Jamie Stone MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  Does it not strike the hon. Member as strange that SSE proposed to underground the cable in the highlands from Dundonald to Beauly, yet says that it is impossible to do so in other parts? That is a very mountainous part of the highlands, so I think there is something in what my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald), my constituency neighbour, said about it being possible.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald), on securing this debate—the first of what I am sure will be many debates in years to come. He has talked about what Norway has done, and he is correct to say that my constituents look out of the window when it is cold and see the turbines going round and round, but the money heading south. That is not a good thing at all. The coldest community in the whole of the British Isles is a village called Altnaharra in central Sutherland, where on 30 December 1995 temperatures hit an astonishing -27.2°. If that is not cold, I do not know what is. My hon. Friend has talked about taking people along with us, and that is incredibly sensible advice, because they are paying a 50% premium above other buyers of electricity. If we can take people along with us on the Orkney and Shetland model, it will work—but the key is how we go about it. He also rightly mentioned affordable housing and how such a fund could be used to address this issue. I was recently in the village of Achiltibuie in Wester Ross, speaking to young people who had summer jobs there. I asked what they did in winter when the hotel closes. The answer was, “We have to head south.” Why? Because there is no housing in a place like Achiltibuie. There is absolutely no affordable housing. That is a dagger at the heart of the viability of communities in the highlands, because it leads to school rolls falling and so on. My hon. Friend is quite correct to place this issue before us, and I hope he will be encouraged—though I am sure he will need no encouragement—to bring it forward again. It could have been tackled some years ago, but a perceived inertia at all levels of Government to actually do something about this issue meant it never was. There is a great opportunity here. Knowing the Minister, whom I congratulate on his appointment, and knowing my next-door neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire, I have every confidence that this will be the start of a discussion that, if we are positive about it, can achieve a fruitful outcome.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Scotland’s Economy · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the Minister on his appointment; I am sure he will do a very good job indeed. I may be a Liberal Democrat, but I recognise that one of the greatest achievements for the highlands of the 1960s Labour Government was the establishment of the Highlands and Islands development board, which did a great deal to reverse depopulation. Today, under the auspices of the Scottish Government, Highlands and Islands Enterprise—its successor body—is a shadow of its ancestor. I wonder whether the Minister would agree to talk to the Scotland Secretary to see how, working with the Scottish Government, we can revitalise HIE.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Scotland’s Economy · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow East (John Grady) on a very thoughtful speech. I want to make three brief points. When the North sea oil came, the then Labour Government saw to it that oil fabrication yards were established in different parts of Scotland, two of which in the highlands, at Kishorn and Nigg, I worked in. They were important because they helped halt and reverse highland depopulation—the curse of the highlands and islands for far too long. Welding and fabrication skills were relocated from Glasgow and the Clyde, and other parts of the UK, to those yards, and some of the greatest structures still working in the North sea today were built there, including the Ninian Central and Magnus platforms. We have the skills there today, but they are ageing skills. The hon. Member rightly talked about the potential of renewables in the North sea, but virtually none of the nacelles and blades are made in this country. We have the fabrication and welding skills, so we should utilise them, as was done in the 1970s. If we do not do that, we are missing a trick. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) is rightly an avid exponent of the potential for space launch from Shetland. I, too, am a keen exponent of the potential of Sutherland in that regard. Orbex, which is based in Morayshire, currently employs 150 and hopes to have perhaps 500 by 2030. There is enormous potential, but the UK Government must match the level of funding coming from Germany and France for the space industry. That is a challenge for the Government, and I am sure they will do their best to meet it. Lastly, so many of our skilled female workforce are unable to deploy their skills to the full to the betterment of Scotland’s economy because the care that they need for their children is simply not there. They cannot leave their homes to go out and make money for the family and serve Scotland in the best way they can. If we can get that right, we can realise the potential of our female workers; again, we would be very foolish not to. Thank you, Mr Dowd—I believe I have kept within the allotted time.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Scotland’s Economy · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Gentleman accept my point that these skills are ageing? We still have them but, if we do not pass them on, they could vanish and it will be much harder to train a new generation of welders and fabricators.

• 14 Oct 2024 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  Further to those points of order, Mr Speaker. It may come as a surprise to Members to learn that I have a photograph of Alex Salmond in my back hall. That is because a long time ago, he, the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) and I were all members of the Students’ Representative Council of St Andrews University. It was a sleepy organisation in which we debated this and that. Then, with a flash and a bang, like Mephistopheles appearing in “Doctor Faustus”, he was there from nowhere—a fully equipped, fully armed, formidable young politician, still in his late teens. That came as a shock to us all. Having debated with him in student debates, I can tell the House that if he turned that laser eye on you and fired a verbal sally, it went straight through you, and then straight through the wall behind. He was a superb debater—I have never seen his like. What was fascinating about him was that he was a fully developed politician so early in life. He knew exactly what he was about and was determined to achieve his end. I was also briefly in the Scottish Parliament, as the hon. Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) alluded to. In 2007, at a reception at the Signet library in Edinburgh, he said, “Jamie, I want a word with you.” He cornered me in one of those half-moon-shaped alcoves and told me very forcibly how supporting the SNP Government in 2007 would lead to a revival of the Liberal party in the Scottish Parliament. Mention has rightly been made of his widow, Moira, whom I found to be a very nice person indeed. She once stopped me on the Royal Mile, shortly after Alex had become First Minister, to say that she had got that dreadful upright piano out of the drawing room at Bute House. She just wanted me to know that. My thoughts are not only with Alex’s family but with his circle of friends, to whom he meant a very great deal. Our condolences should go to his family and to his friends as well. Charles Stewart Parnell made his name in history, and I believe that Alex Salmond will do so in exactly the same way, for many years to come.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Rural Depopulation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my neighbour from across the Minch, the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton), on bringing this important subject to the attention of this place. I am old enough to remember a time, when I was at school in Tain, when my father said to me, “Your future will lie in the south. Go south, young boy, because that’s where the jobs are.” Then, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) so wisely said, the oil came—and come it did. In my case, that meant working in the Nigg yard, as so many others did—at its height, there were 5,000 people employed there. I married and brought up my children in my home town of Tain. I was one of the lucky ones. Indeed, it could be said that, in Caithness, the advent of Dounreay was equally important in not just halting but reversing depopulation. Even today, Dounreay keeps the lights on in Strath Halladale and Bettyhill, because many people have a croft, but they also have an income from Dounreay. To be plain with colleagues, I come to this from the issue of high-quality employment above all else. As my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald) just said, that is crucial, because without jobs, depopulation will continue. I congratulate all speakers; all the important points have been touched on. My neighbour across the Minch made an important point. He said that there is a perception that the highlands and islands, and indeed many other parts of the UK, are full up. That is absolutely not the case. One only needs to travel on what we call the Causeymire—or the Causewaymire—across Caithness from Latheron to Thurso to see the myriad empty ruined croft houses either side of the road. Those once upon a time supported families but that is not the case now. It will be exactly the same across the Minch. My neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire mentioned schools. Just north of his constituency, we have a problem with recruiting and retaining staff for some of our primary and secondary schools. That is becoming a big issue. Such problems are a disincentive for people to come or employers to move to the highlands and offer employment. I am very taken by what my Welsh friend, the hon. Member for Ceredigion Preseli (Ben Lake), said about Western Australia. If incentives can be put together that will encourage qualified staff—dentists, doctors, teachers —to come to these areas, that would help so much. As my hon. Friend from across the Minch mentioned, there is a carers’ crisis. We see that in west Sutherland. We have an ever dropping number of carers, so who will look after the old people? People are giving up. The Government could tweak the rules governing the taxation of mileage that carers are burdened with. It is a very big disincentive indeed. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) talked about the loss of the migrant workers, as did the hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris). The fact that we do not have those people—they have gone—makes a huge difference. I can remember Polish people in Easter Ross asking me, “Do they hate us? Why do they want us to leave?” That was very sad. Also, when I travel in Wester Ross and west Sutherland I see the old European signs with the stars on them saying, “This stretch of road was paid for with the help of EC money.” That was a huge loss to us all. Whatever we might think of the EC, the structural funding or something like objective 1, which was designed to reach the most disadvantaged areas including those that face depopulation, was a great loss to us all. I hope that His Majesty’s Government will look at the issues. Time is short. There is a massive problem that matters hugely to my constituents. I could talk about health, which has been mentioned already in this debate. The fact that Caithness mothers have to travel more than a 200-mile return trip to give birth in Inverness is a piece of nonsense. That is one of the reasons that people are leaving Caithness and heading south. It is as simple as that. Good Government treats the different parts of the UK fairly, whether they are remote, depopulated, or what the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who has left us now, referred to as the concrete of London. The point is that a good and fair Government will give people an equal chance in life to prosper and do well. It is not all doom and gloom, as the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) said. There are hopes for the future. We could look at other models of recruitment, imaginative ways of providing housing and incentives to get employers to come to remote areas. I very much hope that this will be the start of a constructive dialogue with the Government, and between the Scottish and UK Governments, on how we can, as has been said, grip the issue, shake it out and sort it once and for all.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I have the honour to represent the most remote, the most sparsely populated and the coldest constituency. The Secretary of State, in responding to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), said earlier that the Government would try to maximise the take-up of pension credit, and I accept that, but would they accept that sheer remoteness and sheer distance can militate against people taking up this offer? I ask the Government, via the right hon. Gentleman, to please look at this issue, because it means an awful lot to my constituents.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  The point I made to the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), is a fair one. Distance and remoteness militate against take-up. People living in very remote hamlets in the highlands do not necessarily perceive the Department that they should. Can I have an undertaking from the Minister that the Government will look at this issue?

• 4 Sept 2024 · Space Sector: Government Support · Hansard source

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  There is of course room for more than one space launch site in the UK, and we wish SaxaVord well in its future endeavours. The Minister has talked about the economic benefits to the country, but for Sutherland a space launch represents a social benefit to young people and jobs for the future in a fragile and remote part of the UK. My request is simply this: Ministers have a good relationship with the company Orbex, referred to by the hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter), and I would be grateful if that relationship could be built on.

• 29 Jul 2024 · Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  As the Minister has said, the physical presence of police officers—coppers on the beat—is crucial to tackling antisocial behaviour, but during recent years we have seen the number of police officers in the highlands of Scotland decline hugely. That is extremely worrying and does nothing for public confidence in the police force. I know that policing is devolved to the Scottish Government, but may I with some passion ask the Minister: what advice does she have for me as a Scottish Member?

• 29 Jul 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  There is a crofter living in the Rhiconich-Kinlochbervie area of my constituency. He is very hard-working, he is well-liked locally and he has done a great deal for the local community, but he is German and he is trying ever so hard to get leave to remain, but it is taking forever. I would be very grateful if the Minister asked her officials to meet me to see how we can speed this matter on.

• 24 Jul 2024 · Education and Opportunity · Hansard source

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  First, may I congratulate you on your appointment, Madam Deputy Speaker? Further to the point that the right hon. Gentleman has just made, I think it is fair to boast that Scottish education used to be the envy of the world, yet we now have so many staff vacancies in four of our highland secondary schools—Ullapool, Kinlochbervie, Farr and Gairloch—that the kids simply are not being taught what they ought to be taught and are having to rely in some cases on online learning, which is scarcely satisfactory. That is why the parents have banded together to form the Save our Rural Schools campaign. Is that not a damning comment on the Scottish Government’s delivery of education north of the border?

• 18 Jul 2024 · Foreign Affairs and Defence · Hansard source

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  Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have sat through this important debate and it has been an absolute pleasure. What a galaxy of maiden speeches we have heard all around us—and that, of course, is democracy. Everyone can take great encouragement from what they have seen today. The only problem is that I do not know all these new faces, so can I issue a blanket apology in advance to all those on the Labour Benches if I come up to them and say, “I’m so pleased you are a new Lib Dem MP”? I do not mean anything by it. If I say to Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches, “Well done on getting elected on a Labour ticket”, I am terribly sorry about that. You can take comfort, Mr Deputy Speaker, in the fact that I visited an old folks’ home recently and a lovely old lady thought I was Jeremy Thorpe. At least it was the right party. I am on my feet today because my party’s defence spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), is ill with covid. I am sure we all wish him a speedy recovery. However, I did five years as my party’s defence spokesperson. That leads me to my main theme, which I will touch on by simply saying that we will build relationships with those on the Government Front Bench and the shadow Front Bench—that is how we work. I will always remember Ben Wallace arranging for me and the present Secretary of State to be helicoptered to Belvoir castle for a meeting of the joint expeditionary force Foreign Ministers. I have never forgotten that, because it was just two days before Putin’s tanks rolled across the border. I remember going in the car from the MOD to board our military helicopter, and the civil servant asking me and the present Secretary of State, “What do you think will happen?” I think we both said, “He’ll probably invade.” I also remember Ben Wallace saying, during the dinner with the Foreign Secretaries, “I am doing this because Governments change and it’s as well you are prepared, although you may belong to other parties, and that you know as much as you can about the defence brief.” I want to go on the record as thanking Ben Wallace for his very generous attitude to keeping me briefed on intelligence, and I thank the present Secretary of State for his generous offer to see that my colleague, my party’s defence spokesperson, is similarly briefed. That is very good news indeed. I want to congratulate, through reasons of friendship, those on the Government Front Bench on their appointments; it is very good to see them in their places—and indeed, I am bound to say, it is good to see those on the Opposition Front Bench in their places. The shadow Foreign Secretary was quite correct to remind us of what is going on in Sudan. It is not just about Russia and Ukraine or the middle east; there are all sorts of terrible things happening in the world. I liked too the Secretary of State’s saying that Britain is “democracy’s most reliable ally”. We ought to remember that on a day like today, when all these new faces exemplify democracy in its good, healthy, working form. I do not have much time, but I want to touch on two points, one of which I think those on both Front Benches know I care passionately about. I served for a short spell of time as a private soldier in the Territorial Army, and one of my children served in the forces until recently. The size of our forces matters an enormous amount to my party, and I think we all understand that we are very far stretched at the moment—hence my intervention earlier in the debate about the present size of the British Army being not exactly helpful to recruitment. One other thing that I think is desperately important, based on when we met with the joint expeditionary force Foreign Ministers, is that—as all hon. Members have said—we must work across borders, we must work with the European community, and we must work with friends. Only by co-operation, by standing together, can we take on the Russian bear and see it off. As has quite correctly been said, if Ukraine falls, what is next? Finally, in defence debates during my years in this place, I have always thought the atmosphere of consensus across party boundaries very important. I know from my own family that it was encouraging to our servicewomen and servicemen to know that politicians were speaking as one. From what I have heard this afternoon, I have no reason to worry that that will not go on in future. I think that we can work together for the defence of our nation, which we love so well.

• 18 Jul 2024 · Foreign Affairs and Defence · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member is making a most interesting speech. Does he agree that the present size of the British Army is militating against recruitment? A great many people who might be good in the Army and have considered it as a career option are saying, “Actually, if I could get another job I might do better,” and that is very, very dangerous.

• 17 Jul 2024 · Health Services: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I absolutely endorse that. I am glad that I said in my opening remarks that my experience in a very remote part of Scotland applies to other parts of the United Kingdom. What we have just heard proves that this is the case. NHS Scotland has halted all new builds and repairs to health centres across the entire country, which is another problem for healthcare. I have said already how big my constituency is. Just by commuting or doing house visits, healthcare staff will rack up 3,500 miles easily, because the distances are so great. At that point, their reimbursement per mile is more than halved, which does not encourage people to get involved. It is, in fact, discrimination against healthcare professionals who live in rural communities. Training is overwhelmingly based in urban areas, and there is very little incentive to get people to come and work in rural areas. Other factors, such as a lack of housing and job opportunities, feed into this problem. There is another issue I want to raise: the lack of women’s health provision, which is pretty severe. In my maiden speech in 2017 I spoke about the need to restore maternity services to Caithness. Seven years later, that is more important than ever. Caithness general hospital used to have a consultant-led maternity service, which meant that expectant mothers could have their babies locally in the far north of Scotland. It was downgraded when I was my constituency’s Member of the Scottish Parliament. At that time, I had more influence and I got it restored. Since then, however, the maternity services have been downgraded again, and there appears to be no movement from the Scottish Government to reverse that. I wish that some Members from the party of the Scottish Government were present today. Let me give an example of what this situation means: pregnant mothers have to make a 200-mile round trip in the car to deliver their babies. Imagine a trip like that in the middle of winter, and on rickety-rackety roads in the highlands. In 2019, a pair of twins were born—one was born in Golspie, and the other was born 50 miles away, in Inverness. It is a miracle that those children survived, and that neither a mother nor a child has perished. I have been calling for a safety audit all along, but there has never been one. We know perfectly well what the result would be: the arrangements would be deemed unsafe, if not a breach of human rights. It is not just about maternity services; women’s health has been removed from the far north. A routine trip to see a gynaecologist and get a diagnosis for a life-threatening ovarian cyst, or for endometriosis, means travelling the same huge distance—if a woman is lucky enough to get an appointment before her condition has progressed too far for her safety. I wonder what we can do to encourage healthcare professionals to relocate to remote areas, because the health and wellbeing of their wives and daughters must surely be a factor when they consider moving. For children growing up in the far north, it is no better. The waiting list for child and adolescent mental health assessments is three years. For neurodevelopmental screenings—for the diagnosis of dyslexia, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and so on—it is four years. That is the majority of their time at school. One family I spoke to during the election had waited 13 years for a diagnosis. That is a disaster. Dentistry has already been mentioned, and we know that intervention is crucial for long-term dental health

• 17 Jul 2024 · Health Services: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I shall touch upon his sentiments in my closing remarks. As many in the Chamber know—perhaps new Members do not—I myself am a carer: I am a carer for my wife. So I am very happy that my party has put carers at the top of our agenda. My party leader has spoken about being a carer himself. We desperately need reform, and I believe that the carers allowance should be introduced at a higher rate. In a way, I am declaring an interest here, in that I am an unpaid carer, but we have to look at this. I was recently informed of a constituent who was moved from one care home to another one 123 miles away in the highlands. That is a three-and-a-bit-hour journey each way for the loved ones to go and visit that old man. We can see why this is not great for morale. I am from the highlands. I love my native highlands and I care passionately about where I come from, but I think that we need urgent intervention. This is my ask of the Minister. I recognise the nobility of the intent to address these problems at UK level, and I look forward to working with the Government in these endeavours, but the fact is that there is not the delivery under devolution that there should be. I am sorry that no Scottish National party Members are here. I am a committed devolutionist. I was part of the Scottish Constitutional Convention and my name is on the claim of right for Scotland, yet I find it incredibly disappointing that the outcomes are a lot worse than they were. When I was in government in the Scottish Parliament, in coalition with the Labour party, we saw progress between 1999 and 2007, when the SNP came in. Now we see that things have gone backwards. This was the main issue on the doorsteps in Scotland, so I hope that the Labour Government can work hard at improving things. I ask them in a cordial way to do everything that can be done to improve the relationship with the Scottish Government, and perhaps encourage the Scottish Government to look at best practice in the rest of the UK and adopt that. I am not talking about hypothecation or about unrolling devolution, but by working together perhaps we can achieve something. Also, it would be great if we could encourage NHS England to work closely with NHS Scotland, because it is complete and utter nonsense that people who could cross the border and get treatment have been prevented from doing so by bureaucracy, sometimes by politics of the not-so-clever sort, or by the computer systems not matching. That is nonsense. If someone living in the south of Scotland can get their operation done in Newcastle, let us just go for it. I look forward to a Labour Government giving extra money to the health service, and I am sure they will. We will be looking closely at how that happens. There will, of course, be Barnett consequentials that will put that money into the devolved Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly. I hope that the UK Government will look closely at where those Barnett consequentials go. Will they go where we would hope they would go—namely, to improve the health service, to shorten waiting lists, to sort out the nonsense, and to give the standard of health service that my constituents and I believe everyone in rural parts of the UK is crying out for?

• 17 Jul 2024 · Health Services: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  Let me get my specs on properly, Madam Deputy Speaker. They have a wonky leg that sticks out sideways. I must say at the outset that I have heard some excellent maiden speeches today. It is a bit worrying to hear such good maiden speeches, because it makes one feel somewhat mundane in comparison. Let me also welcome the Minister to her place: it is a pleasure to see her sitting opposite me. This Adjournment debate is the first of the new Parliament, and I am grateful to the Speaker for granting it. It concerns a topic that is important not only to my constituents in the highlands, but to constituents in every rural area in the country. I thank the Minister for her attendance, and look forward to hearing what she has to say. I hope that the debate sets the tone for how a Government and an Opposition can work together to meet the needs of every citizen of the United Kingdom, no matter where they live. I recently had the great honour of being re-elected to represent Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, which is now the largest constituency in the United Kingdom. It measures a staggering 11,798 sq km, more than half the size of Wales. We are here tonight to discuss the adequacy of healthcare services in rural areas, and for fear of being predictable I am afraid to say that the health services in the highlands are not even faintly adequate. I recognise, of course, that health is devolved, but 17 years of centralisation have wreaked havoc on my part of the world. Health services have been stripped back and gutted, leaving my constituents with access to far too few local services. Let me begin with general practices. In Scotland, we have seen changes in vaccination services because, in an effort to reduce GPs’ workload, GP contract Scotland removed their vaccination capabilities. That is of huge concern to crofters in my constituency who might cut themselves on a piece of barbed wire and need a tetanus vaccination as quickly as possible. The same goes for anyone in need of shingles, flu, covid or travel vaccines. They must travel a staggering 70 miles or more to the nearest A&E, where they will face further waits owing to backlogs resulting from heavy workloads.

• 17 Jul 2024 · Health Services: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes his point with his customary charm. It is no wonder that he is so well liked in this place, because he always speaks for his constituents. I have talked about the delays in vaccinations, which also applies to the lifesaving vaccinations that babies must have. The Scottish Government take a one-size-fits-all approach that, frankly, does not work in remote rural areas such as mine. The retention and recruitment of GPs and other healthcare workers is crucial, but poor wages and terms and conditions, and a lack of proper travel reimbursement, all lead to a general impression that the game is simply not worth the candle. That is why we are missing key workers and doctors, and why we are paying through the nose for locum and temporary staff. Madam Deputy Speaker, can you believe that NHS Highland has spent £21 million on locum staffing in the past year? That is almost 3% of its entire budget—an eye-watering sum. Could that money not have been spent much better, for example on care homes, hospitals or pain clinics that have been forced to close?