Jerome Mayhew MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 6 Mar 2025 · International Women’s Day · Hansard source

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  This is not my first International Women’s Day debate, but each one presents a fantastic opportunity to learn about the exceptional women who have made our history and to be reminded, as though I need it, that many of those exceptional women are in the Chamber today. My contribution for Norfolk is Elizabeth Fry. I am particularly proud of her, because she happens to be my five times great aunt—that is as close as I get to real commitment and fame, I am afraid. In the early 19th century, she was horrified by the conditions in prisons. She visited Newgate prison and instead of walking on by, she took action. She funded prison schools for the children who were incarcerated along with their mothers in those days; she taught employment skills; she promoted rehabilitation as a concept, which was new at that stage; and she developed a wider movement for reform. In 1818, Elizabeth Fry was the first woman ever to give evidence to a House of Commons inquiry. Directly because of her campaigning work, we have the Gaols Act 1823 and the Prisons Act 1835, which were the beginning of the end of the truly terrible conditions of the 18th century. We talk now about violence against women and girls, but that is not new. In her personal diaries, she expressly discussed the need to protect female prisoners from rape and sexual exploitation. I recognise that things have improved beyond recognition from those days, and we should celebrate that today and at other times, but too much remains the same. Under the last Government, new offences of stalking, non-fatal strangulation, coercive control and public sexual harassment were introduced. The fact that that new legislation was needed demonstrates our corporate failure to change attitudes. Those conditions would have been familiar to Elizabeth Fry back in the 1820s. Our work is not about legislation, because that is not the solution. Legislation deals with and treats symptoms, but the problem is the generational transfer of attitudes, I am sorry to say, typically from father to son. It is our work to challenge those generational attitudes. I do not often agree with the hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler), but on this I stand shoulder to shoulder with her.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cost of Rail Services · Hansard source

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  The latest experiment in nationalisation has shown in just two years that state inefficiency has pushed up costs—not reduced them—by £600 million, forcing fares to rise, alongside an increase in delays, a slump in customer satisfaction, and cuts, instead of improvements, to services. The data shows that in England, Greater Anglia has been the best performing operator, saving money for taxpayers while serving passengers with modern, punctual trains. The Secretary of State is about to launch a public consultation on nationalisation—one that has been as delayed as ScotRail trains. I am told that even the plan to publish it today has been further delayed, with the excuse of No. 10 on the line. If the Secretary of State consults, she has to be prepared to listen. Will she now listen to the deep concerns of the rail industry, and not just the ever-generous unions, and avoid another disastrous nationalisation?

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cost of Rail Services · Hansard source

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  I am very interested by that last answer, because the Government do think that nationalisation will reduce the cost of rail travel. What lessons has the Secretary of State learned from the SNP’s nationalisation of ScotRail?

• 6 Feb 2025 · Financial Education · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered financial education. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people. Many members of that august body are on the Benches today, and it is worth pointing out that it is the second-largest all-party parliamentary group in Parliament, beaten only by that on the communal love for beer. There is a reason why the APPG on financial education is so popular: financial education is a profoundly important topic that affects the lives and life chances of our communities right across the country. We cannot sugar-coat this: we are in a mess when it comes to financial education and financial literacy in our economy and our society, and we have known that for ages. This is going back a few years, I accept, but one of the reasons why I was first drawn to this topic is that I did not receive any lessons on personal finance at all during the whole of my education. In fact, it is true to say that I have been taught considerably more about the formation of oxbow lakes than about personal finance, debt management, budgeting, saving, compound interest, pensions and individual savings accounts. Those are things that grown-ups worry about, and that have such an impact on their lives, yet they were simply missing from my education. I am afraid it does not stop there, because I have asked my children—aged 21, 18 and 15—about their financial education, and they have received none at all, so there has been no improvement, yet we know that this matters profoundly. We know that those unfortunate enough to grow up in a financially chaotic household have no education from their parents, do not understand debt, except for seeing the consequence of it, and do not understand budgeting. Prudent financial management then becomes a middle-class secret. If we care about the poor and the most disadvantaged in our society, financial education must be a core part of the curriculum in our schools. We know that financial stress has a huge impact both on our economy and on our society. Way back in 2014, Barclays bank did research that showed that 17.5 million hours were lost to the economy because of financial stress. We also know that financial stress, or financial worries, is one of the core components of family breakdown and the break-up of relationships, leading to arguments in the home and distress caused to children. Yet we know what the solution is. We have had loads of research. The Money and Pensions Service has said that attitudes towards money and finances are fundamentally established by the age of just seven. We know that financial education in schools is directly correlated with higher career earnings, reduced personal debt, increased pension savings and increased savings more generally. We have all been elected to this place, and we have all come here, I assume, to improve the lives and life chances of our constituents. The single biggest thing we can do for our constituents in our time in this place is get effective financial education into the core curriculum. I say that to the Minister, because she needs to reflect on what her ambitions are for her time in this place. We have had a crack at it. Back in 2014, we, or our predecessors, thought we had done a jolly good job, because financial education was included in the national curriculum in secondary schools in England, and in primary schools in the devolved nations. Last year, on the 10th anniversary of that change, the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people undertook research to see what the impact of that inclusion in the national curriculum had been. The awful truth was that it was virtually negligible, because financial education was not in fact being taught. We made the mistake as policymakers of saying, “We’ve changed the policy—job done. That’s the solution”, but we did not take the next step and ensure that the policy was implemented effectively. Indeed, 55% of teachers responsible for implementing the national curriculum were either unaware of the requirement, or unsure of whether there was a requirement to teach financial education, and 62% of children had no recollection of having received any. Why did we think we had solved the problem with policy, when in practice the change did not take place? Part of the answer is that financial education was included within personal, social, health and economic education, and it was not measured by Ofsted, and we all know that we get what we measure. Another part of the answer is that teachers lack confidence, because they too have not received financial education, and they are unsure about their personal finances. Far too often, financial education depends on there being a personal convert among the teaching staff. Some schools do a brilliant job on this issue, but too often that is wholly dependent on there being one member of staff who takes the bit between the teeth. Just today, Young Enterprise, which operates the secretariat of the all-party group, published a report called “Making the Classroom Count”. It has done research, and has assessed the state of provision and how we can improve it. Its first conclusion concerns the curriculum in both primary and secondary education. This subject is too important to be left to the peripheries of the educational process; it must be recognised as a core element. If financial education is a core part of the curriculum, it must be measured as such by Ofsted. The second issue is accountability; we must inspect for financial education, because we get what we measure. The third issue is guidance. There must be access to trusted teaching materials for hesitant teachers. Too often, the all-party group heard that teachers were not sure which resources, from the plethora out there, they should trust, and they are naturally hesitant about branded materials coming into schools. We need the Government to take a step forward and build on the work already being done on trusted resources. The fourth point is about awareness; the Government must be clear and express the fact that financial education is a core part of the curriculum. Finally—I put it last because it is the least important—comes money and resources. They are necessary—we need money to achieve things—but if the Government took steps one to four, we would be 95% of the way there. There is a solution to the money side of things. I understand that the Chancellor is never keen to write a cheque, but we have the dormant assets scheme, and financial inclusion is a core element of the distribution of dormant assets. We also have the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which has offered to match-fund the element spent on financial inclusion. Surely there is a way that the Government can make best use of that money. The Government are reviewing the national curriculum, so now is the time for them to take a bold step, and not just have the policy, but ensure that it is acted on. Will the Minister include financial education in the primary curriculum? Will she undertake to measure what she wants to see in our schools, and require Ofsted to report on financial education in primary and secondary schools? Will she embed financial education in the curriculum, and not just in PSHE? Will she show some ambition, in the light of the 2029 OECD programme for international student assessment on financial literacy? Will she commit to the Government applying to join that scheme? Will the Minister develop the good work of the Oak National Academy, which has produced about 42 online lessons to support financial education and literacy? Will she follow that up with a commitment to developing trusted paper resources for the educational sector? Finally, will she consider making proper use of the dormant assets fund and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and directing additional funding from those sources to financial literacy education in our primary and secondary schools? I started by talking about ambition, and I want to finish on that, too. It is profoundly important for the life chances of our constituents over the next 10, 20, 30 and 40 years that we grasp this issue now. We spend so much time on tittle-tattle in this Chamber, making cheap debating points that may make the headlines in the evening, or tomorrow. I do not care whether this debate is reported, as long as we can get this simple change to our educational processes and deliver for our constituents. Now is the time to do it.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Financial Education · Hansard source

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  I thank Young Enterprise, the secretariat of the all-party group on financial education for young people, the Money and Pensions Service, GoHenry, MyBnk, HSBC, Santander, Your Money, Money Wellness, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, AQA, UK Finance, and the Bank of England, who all briefed in advance of this debate. I particularly thank the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove), my co-conspirator in the debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) on her first outing at the Dispatch Box. I thought she did brilliantly. When talking about financial education, I start with my own family. I realised that I may have gone a bit too far when one of my grown-up children confided to me recently that she feels physically sick every time she spends money, so I may have overdone it a little. Equally, 175 years ago, my forebear, Henry Mayhew, was declared bankrupt for the third time. His great friend was Charles Dickens, and it is said that the character of Mr Micawber was based on Henry, so I will end the debate with one of the more famous quotes from Mr Micawber: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty-pound ought and six, result misery.” How right he was. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered financial education.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Financial Education · Hansard source

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  It is the way he says it.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Medicinal Cannabis · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms McVey. Do not worry, I have not defected. I just sat here, rather than where Conservatives would normally sit, because I did not want to interrupt the flow of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) while he was making his speech. I am grateful to him for securing this debate. I am here because of one of my constituents, Matt Hughes, and particularly on behalf of his son, Charlie, who has severe treatment-resistant epilepsy. Mr Hughes has been to see me on a number of occasions. I am in the thick of a correspondence battle with the Department —the latest was in December last year—trying to deal with some of the problems that have arisen out of the 2018 NICE guideline change, which was brought in by Sajid Javid. Somebody looking at the NICE guidelines would think, “Problem solved—wonderful! We can get access to these very important treatments for severely epileptic children.” But we are here today because that access is simply not available in practice. It is no good for us, as policymakers, to think that we have done the job because the policy has changed: if it is not working in practice, there was no point in changing the guidance. There are a huge number of problems. There are licensing issues, to which I will return in more detail. There was the very unhelpful advice given by the British Paediatric Neurology Association in 2021, which seems to directly contravene the advice of NICE from 2018. There are many examples in which general practitioners have thought, after clinical assessment, that this kind of treatment, particularly second-generation drugs, should be supplied and yet local hospital advice was against it. Finally, there is the failure of the funding pathway. We have already heard about individual funding requests, but one problem is that the general application for many children to benefit from this kind of drug means that it fails the exceptionality test, so requests for individual funding are being refused on the grounds that the impact of the drug on the particular patient is insufficiently exceptional.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Medicinal Cannabis · Hansard source

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  That is the purpose of this debate: to encourage the Minister to get the NHS to change practice in this area. She could usefully start with the difficulty in licensing because second-generation medication is personalised. It does not have one or two active ingredients, but up to 20—that is probably not the right terminology but I hope we all understand—and the amounts of each of those active ingredients are personalised, in a patient-centric way. Yet we persist in applying a randomised controlled trial approach simply not appropriate for personalised medication. As a result, there is a failure to adopt licensing for medication that, anecdotally, is hugely effective, and has been hugely effective in supporting my constituent Charlie. It is not beyond the wit of man to design an appropriate licensing system for this kind of medication because it has been done effectively elsewhere. We could look at the examples of Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy and even some states in the United States of America. If they can do it, why can’t we? I would be grateful if the Minister addressed that question specifically. Why do we persist with randomised control trials when we know that that acts against the adoption of this kind of modern medicine? Why does the Minister think that the licensing approach in all those first-world countries is in some way dangerous or inadequate? Rather than repeating current policy, what change are the Government proposing to make to provide access through licensing for multiple active ingredient patient-centric dosing? What change are they proposing in relation to individual funding requests? Are they prepared to fix the problem of exceptionality, given that these drugs are routinely refused because they help too many children? This is a huge issue. An estimated 35,000 children are affected. I hope the Minister will not dole out sympathy alone in her response, but set out the active change that the Government intend to make.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Avian Influenza · Hansard source

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  This outbreak is concerning for the whole of Norfolk, and particularly for the bird-rearers in Broadland and Fakenham, but it highlights the critical importance of the Animal and Plant Health Agency in New Haw, and the plan for its full redevelopment. Do the Government agree that that redevelopment is long overdue, and if so, will they commit to supporting it?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Women’s Health Strategy · Hansard source

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  The Minister got her tone wrong in dealing with this urgent question. If a Minister turns up late for a UQ, the least they can do is take the questions from the Opposition Front Bench seriously. Amanda Pritchard, the CEO of NHS England, has said that the health service does not “always have the needs of women at its heart.” What message do the Government think scrapping women’s health targets will send?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Employment Costs · Hansard source

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  I think the Minister may have misunderstood my question; I asked how he would reduce employment costs. The president of the Confederation of British Industry recently said that, because of things like the Employment Rights Bill, employers will be laying people off and will be less likely to employ, and that is before the national insurance tax on employment imposed by this Government. Does the Minister accept responsibility for the increase in unemployment that we are already seeing?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Employment Costs · Hansard source

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  2. What steps he plans to take to help reduce employment costs.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Draft Gambling Act 2005 (Operating Licence Conditions) (Amendment) Regulations 2024 Draft Gambling Levy Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  In her first sentence the Minister says we should move on from these political points, then in the second sentence says she will take no lessons from us on how we managed to wreck the economy. I would like it if she could reflect on those two sentences, to see whether they are mutually compatible.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The Minister makes reference to the very limited time. Why is that? This is a Government who hold general debates on Mondays and Thursdays. They have no business, yet we have less than two hours to debate this really important issue.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I need some assistance in understanding how the House can express its displeasure at the Government’s manipulation of the business of the House to stop proper consideration of this Bill. Water was at the heart of the last general election—it is really important to our constituents—and yet the Bill’s Report stage was limited to less than one and a half hours, and not a single Back Bencher has been able to contribute on Third Reading. Is there a way that we can express our disapprobation of the Government putting forward two non-urgent statements today on Gaza and on Sudan and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo—both of them important in their own right but, I suspect, designed to eat up time?

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  I do not want to give the hon. Member a lesson in geography, but he will recognise that the western link road is in my constituency and not his.

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in relation to farming. While I am very supportive of regenerative agricultural techniques, does the hon. Member accept that yield decreases by 25% to a third when we use those techniques? They are suitable in some areas, but not in all.

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  If my hon. Friend looks at the wording of clause 2, there would be a presumption against energy projects of over 100 MW unless there was community agreement. It sounds to me like the Bill reimposes the community ban that the previous Conservative Government had.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Agricultural and Business Property Reliefs: OBR Costing · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, if you look at the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, you will see a reference to my family farm in my constituency. Last Sunday, I drove one of our tractors to Fakenham racecourse to support the farmers’ protest against the APR and BPR. I talked to other farmers, and the key complaint was that there had been no consultation on the changes, and no time for older farmers to adjust their affairs. All those concerns have been rubbished by Ministers time and again, most recently today. Now that the OBR confirms that it is more difficult for older people to restructure their affairs quickly, will the Government finally listen, show some humility, and consult on how best to tackle the tax shelterers while still protecting our farmers?

• 21 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  One of my GP surgeries called me this morning to highlight the impact of the rise in national insurance contributions, which will cost it £40,000. It can only respond by freezing cost of living pay increases for all its support staff. Does the Chancellor finally accept that working people up and down the country are paying the price for her tax rises?

• 16 Jan 2025 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  This is a request for information on my part. In my conversations with Anglian Water, one of its key asks relates to the imbalance in which the company has a legal duty to connect any planning application that is passed, yet it is not a statutory consultee. It is therefore not required—not able, in fact—to take part in the planning process. Until the companies are made statutory consultees, all this is irrelevant, so should not the new clause focus on their becoming statutory consultees? While I am on my feet, I have a query about the drafting. The hon. Gentleman defined a “relevant time”, but I do not see that definition in the new clause. Is it contained somewhere in the draft legislation? If it is not, what might the effective definition be?

• 16 Jan 2025 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  That may be the hon. Member’s intention, but the drafting does not say that. Part of the problem is that (ii)(a) deals the with start time, end time and duration, not flow. Does that particular sub-paragraph not duplicate the existing legal requirements for publication within 60 minutes?

• 16 Jan 2025 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am sympathetic to quite a lot of the intention behind the new clause, but as ever, the devil is in the detail. Proposed new section 272B(2)(d)(ii)(a) contains a duty to publish the start time, end time and duration of all sewage spill events. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there has already been a duty to publish that information for some time? All undertakers have a duty to publish information from event duration monitors within—from memory—60 minutes of an event being triggered. Will the hon. Gentleman give a bit more detail on what he has in mind for the authority to publish? Proposed new subsection (2)(c) says that the database must “contain such data or information as the Authority thinks is necessary”. Such a bland statement will be open to challenge and interpretation, with all sorts of committed parties deciding that their “independently collected and analysed information” should be in the database, and other people saying it should not. Is this not just a charter for judicial review of the authority?

• 15 Jan 2025 · Farmland Flooding · Hansard source

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  Of course I agree. My message to the Government is that when they are dealing with flooding, particularly through the Environment Agency, they need to do so in collaboration with farmers and get their agreement. If a watercourse is going to be slowed down through a lack of clearance, they need to recognise where that water will end up. Such an intervention does not simply lead to freak flooding on a neighbour’s land or even their house; it will have consequences for businesses and food security. The Government need to work in collaboration with farmers and be prepared to pay if the benefit of other people’s land is used. I recognise that, up to now, my entire speech has had nothing to do with the Minister’s portfolio because she deals with flood defences. I am sure she has a deep knowledge of farming, but it may not be quite deep enough to answer some of my questions. She will be relieved to know that I am moving on to discuss natural flood management schemes as part of the Government’s flood defence budget of £5.2 billion. The last Government made a step in the right direction, albeit a small one, by allocating £25 million to natural flood management schemes. That amount needs to be increased because the lesson from the initial schemes is that they are relatively cheap but very effective. Why do we not do more of them and build on that Brexit dividend? That leads me to the scary bit: the Budget. I have real concerns. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs trumpeted his £5 billion over two years to support agriculture, which he says is a record amount. However, it is only the biggest ever amount if you ignore inflation, Dr Murrison, which none of the rest of us can. That £5 billion would need to be £5.8 billion across the two years, and then through the rest of the Parliament, to match the £2.4 billion equivalent from 2019 onwards. So we are already £800 million short over the course of the Parliament. What happens after 2026? In the Budget, it says that future “funding pressures on flood defences and farm schemes of almost £600 million” will require a review into affordability. What does that mean? Does that mean it is the end of ELM schemes? Are we going to cut back on all the nature-friendly farming initiatives? Without reassurance from the Minister, and in particular from the Treasury, farmers look at this and say, “There is a cliff edge at the end of 2026.” There are two years of £5 billion, which is less in real money than they had before, and then a huge fall-off. That is a terrible message, on top of the family farm tax: cuts to nature-friendly farming. Where does this go? That is the opposite of the Labour party’s manifesto commitment, which was to an expansion of nature-rich habitats. Will the Minister commit to the water restoration fund? Yesterday, I served on the Water (Special Measures) Bill Committee. New clause 2, which was in the name of the Opposition, including me, would have enshrined the water restoration fund in law, but it was voted down by the Government. That gives me, and farmers, real cause for concern. Will the Minister reassure farmers that post-2027 funding for farming, in particular nature-friendly farming, will be index-linked? Otherwise, it will fall off a cliff. Will she rule out cuts? Will the Minister allocate—this is perhaps more in her personal remit—an increased percentage of the flooding budget to nature-based solutions? Those have been proven effective, and they work to compensate farmers who assist in their creation. Will she enable private sector investment in natural capital markets? Get the quangos out of the way. Let them set standards, certainly, but then allow the market in nature credits to flourish. Words in a manifesto do not mitigate flooding or support farmers; long-term funding and long-term incentives do. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Farmland Flooding · Hansard source

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  It’s our secret.