments 1 and 8, and therefore against the motion, in two minds. I say in two minds because I find the unilateral removal of the hereditary peers without seeking consensus, which is what a rejection of Lords amendment 1 would mean, both regrettable and exciting. I would like to take each of these two polarising mindsets in turn. My first emotion is regret. Britain has something of a Schrödinger’s cat constitution. We are simultaneously a modern, plural and open democracy, and a kind of autocratic theocracy. Our national motto, “Dieu and mon droit”—God and my right—points to the hereditary monarch being appointed by and accountable only to God. We have a state religion in England and Scotland, and in England the divinely appointed monarch is the Supreme Governor of the Church. The bishops, whom the King appoints, sit in our legislature, as do hereditary peers, who are the focus of the amendment. The King appoints the judiciary and is the commander of the armed forces. On paper, as Labour Members have pointed out, the country with which we have most in common is the demonic Islamic Republic, but unlike Iran we have simultaneously free and fair elections, broad debate in a free press, and freedom of religious and belief, and we are an open member of the international order. The point is that we would never design our tapestry of a constitution. In many ways it is absurd, but it is organic. It is rooted in the millennia of history. In two years’ time, we will celebrate the 1100th birthday of England, the most remarkable nation on earth, which a majority of us in this place are fortunate to have won the lottery of life to be born in. We should be respectful of that evolution, because that evolving constitutional order has empirically served us well. It is how it works in practice that matters, not how it looks on the ideological grand planner’s piece of paper.
4 Sept 2025 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source
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That is the tension that I am trying to bring out. Who would seek to frustrate such an agenda—the Lords might, in their current form. I find it exciting—and this is a warning—that a majority in this House, gained from 33.7% of the vote on a 59.7% turnout, which is almost exactly 20% of the adults in this country, can remove their opposition from the other place. Labour Members may not agree with the hereditary principle, but who else does not get elected in the other place and cannot be removed by elections? It is the life peers. I say honestly, the lack of respect you might have for a millennia-old principle, I have for a lot of the backgrounds—
3 Sept 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source
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Q12. Like many, I was deeply concerned that a police force deemed it necessary to take five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer from a flight. Some may have found Mr Linehan’s comments offensive, but that is not the point. If we do not support speech that we do not like, we do not support free speech. Will the Prime Minister commit to reviewing our speech laws to ensure that legitimate free expression is protected and will he condemn the culture within the public sector that prioritises this dangerous and perverse nonsense?
21 Jul 2025 · Victory over Japan: 80th Anniversary · Hansard source
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It is through our veterans that our collective memory of the second world war is best preserved, but as their bright flame is flickering it is important that a new generation—my generation—commits to re-telling their stories. As a schoolboy, one of the pieces of work that has stuck with me the most was the “man behind the name” project, because it is impossible to think of the 5 million British young men—25% of adult men—who fought in the first world war; that is 55 full Wembley stadiums. The “man behind the name” project was so powerful, with the general point being, “Go and pick a name on your local cenotaph.” For me, that was the one I passed on the way to Mrs Wood’s history lesson at West Hill school. We were told, “Choose a name and research that man, because when you learn about that young man—where he was born, his sweetheart, his job, his kids, not too dissimilar in age to yourself—you realise that it is not an abstract number, but 5 million young men with their own lives. It hits home.” The man behind the name for me was Benjamin Ford, my great-great-grandfather. He died in Mesopotamia fighting the Ottomans. What struck me particularly was that I heard a lot about the western front but little to nothing about this other front where men like Benjamin died for King and country. It rather strikes me that the Pacific front in the second world war is often similarly overlooked. Today’s debate is important for highlighting those men who fought and died in the far east, particularly those fighting after VE Day had passed. Just this weekend I was speaking to Theresa Haggart, a former local headmistress and stalwart of Windsor civic society, about her father, the late Charles Snelling; I want to take this opportunity to highlight the man behind that name. He passed in August 2016, aged 92. He came from a family with a proud tradition of national service. In the first world war, he was a regimental sergeant-major as part of the Canadian imperial forces, and in the second world war he was a radar engineer and operator. He spent time hopping from ship to ship, making repairs to essential equipment, and, like 365,000 other British troops, found himself thousands of miles away in the Pacific. Unable to share his precise location with his family, he sketched drawings of the local culture and the people he met on blank postcards, which he sent to his parents, letting them know he was okay. Charles did not discuss his service, although he did feel that while VE Day commemorations continued to draw national attention, VJ Day came and went almost as an afterthought. I gently say to Ministers that this sometimes feels to be the case on the 80th anniversary—and that is regrettable. Victory over Japan marked the true end of the conflict, and no less was the sacrifice of those who gave their lives there, so let us all in this House play our part so that these stories, as they come down from generation to generation—
11 Jul 2025 · Colne Valley Regional Park: Protection · Hansard source
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The proposals for a third runway at Heathrow would take 900 acres of the regional park directly, not to mention the indirect consequences, including Colnbrook and Horton in my constituency, which would be irreparable. Does my hon. Friend condemn the Chancellor pressing the panic button and inflicting this irreversible damage on the Colne Valley park?
1 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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T7. We all know that there is a difference between welfare cuts and welfare reforms. These cuts were the maths of Treasury mandarins. It is the same thinking that saw winter fuel payments taken from pensioners. Now that the Government have U-turned on both of those, when will they finally back British farming and U-turn on the family farm tax?
30 Jun 2025 · Glastonbury Festival: BBC Coverage · Hansard source
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Had those chants called for the deaths of people of any other nationality or ethnicity, there is no question in my mind that the live feed would have been pulled straightaway. I welcome the Secretary of State’s robust statement, but does she agree that this problem is systemic, and that there has been a decades-long, deep-rooted bias against Israel at the corporation, which seems unwilling to deal with it, or incapable of doing so?
24 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source
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We welcome the provisions in clause 11, which relate to extending the time period in which the unduly lenient sentence scheme may be applied for. However, as the official Opposition, we still have concerns that the window of opportunity for victims to raise an appeal remains the same. The scheme can only be referred to for some of the most serious crimes—crimes that are likely to leave victims and their families with a degree of trauma or grief. How can we possibly expect that, within just a month of a sentence being issued, gathering together a clear, strong case for a sentence’s being unduly lenient would be on the minds of victims? We also know that many victims do not know about the scheme, or the opportunity to appeal. Baroness Newlove said that victims “really do not know” about it. She said: “Once they leave the courtroom, it can take a long time, but the clock is ticking.” — [ Official Report, Victims and Courts Public Bill Committee, 17 June 2025; c. 8, Q15.] During the oral evidence session, many notable sources raised issues with the current timeframe. Dame Nicole Jacobs, Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, described the current system as “disorienting” and said that “we need to do so much more to put in place solid advice and support for victims. Those 28 days seem to fly in the face of that.” –– [ Official Report, Victims and Courts Public Bill Committee, 17 June 2025; c. 9, Q15.] Extending the window of opportunity will also surely allow a greater base of evidence from previous cases to be compiled, to bolster a referral under the scheme. It is only right that we allow victims, and the organisations supporting them, the time and space to make their case as strong as possible, ensuring that everything is laid on the table for the Attorney General to consider. Let us place victims and families at the heart of the unduly lenient sentence scheme, where they should be.
17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q Just to pick up on this point, as well as tabling the extension to 56 days, the Opposition have also taken up the point that the witnesses mentioned about awareness. With amendment 12, we are trying to create an obligation for the Crown Prosecution Service to write to victims within 10 working days. Will that assuage your concerns that the main concern is awareness, rather than the timeframe?
17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q As the official Opposition, we have tabled an amendment to increase the force with which the justice system can compel the convicted to come to their sentencing hearings. We are particularly keen to make sure there is a duty to consult the victim or their family, where the victim is deceased. Is that something you would support? Mark Brooks: Yes, in principle. I come back to my point about the importance of making sure victims feel that justice is being done, as well as seeing it being done.
17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source
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Am I out of time, Dr Murrison?
17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source
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Q To pick up on this theme, Assistant Chief Constable, the police show all the time that it is possible to move and restrain people legally, do they not? Genna Telfer: Yes.
17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source
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Q So how is this different? Genna Telfer: It is not; it is exactly the same, but we do not move them easily. If someone does not want to be moved, there is a risk to the people moving them, as well as a risk to the individual. Obviously, we train and we do a lot of work to make sure that that injury is limited, but people do get injured when we try to move someone forcefully, on both sides.
17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source
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Q A quick question: would you support the publication of sentencing remarks to support transparency, and to enable victims to reflect on what was said in court? Sarah Hammond: Ultimately, that is a matter for the Government. There is clearly an argument for victims to be able to see that justice has been done. It will also potentially help with appeals for unduly lenient sentences if victims are able to access the sentencing remarks, so they can see the basis upon which the sentence has been passed.
17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source
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I was just going to offer the panel the opportunity to say whether there is anything not in the Bill that they would like to see included.

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