Jade Botterill MP: speeches

Speeches

• 26 Jun 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  My constituency has recently hosted some fantastic community events. We have had the world coal carrying championship, the annual Ossett and Gawthorpe maypole procession, the Horbury craft fair, the annual Shelley French lunch, and plenty of beer festivals—not to mention the upcoming galas across the constituency over the summer. Could the Leader of the House support me in finding parliamentary time to celebrate the hard-working volunteers behind all these events, including Visit Ossett, and acknowledge their contribution to Yorkshire’s community, culture and local economy?

• 21 May 2025 · Broadband and Mobile Connectivity: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for giving way and the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) for securing the debate. The rural areas that I represent are blessed with incredible natural beauty, but too often that beauty can obscure deep issues in public services, transport, employment opportunities and connectivity. I have had to fight hard for local residents, such as those in Inkerman Court in Denby Dale in my constituency, to get the connectivity they deserve. With the new Government investing £500 million next year to deliver digital infrastructure upgrades through Project Gigabit and the shared rural network, does the hon. Member agree with me that high quality, stand-alone 5G is crucial to unlocking the economic and social potential of our rural communities?

• 1 May 2025 · Exports: Small Businesses · Hansard source

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  I recently visited Phoenox Textiles in Denby Dale, a family-run business that proudly continues our community’s heritage in the sector. It raised the concern that, while it operates a “zero to landfill” operation, low-quality, unsustainable imports from Chinese sellers such as Temu undercut its business and the local growth that it sustains. How are the Government addressing this concern, and what are they doing to support British businesses?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Passenger Rail Performance · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for her answer. In rural towns, rail links are vital to keep our communities connected, but many stations, such as Shepley station in my constituency, have poor accessibility for disabled and elderly travellers. Can she offer an update on the Department’s plans to upgrade accessibility at Shepley station through the Access for All programme and through its consideration of the business case submitted by Kirklees council to ensure that all residents can use it?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Rural Communities: Government Support · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing the debate. I am deeply proud to have grown up in and to represent a rural area. Anyone from any of the villages could tell the House how unique their community is; from Scissett’s wassailing to Shelley’s fundraising French Sunday Lunch or the Crigglestone and Durkar Wombles, who help to keep their village tidy, rural villages across my constituency provide rich, distinct communities. However, their beauty and that community can obscure deep issues, including lack of access to public services, transport and employment opportunities. Following the previous Government’s real-terms cut of £1 billion to NHS dentistry between 2010 and 2014, everyone in the country knows the struggle to access a dentist, but in dental deserts in rural communities, the cuts are felt more deeply. The previous Government allowed the roads across our country to fall into disrepair, but in rural communities, where people are more reliant on cars because public transport is so unreliable, people know the real cost and inconvenience of the pothole crisis—and, although everyone has felt the rise of antisocial behaviour since 2010, only rural communities face the full impact of county lines, livestock theft and fly-tipping. That is why I am so supportive of the Government’s efforts to support our rural communities. We are delivering a renewed push to expand 5G and broadband coverage by 2030, so that poor connectivity no longer holds rural communities back. We are providing nearly £1.6 billion in funding to finally get to grips with the pothole crisis, supporting parents taking their children to school and people just trying to get to work. When I report potholes I see across the constituency, I now have confidence that they will be filled. For constituents like so many in Emley, who are tired of waiting hours for buses that are delayed—if they come at all—we are giving communities the power to take back control of their bus services, with our better buses Bill. For all those unable to see an NHS dentist, forced to go private or to live in pain, 700,000 new dental appointments will be delivered, bolstering the flexible commissioning and golden hellos needed to attract dentists in rural areas. Those are real, concrete commitments to rural communities across our nation—commitments on potholes, bus services, dentists and rural crime. From the city centre to the village hall, I am proud to support the Labour Government in delivering these much-needed changes to our country and its rural communities.

• 27 Feb 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q All three of you have expressed disappointment at our scrapping the Rwanda scheme as part of the Bill. What part of the £700 million spent by the previous Government do you think was good value for money for the taxpayer? Tony Smith: I do not think any of it was good value for money for the taxpayer, was it? The history and record speak for themselves. But we need to think about why it did not work and look at the reasoning behind why it took three years to try to get the process going. An awful lot of work was done in Rwanda and the Home Office to try to make it happen, but it was subject to continual legal challenge. Legal challenges were made in Europe, in the domestic courts and by judicial review. On a number of occasions, flights were lined up that did not happen, and a lot of money was therefore wasted in the process. I am not a big fan of the Illegal Migration Act. Some of it was cumbersome, because it put all the eggs in the Rwanda basket. Rwanda was a limited programme—obviously, we could not send everybody to Rwanda—but under NABA, you had the option to triage and put some people into the Rwanda basket: those hard country removals, where you could not remove them anywhere else. You had that option, but you could still do what you are doing now and process people from places like Turkey and Albania, put them through the asylum system and return them to source. Losing that triage option is going to be a big drawback, and it is going to cost a lot more money in the long run. The intake will continue to come, and you will then have to rack up the associated asylum, accommodation and settlement costs that run along with that. Karl Williams: I would ask: “Value compared with what?” There is one argument around the counterfactual of if you had a deterrent, but I would also refer to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s analysis last summer on the fiscal impact of migration. It estimates that a low-skilled migrant, or low-wage migrant as the OBR puts it, will represent a lifetime net fiscal cost to the taxpayer of around £600,000. We know from analysis from Denmark, the Netherlands and other European countries that asylum seekers’ lifetime fiscal costs tend to be steeper than that, but even on the basis of the OBR analysis, even if everyone ends up in work, if 35,000 people cross a year, which is roughly where we were last year, at that sort of cost range, it will probably be £50 billion or £60 billion of lifetime costs. Compare that with £700 million—it depends on what timescale you are looking at.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Coalfield Communities · Hansard source

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  I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this important debate. I am proud to see so many colleagues speaking so passionately about their communities. Despite years of under-investment from the Conservatives, most of whom could not be bothered to show up to the debate today, it is nice to see people on the Government Benches who feel the same commitment to rejuvenating their communities and, importantly, to celebrating the social, economic and cultural contributions of the areas we have grown up in and now have the privilege of representing. I was there when Kellingley, the last deep pit in the UK, closed a week before Christmas back in 2015. I spoke to some of the 450 miners who had been made redundant, whose fathers and grandfathers had worked down the pit. The devastating, ruthless impact of closures was clearer to me that day than ever before. The mine was not just a place of work, but the heart of the community. Built around it were schools, sports teams, brass bands, social clubs, places of worship, families, friendships, hope, security and prosperity. When Kellingley closed, I saw on the faces of the men and their families the fear that the death of the industry would take the community and the culture with it—the culture and the industry of his father, and his father before him. However, they rejected victimhood. The next day, the miners, the families, their friends and their community marched together and met at the miners’ welfare club. For too long, people in post-industrial northern towns were promised nothing but empty slogans. Successive Conservative Governments ignored them, neglected them and insulted them, but they refused to be forgotten. Although Kellingley is not in my constituency, many mines like it were closed in similar circumstances and with similar results right across Ossett and Denby Dale. I cannot help but imagine that the scenes were similar on each occasion. Caphouse colliery in my constituency closed in 1985. In that refusal to be forgotten, the mine was converted into a museum, conceived, created and now staffed by ex-miners. It is run by Lynn Dunning, who embodies the often-forgotten role of women during the strikes. We must remember those who helped heat our nation for generations. With good old Yorkshire miners taking people down the shaft at the mining museum, there is not a better place to remember our rich industrial history. Yes, that is a plug to visit the National Coal Mining Museum in my constituency. It remains a place where we are reminded of our community’s contribution to this country. Every time I visit, I am filled with pride, anger and determination: pride in my region’s national contribution and the spirit of hard work, humour and solidarity still present in the ex-miners who remain there today; anger at the arrogance and ignorance of previous Governments who decimated our communities without a thought for what would come next; and determination to change this great injustice and to give our community not just what it needs, but what it has earned. We do not need to just preserve the legacy of coalfield communities; we must also fight for the dignity of retired miners who made that proud legacy possible. Other Members have spoken eloquently about the action taken to end the historical injustice of mineworkers and their pensions, which former mineworkers in my patch often raise with me. My hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Keir Mather) has been fighting for his constituent, Tony Rock, whose compensation case in the past few years has been delayed and delayed by the Department for Work and Pensions as his health worsens. That sort of case must become a thing of the past, and my Labour colleagues and I will keep fighting until retired members across Yorkshire receive the dignity in retirement they deserve. I know that this Government share that feeling and are acting, and I was proud to run on a manifesto that made a concrete commitment to miners and mining communities. This Government’s approach must go further, and does, to revive these communities for generations to come. That is why we are investing in schools and hospitals, roads and rail, high streets and homes. We are restoring pride in our town centres, combating antisocial behaviour and crime. We are financing the green industries of the future to ensure that what happened to the mineworkers never happens again. We are committed to growing the economy in towns right across our country, and not just London. As people in my area know all too well, strong communities must be nurtured generation after generation, but people in post-industrial northern towns such as mine often feel ignored and forgotten by the powerful. It is my job in the House to ensure that those thoughts and feelings are heard. I am committed to never treating them with the same injustice they experienced at the hands of uncaring, short-termist Conservative Governments.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Business Growth Service · Hansard source

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  1. What progress his Department has made on establishing the business growth service.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Business Growth Service · Hansard source

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  Before Christmas, I was pleased to meet some of the many microbusinesses operating in Osset and Denby Dale. They told me that they previously felt that they had fallen through the cracks of Government policy and economic ambition. How will the Minister’s business growth service assist those microbusinesses, as well as broader measures that the Government are taking to help smaller organisations to grow?

• 3 Dec 2024 · Business Rates: High Street Retailers · Hansard source

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  24. What steps she is taking to introduce permanent reductions to business rates for high street retailers.

• 3 Dec 2024 · Business Rates: High Street Retailers · Hansard source

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  Many people in my community rely on in-person banking and access to cash. I was pleased to recently open the banking hub in Ossett town centre. Ossett was previously one of the 55 bankless towns in the UK. How are the Government looking to further support those who rely on those services, particularly in towns and rural villages?