James Murray MP: speeches

Speeches

• 27 Jan 2026 · Rail Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we are all about job growth. I fear I will be quite busy after this set of questions with taking up projects in different constituencies, but that is absolutely right, because we all want to make sure that we have better investment—particularly in transport and infrastructure—for our constituents. I assure him that I will look into the matter and get back in touch with him.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Rail Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising the concerns of the services used by his constituents. I can assure him that I will look into those and get back to him.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for raising the situation in her constituency. All Departments across Government have had their budgets set, and they include a contingency for covering known pressures. One of the ways that we have managed spending settlements differently from the previous Government is that all Departments must recognise that unexpected pressures will come along. They need to prepare for that, and should have robust plans for responding when such things occur.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  As my hon. Friend sets out, there are significant challenges in adult social care, and we have already made available an extra £4.6 billion, including funding to start to implement the fair pay agreement. As she will probably be aware, Baroness Louise Casey is leading an independent commission to build consensus on reform. Its first phase will report this year, with a focus on how to make the most of existing resources.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  This Government are backing investment in Teesside to create the good jobs that my hon. Friend’s constituents deserve. I know that Teesside is very well placed to lead for our country across a range of sectors. For example, £4 billion is going into the UK’s first carbon capture, usage and storage cluster in Teesside, including the world’s first at-scale gas power station with CCUS.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) is warmly welcoming people who spent 14 years undermining public services, who wrecked the economy, who botched Brexit, and who were booted out by the British people in 2024—and Reform’s latest recruit was so bad that she managed to get sacked by Liz Truss.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Let me start by thanking the emergency services in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency for all their work to ensure that people are kept safe, and to respond to the challenges that people face as a result of flooding. We are determined to support public services across the board, and the decisions taken by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in past Budgets and in the spending review mean that we have sustainable funding for our public services in all parts of the country.

• 15 Jan 2026 · Covid-19: Financial Support · Hansard source

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  I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) on securing this debate. I thank hon. Members from both sides of the House for their powerful contributions. Although much of the debate has rightly focused on the detail of the financial support made available by the then Government during the pandemic, we have also heard many deeply personal stories about businesses and individuals who were directly affected. In two months’ time, the country will come together to mark the sixth anniversary of the start of the pandemic. That will be an opportunity for us all to remember and reflect, and to pay tribute to all those who died, whose loss is still so keenly felt in all our constituencies. The pandemic cost over 227,000 lives in our country, and I know that loss and grief are still felt by families whose loved ones were lost during that difficult period. As the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) said, reflecting on the pandemic is also a moment to express our gratitude, once again, to all those who worked throughout the pandemic to provide vital and, in many cases, lifesaving services to all of us across the country. It is also a moment to recommit to learning the lessons of what happened during that time, so that we are better prepared for future crises. The Government are committed to learning those lessons and doing all we can to protect businesses and individuals across Britain in future. As well as having a huge impact on the lives of people and their families across the country, as we have heard today, the pandemic was a huge economic shock. GDP fell by a record 19.4% and thousands of businesses faced closure, so it was necessary to support businesses and individuals affected. We supported putting in place the measures mentioned by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild), including the coronavirus job retention scheme, the self-employment income support scheme, and various business grants and Government-backed loan guarantees. It is right, however, that we as a country now reflect on how those schemes were implemented by the Government of the day. As we have heard from many hon. Members, a number of people experienced genuine hardship and distress because they were excluded from the available schemes. Many of those experiences have been described powerfully in today’s debate, including by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon in her opening speech and by my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden). We also heard a number of other stories about individuals and businesses across the country from my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham), the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane), and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper), who also spoke about the significance of economic resilience and preparedness for the future—an important topic that I will return to in a moment. We also heard from the hon. Members for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) and for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed), and my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank), who spoke about the impact of the pandemic on young people, which has had a lasting effect, as we are all keenly aware. The hon. Members for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) and for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) also spoke about their affected businesses and constituents. One of the themes of those contributions was about what we as a country are doing to prepare for the future, to ensure that if a similar crisis happened again, we would be better prepared. As a Government, we are considering how we might better target and reach excluded groups in future, including through better real-time data collection. As hon. Members know, the official covid-19 public inquiry is considering how future emergency schemes could be better tailored to the modern labour market. The inquiry recently held public hearings focused on economic support for people and businesses during the pandemic, and it will publish its final report in due course. The Government, including the Treasury, fully participated in those hearings and provided a substantial amount of evidence. We will carefully study and consider any recommendations, mindful of our responsibility to vulnerable groups and our commitment to value for money. As hon. Members have also made clear, no assessment of the previous Government’s record during the pandemic can ignore the fact that billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was lost to fraud. That was a failure of monumental proportions, and we are all continuing to pay the price. That is why, on taking office, we took action to recoup the money owed, including by appointing Tom Hayhoe as the covid counter-fraud commissioner. In December he published his report, and the findings are shocking. According to the commissioner, covid fraud cost the taxpayer a staggering £10.9 billion—that is enough to fund daily free school meals for the UK’s 2.7 million eligible children for eight years. Of course, we recognise that our predecessors in government were responding to a crisis, the nature of which demanded acting at speed, but the cynical exploitation of pandemic support was foreseeable. Last year, an arrest was made following an HMRC investigation into a company, Luxe Lifestyle, which was awarded a £25 million PPE contract, having been referred to the procurement VIP lane by a Conservative Minister and a party chairman. The company won that contract despite having no employees, no assets, no turnover and £9,000 of debt. While Luxe Lifestyle did end up supplying some items, they were all inadequate and unusable. That is just one example. It does not begin to scratch the surface of covid fraud, but we have heard no apology today from the Conservatives for their actions—no apology to this House, and no apology to the British people who have been left to pick up the bill. We cannot allow this ever to happen again. That is why the Government introduced tougher sanction powers in the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Act 2025 to help recover stolen funds, and why we have rolled out specialist fraud recovery teams to track down suspected fraudsters and recover taxpayer cash. Since coming to office, the Government have recouped almost £400 million paid in error or that was obtained illegally through covid fraud. As the Chancellor has made clear, this fraud is a fraud against the British people, and we will leave no stone unturned, leave no question unasked, and leave no fraudster unchallenged until we have cleared up the mess we inherited. While we work to fix those problems, we are also turning towards the future, making sure our country is well prepared to face future crises. Much has been learned already from the covid-19 pandemic, but the scale of the economic emergency facing the country nearly six years ago underlines the need to continue embedding these learnings into the Government’s systems and processes. As I have already set out, we have taken tough action to track down the fraudsters who profited on the previous Government’s watch. We are improving and enhancing the Government’s analytical and modelling capabilities, to ensure that we can better target support schemes in future. We have launched the National Situation Centre, enabling us to identify and plan for a range of risks and improve our crisis response. We have conducted, through Exercise Pegasus, the largest cross-Government pandemic simulation in British history, helping to make sure we are better prepared than before, that our plans are battle-tested, and that we are ready to adapt. As the official covid-19 inquiry draws to a close, we stand ready to study any recommendations and to take action where needed. The economic implications of the covid-19 pandemic for this country were profound. In response to this unprecedented crisis, it was of course necessary to act quickly for our economy and for our communities. But we know that mistakes were made, and the British people were defrauded to the tune of over £10 billion. That is money that should have been spent on schools and hospitals but which has instead gone into the pockets of fraudsters and criminals. There will also undoubtably be wider lessons to draw from the design of support schemes and the impact those schemes had on various groups across the economy. As a Government, we will continue to enhance our resilience to future shocks. We have set to work on that since the election, and our efforts will intensify after the official covid-19 inquiry publishes its final report. We will do whatever is necessary to build a safer and more secure country for the future. I will end by again thanking all hon. Members for sharing the experiences of their local businesses and individual constituents in the debate.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  I am unclear whether the hon. Gentleman supports our £150 off energy bills and our extra £150 off for those 6 million households on the lowest income. That will benefit people right across the UK with the cost of living challenges they face. We know that that is what matters to people right across Britain. Instead of focusing on what this Budget means for people across Britain, we heard the shadow Chancellor’s comments on a motion that focuses so much on process. While I accept that process is very important, it has been covered extensively in recent weeks—indeed, most recently by the Chancellor in the Treasury Committee this morning—so let me put on record our response to the motion and to the comments that the shadow Chancellor made about process. Let me begin by again addressing the speech that the Chancellor made on 4 November. When the Chancellor addressed the country that morning, her purpose was simple: to give the British people an honest sense of the circumstances we were facing and the principles that would guide her as she took decisions at the Budget. She wanted to highlight the challenges that our country was facing and her priorities in the face of those challenges, and that is exactly what she did. Following the OBR’s review of productivity—the review of the impact of 14 years of the Conservatives being in power—the Chancellor knew that we faced a downgrade. To understand the scale of the impact, members of the Opposition need only to consult the Budget document. There, they will see that the OBR’s productivity review, which covered the Conservatives’ time in office, reduces “the amount of revenue the OBR expects the government to collect by around £16 billion in 2029-30.”

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman is mistaken. We have kept to our manifesto commitment not to raise the rates of income tax, national insurance on working people, and VAT. We also said in our manifesto that we would keep taxes on working people as low as possible, and we have been able to do that only because of the other fair and necessary choices that the Chancellor made on taxation.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for talking about the experience of her constituents. She is absolutely right that the NHS is so important to all of us, and it is so important for the Chancellor to protect it in the Budget. The decisions she took protect our investment in the NHS in order to get it back on its feet, which will improve people’s experiences right across the country.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right to point out that the OBR’s report contains a series of recommendations. It was, in fact, published within a few days of the premature publication. We are acting on its recommendations, including the recommendation that we should determine whether this has happened before, at previous fiscal events. While the OBR indicated that it might have happened earlier this year, at the time of the spring statement, it did not look into previous fiscal events, either under this Chancellor or under Chancellors in the last Government. We are looking into that to find out what happened. More widely, beyond the EFO and the OBR, we put the utmost weight on Budget security, as I told the House last week. That is why, as I have told the House, a leak inquiry is under way, with the full support of the Chancellor and the whole team at the Treasury. In addition, the permanent secretary to the Treasury will conduct a review of its security processes, which will inform future fiscal events. The Budget security review will happen in the new year, and we will publish the outcome once it has concluded. More immediately, however, while recognising the seriousness of what happened with the OBR’s forecast, we remain fully committed to working with an independent OBR, and we recognise its vital role as a core part of our fiscal framework. The Government will soon launch a competitive external recruitment process to appoint a new chair, subject to the consent of the Treasury Committee. In the meantime, Professor David Miles and Tom Josephs will jointly lead the OBR until the new chair is in place. I am happy to come here every day to explain the decisions that we took in the Budget in the interests of the British people. It is clear that the Conservatives do not want to talk about £150 off energy bills, freezes in prescription charges and rail fares, our investment in our NHS, and the fact that we are cutting debt. They do not want to confront the fact that this is a Budget that not only delivers for Britain, but does so in challenging times. It is a Budget that invests in Britain, supports the NHS, helps people with the cost of living, and gets our debt and borrowing down. It is a Budget delivered by a Chancellor who takes challenges head-on, makes the right decisions for our country, and meets the priorities of the British people. It is a Budget from a Government who will not let Britain’s future be defined by the failures of Governments past. This is a Budget that we are proud of, and we reject the Opposition motion.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  I will give way if the right hon. Gentleman will tell us whether he supports our changes to council tax on high-value properties.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  I think the hon. Gentleman is incorrect in what he said. He said that I may have implied the premature publication was deliberate; I certainly did not. It is none the less a serious matter, which is why we are responding to it with the commensurate seriousness that it deserves. We know that the OBR rightly took responsibility for this mistake, and soon afterwards—while we were discussing the matter at these Dispatch Boxes last Monday—its chair, Richard Hughes, resigned. That, of course, is a matter for Mr Hughes, and is his decision. The Chancellor wrote to him to thank him for his professionalism and dedication. Many Members and I have made clear our gratitude for his work as a public servant. Nonetheless, it was a serious breach, and the Government are acting with seriousness in response.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman said he feels sorry for me—he needn’t. I am proud to be defending a Labour Budget in this Chamber. Frankly, I might repay the sympathies to him: I feel sorry for him to be stuck on the Opposition Benches, where I fear he may be for a long time. The other point of process in the motion, to which the shadow Chancellor referred in his comments, is speculation ahead of the Budget. Let me start by addressing the premature publication of the “Economic and fiscal outlook”. We know that the EFO is a highly sensitive document, which is obviously not meant to be published until after the Chancellor has finished presenting the Budget to the House. The fact that it was accessed online before she began her Budget speech was a serious matter.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  I would take the hon. Gentleman more seriously if he spent a little less time opposing the decisions we take on tax to fund public services, because we are taking fair and necessary decisions on tax precisely to fund the NHS and the other public services on which we all rely. I have set out at length what we are doing to protect the NHS, but the Chancellor’s second priority going into the Budget was to tackle the cost of living, and that is exactly what we are doing. At this Budget, the Chancellor chose to freeze rail fares for the first time in 30 years, to extend bus fare caps, to freeze prescription charges, to increase the basic and new state pension, to raise the minimum and living wages, to extend the fuel duty cut, to help more than half a million children who would otherwise live in poverty, and to save the average household £150 off their energy bills. As the Bank of England deputy governor told Members yesterday, this Budget will reduce inflation by between 0.4% and 0.5%. The Chancellor’s final priority going into the Budget was to cut our national debt and Government borrowing, and that is exactly what we are doing.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right that although improving the NHS is a clear priority, because of all of our experiences and because of our reliance on it to keep ourselves and our families healthy. Investing in the NHS is also an economic investment, because people being out of the workforce due to ill health is a serious drag on our economy—that is the situation we inherited from the previous Government. Our investment in the health service and our desire to get the NHS back on its feet is the right thing to do, not just for families across the country but for economic growth.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  The word “rates” is definitely in there. The manifesto talks about the income tax rates and additional, main and higher rates of income tax, and it is very clear that we were talking about the rates of tax on working people. As I said, the manifesto also says that we will keep taxes on working people as low as possible. I note that the right hon. Gentleman did not take my suggestion to comment on some of the other tax choices we took at the Budget—the fair and necessary choices. The Opposition are picking and choosing what they want to refer to in the Budget. The Budget is a package. If they do not like it, they should explain what they would do instead.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  I thank the Opposition for giving me another opportunity to remind Conservative Members how the Budget cut the cost of living, cut NHS waiting lists and cut Government borrowing. I have seen the shadow Chancellor across the Dispatch Box so much in recent weeks, on what feels like a daily basis, that I might almost miss him over the recess—almost. No matter how many times I have seen him across the Dispatch Box, he has shown that he does not want to talk about the fact that this Budget takes £150 off energy bills, freezes rail fares and prescription charges, lifts 550,000 children out of poverty, increases our headroom to £21.7 billion, and gets debt falling and cuts borrowing in every year. This Budget invests in our NHS, our defence, our roads and our railways, and in every region and nation of the UK. The Conservatives do not want to talk about the substance of the Budget because they can see that the Chancellor has delivered a Budget that delivers for working people.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  I will give way one more time, and then make some progress.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Sorry seems to be the hardest word to say for Opposition Members when it comes to covid fraud, the state in which they left the NHS, the Liz Truss mini-Budget and everything they did to public services and our economy, writing off the next generation and vast swathes of our nation. They should stand up and say sorry. The priority for the Chancellor at the Budget was also to make sure that we cut our national debt and Government borrowing. Because of choices that the Chancellor made at the Budget, borrowing will fall as a share of GDP in every year of this forecast. Net financial debt will be falling as a share of GDP by the end of this Parliament, and will be lower by the end of the forecast than when we came into office. As I have said already, our headroom now stands at £21.7 billion, meeting our stability rule a year early, giving businesses the confidence to invest and leaving Government freer to act when the situation calls for it. Whatever mischief the Conservatives try to make and however personal they make their attacks, the truth is that the Chancellor was clear about the challenges the country faces. She set out her priorities in taking those challenges head-on, and she delivered a Budget that meets the priorities of the British people now and in the future.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  The Chancellor set out the productivity review that was under way by the OBR. In fact, if the right hon. Gentleman consults the OBR document published on Budget day, he will see in black and white that the productivity downgrade reduced tax receipts by £16 billion. The Chancellor was clear in her speech on 4 November that this, combined with the clear need to increase headroom to build resilience in public finances, would require everyone to contribute, and that is what happened.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman had a very long time to comment earlier in this debate—I may give way to him later.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  What the Chancellor knew when she gave her speech on 4 November was that headroom stood at a precarious £4.2 billion, and that was before previously announced policy measures had been accounted for. As I have said before in this House, and as Professor Miles of the OBR said to the Treasury Committee, that was a very challenging fiscal situation. If I had been at this Dispatch Box trying to justify a headroom of £4.2 billion or less, that would have been completely indefensible. Doing nothing was not an option—£4.2 billion of headroom would have been insufficient and deeply irresponsible. In her speech at the beginning of November, the Chancellor was clear that she would seek to build more resilient public finances, with headroom to withstand global turbulence. She set out her priorities for the Budget, and those priorities were exactly what the Budget delivered. The apparent astonishment of Conservative Members that a Government could set out circumstances honestly, explain their approach and then deliver as promised is very telling—it must be an alien concept that they never considered during their time in office. As the Chancellor set out on 4 November and then delivered in her Budget, she wanted to cut NHS waiting lists, and that is exactly what we are doing. Waiting lists are already down by 230,000, with an extra 5 million appointments delivered since the election and 250 new neighbourhood health centres on the way.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  As the right hon. Gentleman should know, this Government take our responsibilities to public office incredibly seriously, and we have made sure we focus on that in the way we conduct ourselves in office. In speaking to people on 4 November, the Chancellor was setting out the challenges that we knew we were facing and the principles that would guide her in approaching decisions ahead of the Budget. It was important to set out the priorities she would have in taking her decisions on Budget day.