Jerome Mayhew MP: speeches

Speeches

• 7 Apr 2025 · Road Maintenance · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member may have misunderstood me; the figure I was referring to was from 2009-10—the very last year of the Labour Government. Since then, although there have been variations because of winter and summer, the number of potholes leading to breakdowns has more than halved, according to the RAC, which is of course independent. I know there are lots of examples of people driving into potholes, including me and everyone here who drives, but the overall data demonstrates beyond doubt that people are better off under the Conservatives than Labour if they want to avoid potholes that cause breakdowns. Long-term predictable funding leads to an increased number of repairs at a reduced cost, but Labour has cancelled that long-term approach, so predictability of funding for local authorities has gone. The efficiencies associated with that predictability of funding are gone, as are the cost savings. Instead, we have had an announcement of £1.6 billion until 2026, which is very welcome; I have constructive opposition to this issue, so when more funding comes for the repair of potholes, I welcome it. However, if we look beneath the bonnet, we see that the Labour Government have at the same time increased costs to local authorities through their national insurance contributions hike of £1.1 billion. They give £1.6 billion with one hand, but they take away £1.1 billion with the other. It does not stop there. Their hike on vehicle excise duty over the course of this Parliament means another £1.7 billion being taken from motorists. They take £1.7 billion from motorists, and they give £400 million net back for road improvements. What happens after 2026? Do we know? Does the Secretary of State herself know what happens with the funding after that? The Government have been entirely silent, leading local authorities to be deeply concerned about their ability to plan long-term repairs, not just to potholes but to road infrastructure as a whole. It is an unfortunate example of this Government chasing headlines over responsible government. Let us move from local roads to the major road network. Labour’s first act on coming into Government was not to back our road infrastructure or improve repairs but to cancel five vital road improvement schemes. Those were the A5036 Princess Way, the A358 Taunton to Southfields, the M27 Southampton junction 8, which was obliquely referred to earlier, the A47 roundabout at Great Yarmouth—the other end of the Thickthorn roundabout, which the Secretary of State is continuing the previous Government’s improvement of—and the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham. Labour is not prioritising roads or road users, despite taking another £1.7 billion out of vehicle excise duty. It is dipping its hands yet further into the pockets of motorists while cancelling major road improvements. That contrasts with the Conservative record of 2015 to 2025, where we invested £40 billion into England’s strategic road network. Short-term headlines over long-term planning—that is Labour. What is to come with Labour’s road maintenance plans? I hope this debate will shed light on it and clarify the future of funding for road maintenance. Perhaps the Secretary of State can whisper into the ear of the Minister for the Future of Roads before she winds up so she can tell us what happens after 2026, because local authorities deserve better than to be marched up a hill with road repairs and then left in a hole.

• 7 Apr 2025 · Road Maintenance · Hansard source

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  It has been an interesting debate, and one might be forgiven for thinking that there are local elections coming up. I do not know what caused me to think that, but there was there was something in the air; let us leave it at that. I am not going to go through everyone’s contribution, insightful and interesting as each of them was in its own way. I will just pick out a few highlights of the debate. I will start with my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore). Rather in the theme that I developed earlier, he referred to Bradford council’s terrible performance on potholes and said that it was leading to a loss of trust in Labour. In particular, he referenced the residents of Ilkley, who went to the trouble of having a referendum on what they should do about the state of the roads. He talked about the council’s proposal to impose speed humps and a 20 mph limit, despite 98.3% of residents voting against it. They were ignored by Labour. Then we heard from the hon. Member for Burnley (Oliver Ryan), who is in his place. He also raised the condition of his local roads, but he went on to make an interesting point when he complained of what he described as the “crumbs of levelling up”. I took advantage of the length of the debate to look up what the crumbs of levelling up were, and, in fact, £19.9 million was directed to Burnley through three town centre schemes. That was an achievement of the excellent former colleague of mine, Antony Higginbotham, who was an understated but amazingly effective Member of Parliament. I will follow the career of the current Member for Burnley closely to see whether he delivers even a fraction of that for the people of Burnley. My hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) showed off about the length of his roads, which certainly put mine to shame. He was another advocate for the JCB Pothole Pro, saying that 1,889 repairs had been undertaken in six months. But what he really exposed was the repeated failure of the SNP, which has cut funding north of the border, and the lack of interest shown in this debate from SNP Members in this place, as we can see from their empty Benches.

• 3 Apr 2025 · UK Democracy: Impact of Digital Platforms · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is making a genuinely powerful speech with a really strong argument, and I commend her for it. The Government may be struggling to tackle the digital platforms themselves, but would a useful first step be banning telephones in schools up to the age of 16?

• 2 Apr 2025 · British Indian Ocean Territory · Hansard source

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  What a disgrace this shabby Chagos deal is turning out to be. Labour are not just giving away our national security; they are going to pay billions to Mauritius for the pleasure. Instead of raising taxes on people and businesses in this country, why does the Minister not stand up for Britain and stop this deal?

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman makes reference to the ability of this House to make regulations. We can, of course, do so by primary legislation. There was a parliamentarian who said that “the use of delegated powers carries a risk of abuse by the Executive, which is not something the Opposition could ever support.” –– [ Official Report, Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Public Bill Committee, 1 February 2018; c. 305.] The Secretary of State should agree with that, because it was he who said it.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I am so pleased to have eventually got through to the hon. Lady. She heard the Minister at the Dispatch Box say that this was not about dynamic realignment. Am I right in understanding that her view of this legislation is that it is 100% about EU dynamic realignment?

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I am genuinely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He says that he has failed to persuade Opposition Members in this place, but does he accept that he has also failed to persuade the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in the other place? That Committee, which is chaired by Labour, said last month: “We remain of the view” that “the delegation to Ministers of law-making powers in this Bill involves legislative power shifting to an unacceptable extent from the…legislature to the Executive.” Why does he think the Committee remains against his view?

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I refer the hon. Gentleman to the conclusions of the fourth report by the expert Committee, which states: “We remain of the view…that the Government have failed to provide a convincing justification for the inclusion of skeleton clauses in this Bill that give Ministers such wide powers to re-write in regulations the substance of the regulatory regimes for products and metrology.” He is wrong in his assessment, is he not?

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Much of this debate has been about whether this Bill leads us to dynamic alignment. The Government’s position is that it does not and that this is all a mirage and a fantasy. If that is the case, does the hon. and learned Member agree that a simple amendment to this Bill to make that clear would go a long way to reassuring Members.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Of course I agree with my right hon. Friend, and that comes to the nub of what I want to say. Yes, inevitably we are party politicians. We have the official Opposition, we have the Government, and we have those who sit on the left-hand side of the official Opposition. Above that, however, we are parliamentarians, and some of us are quite new. I may look old, and indeed I am, but I was first elected in 2019, and an awful lot of Members in the Chamber who may be voting tonight are even less experienced than me. It takes a while to begin to understand the difference between the role of the legislature and the role of the Executive, and my profound concern is that we are at risk of handing very significant powers from ourselves, the legislature, to the Executive.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I entirely agree. I did an analysis, and 48.3% of sitting days since the general election have been on one-line Whips, so there are no grounds for the Government to assert that they do not have time to put forward fresh legislation. It simply is not the case, and they do not have a legislative agenda that they are progressing with any urgency. There is plenty of room, and if we need to regulate, we can do it. We have a big decision to take as parliamentarians. We are being asked by the Government to nod through a blank cheque—a blank cheque that is in breach of our parliamentary conventions. It is against the express advice of the cross-party Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee not once, not twice, but three times. I say to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that any parliamentarian worthy of the name will vote against this Bill.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The conventions of the House, and the conventions of the legislature, cannot be brushed aside by a flip comment like that. There are reasons why we have conventions. There is a separation of powers between the Executive and the legislature, and the power to create legislation lies with us. There are grounds, sometimes, on which we can give it to Ministers, but there must be really sensible reasons for that to be done, and there simply are not in this instance.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I do not think I can; I thought that was an absolutely brilliant speech. I feel like a party-pooper, because I am going to drag the debate back to the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, and I can only apologise. I was going to assert boldly that I was the only Member of this House who had sat on a standards committee and drafted European regulations, but I stand corrected. There are now two of us. At first glance, the Bill looks tiny. There are just four clauses on product regulations and four substantive clauses on metrology. There is a reason why it is so tiny: it does not actually say anything. There is no description of the changes anticipated by this legislation. There are no examples of what needs to be addressed. There is no indication of the direction behind any future decisions—nothing. Members, particularly those on the Government Benches, have referred to e-bikes and e-scooters, electrical safety, defective toys and lithium-ion batteries, to name just a few, but not a single one of those things is in the Bill. They could be. This could be a regulation Bill trying to fix the problems that have been identified, but none of that is there. Worse than that, there is no explanation for the silence. The Bill simply makes a request of this House—of us, as parliamentarians—by saying, “Please give me, the Minister, the power to change primary legislation through regulations, including the power to create new and novel criminal offences.” This is the very definition of a skeleton Bill, where almost all the substance is left to regulations. That is contrary to an established convention in this House and the other place that the principal aspects of policy should be in a Bill, and only its detailed implementation left to delegated legislation. That is an established principle of our legislature. If we wish to depart from that, there needs to be a very good reason. In exceptional circumstances, there are good reasons, but are there exceptional circumstances here? The issue was picked up immediately in what proved to be a hostile reception in the other place on Second Reading on 8 October last year. That was followed by a review on 15 October by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which is not some right-wing conspiracy theory group. This is not “Brexit or die”; it is chaired by Labour. It is chaired by Baroness Ramsey, and it is a cross-party Committee. By the way, in another role, she is the senior adviser to the Labour party on standards and ethics, yet her report has been entirely ignored by this Government, because it was damning in its conclusions. It said that Government guidance was that skeleton legislation should be used only in the most exceptional circumstances, but that test was “failed” by this draft legislation. As a result, that cross-party Committee, chaired by Labour, made the recommendation that clauses 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 9 all be removed. Those are the substantive clauses right through the Bill, on both sides. That is a stinging indictment of this category of draft legislation. However, the Committee members were so concerned that they did not leave it at that. The following day, they took the exceptional step of summoning the Minister and his officials to give oral evidence. That is very rare, and it was the first time for three years that it had happened. The Committee members were clearly unimpressed by the answers—the attempted explanations —that they were given, because in a subsequent report, on 28 October, they reported that the Minister and his officials had “failed to provide a convincing justification”. As a result of that second damning indictment of the Government’s approach, there was some movement: the removal of some Henry VIII powers, and the addition of a duty to consult, at least in the first instance. However, other Henry VIII powers remain, and the duty to consult refers only to the first instance, not to any secondary attempts. The Committee then produced a third report, on the Bill in its current form. It said that “the delegation to Ministers of law-making powers in this Bill involves legislative power shifting to an unacceptable extent from the democratically appointed legislature to the Executive”, and also that “the Government have failed to provide a convincing justification for the inclusion of skeleton clauses in the Bill”. Actually, I think the Government did understand what they were doing, because the Bill gives Ministers the power to make politically contentious decisions about the degree to which domestic law on product regulation and, indeed, on metrology should be aligned with EU laws. That is the real reason behind the Bill: the fear of EU alignment by the back door.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Every single one of the measures in that infamous list that my right hon. Friend just went through required a vote in this House, and Labour Members had to put their name to each proposed legislative change. They will not have to do that under this legislation, will they?

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 31 Mar 2025 · Draft Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products and Energy Information (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I have nothing further to add on the meat of the debate than what my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk put forward. I rise to explain my delayed arrival to the Committee; I was a Teller in the Divisions in the Chamber, but I came as quickly as I could. I did not mean any rudeness to you in the Chair, Dr Huq, and I am sorry for the delay.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  It has been an absolute delight to listen to the debate. There were times when I thought that having an official Opposition was unnecessary because of the amount of opposition from Government Members. I congratulate my Norfolk neighbour, the hon. and gallant Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis). I am delighted to have a return of these rather archaic honorifics, because next time he refers to me, he will have to call me honourable and learned, which I know will stick in his craw. I congratulate him on introducing a groundbreaking Bill to the House. It would have a huge impact on the water industry, for good or ill, as I will discuss in the coming minutes. It is surprising to me, and perhaps to other hon. Members who were in this place before the last general election, to see the total absence of any Liberal Democrat Members in the Chamber. Not even their official spokesperson is here. I remember the amount of noise they made before the election about their views on water. It is telling that when it comes to a groundbreaking piece of legislation that could really make a change, according to the hon. Member for Norwich South, they could not even be bothered to attend. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I have unified the House. We all agree on one thing, and we know what that is. The hon. Member for Norwich South made not just a critique of the water companies, but of private ownership in general. I want to address that very briefly, in a single sentence: capitalism has lifted more people in the world out of poverty and despair than any other economic system in history. However, I recognise that there are many forms of ownership in a capitalist system, including national and public ownership, mutualisation and private ownership. Before throwing the metaphorical baby out with the almost uniquely clean bathwater that we enjoy in this country, let us take a moment to look back at private sector water company performance, in a way that would have been impossible for me to do prior to the general election, because the campaigning noise was so deafening that rational debate was too often brushed aside. I am taking a risk, but I hope that today, in this Chamber, we can have a more rational and careful debate, and look at the data. Let us look at the private performance, both good and ill. This is not a defence of the status quo, but it is a challenge to the assumption that public ownership is necessarily the solution. I will go back and look at elements of the performance of the private sector over the past 30 years. The first duty of a water company is to provide safe, clean drinking water for its customers. As we heard from the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), our water industry passes that test with flying colours. It is not just clean water but the cleanest water in the entire world, jointly with one other country—and I hope no one intervenes to ask me which country that is, because I simply do not know. Let us not forget, as we bash the water companies, that they have provided the cleanest drinking water in the world. The next thing water companies have to do is to make sure that the supply is uninterrupted. We had an experiment with nationalisation of our water industry up until about 30 years ago. During that period, interruptions in the water supply were five times as likely as they are today. To put it another way, privatisation has reduced the interruption of the water supply fivefold. We can argue about why that is, but that is a fact. There are examples of disruption such as the one the hon. Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon) referred to, and they are terrible, but in aggregate, the number of disruptions has reduced fivefold. We then turn to leakage. As my neighbour, the hon. Member for Norwich South, says, water is a scarce and valuable public resource, so leakage is very important. Since privatisation, the amount of leakage has reduced by a third. How has all this been achieved? The answer is that £236 billion has been invested by the private sector in our water infrastructure since 1991. How has it been able to do that? The answer, in my submission, is that it has not been competing with the provision of new hospitals or new schools, and—perhaps Government Members will feel this more closely to their hearts—it has not been competing with personal independence payments for the disabled, the disability element of universal credit or carer’s allowance. Try asking the Chancellor of the Exchequer now for £236 billion to be spent from the public funds on water. We know from the debates we have had last week and this week that that is almost impossible. I turn to performance. There are various ways of measuring performance, but the headline is serious sewage incidents. In the 1990s, the average number of serious sewage incidents was 500 a year. Now it is well below 100. The last year for which I could find data was 2021, and in that year the number was 62. There are other elements of performance. There are the chemicals being leached into our waterways through treated sewage. The most damaging for biodiversity is phosphorus. Since 1990, because of the investment, the amount of phosphorus entering our waterways through the water treatment system has not increased; it has reduced by 80%. This is at a time when our economy has grown and our population has increased significantly. The next most damaging chemical is ammonia. Again, since 1990, the amount of ammonia going into the waterways because of treated water has not increased along with population growth or economic growth; it has in fact declined by 85%. The next most damaging chemicals are cadmium and mercury. Since 2008—a slightly different starting point, I accept—the amount of cadmium and mercury has reduced by 50%. If we take away the emotion and start looking at some of the core data, we can see that there have been very real elements of progress—not universal progress, but real elements of progress because of a huge amount of private investment in our water industry.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I am absolutely not saying, “You’ve never had it so good,” but I am drawing attention to the actual data, so that we can make a balanced judgment. I will come to some of the disadvantages of the last 30 years later on in my speech, so I hope I will give a balanced judgment. We have dealt with the rivers and serious sewage incidents— [ Interruption. ] Hon. Members should wait and not be hasty. Sewage discharges from storm overflows have been, without doubt, the greatest area of failure for decades, in both public and private ownership. Why? It is because the problem was hidden for decades. It was not reported, and it was not measured. Back in 2010, the Labour Government monitored only 7% of storm overflows. As a result, we had no idea how frequently storm overflows were being activated, or for how long. Worse, Labour changed the law in 2008—I think one Labour Member present was in Parliament at that time—to allow the water companies to self-monitor their environmental performance. The Liberal Democrats do not come out of this very well, either. [ Interruption. ] We can all agree on that. During the coalition, there was a Liberal Democrat Water Minister from 2013 to 2015. What action did they take when they held the levers of power? Absolutely none. It was the Conservatives who forced transparency on the water industry by requiring 100% of storm overflow data to be monitored and then published within 15 minutes. That exposed the problem, and we then took action through the £56 billion storm overflows discharge reduction plan to fix the problem over 25 years. We all want to go faster, but it is about the balance between costs, the industry’s ability to react, and the time a responsible Government have to take these decisions. We also had a plan to improve the water quality of chalk streams, which is an issue close to your heart, Madam Deputy Speaker. I believe you have the Test in your constituency, and I can beat that with the Stiffkey, the Wensum, the Bure and a couple of others. Despite the unacceptable storm overflows, the question we need to ask is whether river water quality has got better or worse under privatisation. The difficulty is the lack of comparative data, because as we have monitored more, we have more data points identifying more discharges that were previously unrecorded. One of the best datasets to look at is invertebrate biodiversity, on which there has been a comprehensive study by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, analysing 223,000 samples taken between 1989 and 2018. It looks for biodiversity gain or loss, especially in species that are particularly sensitive to clean water—the mayfly and the caddisfly. You will be pleased to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that invertebrate biodiversity has tripled in our rivers over the last 30 years, during the period of privatisation. I am not defending the water companies’ lack of inquisitiveness about the number of storm overflow discharges. This terrible problem has to be addressed, and it was being addressed by the last Conservative Government, but it prompts the question: has our water got better or worse, in aggregate, over the last 30 years? The data suggests that it has got considerably better. I will talk about the pros and cons of privatisation in terms of funding. In my view, there are definite cons to the private ownership model we have had over the past 30 years. I concede that some water companies have exploited weak regulation to take advantage of their monopolistic position. True competition cannot exist because we have monopoly providers. The role of competition is meant to be provided by regulation and, too often, the regulation has been found wanting, particularly on the financial engineering of the leverage that water companies undertook in the noughties, peaking in about 2015. Again, I accept that that is a problem that should have been prevented, but all the major parties are guilty and played their part. It started under Labour and continued under the coalition—I am afraid that both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have their fingerprints on this—before stopping in about 2015, when Ofwat belatedly tightened up its provision. Members will have noticed that the latest return on capital allowed by Ofwat is, from memory, 3.4%, which I submit is a reasonable return on capital and one that individuals might get from a high-interest account. I hope that I have given a balanced assessment of the good and bad of privatisation over the past 30 years. We need to do that, because it is the basis on which we address the next question about the Bill: what is the right mechanism of ownership? In my view, privatisation has, on balance, been a success, because it has managed to lever in investment to improve our water quality overall, to reduce leakage and outages in the way that I have described, and to provide us with the safest water in the world.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I have not intervened on other speeches, but on that one comment that the hon. Lady has made, has she read the plan for water that was published by the previous Government and is she aware of its contents, which include £56 billion of investment to deal with exactly this issue?

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I would like to give the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to correct the record: the official Opposition did not oppose that Act.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  The profit motive does promote efficiency in innovation, because companies want to minimise their costs and therefore maximise their profits. It also provides access to capital in the manner that I have described, because there are rights issues as well as the recirculation of water bills. It is right that that is the foundation of the business, but it is not the only access to capital, whereas with public ownership, as we are very aware this week, there are limited funds. We cannot borrow forever. We have what I think are described as iron-clad fiscal rules, which we have heard a bit about recently. We know that this Government, and all Governments, are constrained in their ability to borrow and spend, and that they have other priorities, so we will never get a big budget for water if it is in public ownership. The Bill has generated a huge amount of interest. I thoroughly agree with elements of it, particularly on nature-based solutions, which build on the “Plan for Water” published by the last Government in 2022. If the Bill proceeds, there are areas that I would like to discuss and develop in Committee, but I will not detain the House any further on them now. I look forward to the progress of the Bill.

• 27 Mar 2025 · St Patrick’s Day and Northern Irish Affairs · Hansard source

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  It has been an enormously enjoyable debate. I start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee). From the perspective of Conservative Members, he is one of a depressingly large wave of new entrants into this place, but he has definitely marked himself out as one to watch. He produced a tour de force—a wide-ranging review of the historical community ties between the nations of the British Isles. The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) gave us a very interesting history of St Patrick. I certainly learned more from his speech than I was able to find in my Wikipedia search in preparation for this debate—that is an admission. The hon. Member for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins), who is, I think it is fair to say, a proud trade unionist, and other Labour Members highlighted the strong connection between people of Irish descent and the trade union movement—so though that movement has not all been good, some of it has been. My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) called with great force and, in my submission, quite rightly for a bank holiday to celebrate St Patrick. If the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme put forward a proposal to celebrate both St Patrick’s day and St George’s day as bank holidays, I would be one of the first to support him. My hon. Friend the Member for Romford also mentioned the now defunct order of St Patrick, and his campaign to reinstate it. That sounds like a sensible thing to do. He made reference to the green of St Patrick. From my research on Wikipedia, I learned that St Patrick’s colour was actually blue, not green. Green is a development of the most recent centuries, so we might have to do a bit of work there. The hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) celebrated—boasted about, frankly—having the largest Irish diaspora of any UK constituency. She highlighted, as did others, the huge contribution that people of Irish descent have made to the local economy and the local community. I will skip to the hon. Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon), who spoke of the Tayto diaspora and celebrated the London Irish community. He made an eloquent plea for support for his campaign on Philomena’s law. The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) rightly described the significant contribution of Northern Ireland to this nation’s fight for freedom in the second world war, but he went on to recognise some darker aspects of the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and of the east-west relationship, and I do not think he was wrong to do that. If we are to have a mature relationship built on trust and respect, we need to recognise each other’s weaknesses, as well as being sentimental about our shared history. We should be clear-eyed and recognise the failings of others, as well as ourselves, in our shared history. While I do not agree with everything he said, there were points when I thought, “Yes, you are quite right. We should be clear-eyed about this.” That takes me to St Patrick. His day, 17 March, is forever linked in my family with my father, Patrick Mayhew, who was half-Irish. It was a red letter day in my family’s calendar. Wherever we were in the world, we would always ring up or get in touch with my father to wish him a happy St Patrick’s day. St Patrick was, in fact, a Briton. I knew that, but I did not know until I prepared for this debate that that he was captured by Irish pirates and taken forcefully as a slave to Ireland. Whatever his experience there, he cannot have hated it too much, because he then voluntarily returned to bring Christianity to Ireland and to drive out the snakes. That is an early example of cross-border cultural mixing that has been to our mutual benefit. The latest census suggests that more than 400,000 Irish- born people live in the UK. Ireland is, of course, our closest neighbour by geography, by culture, by family connection and by friendship. That has led to a historical interlinking of our economies—an interlinking that can be developed further. As of 2023, some £78.8 billion of trade flowed between our nations. The United Kingdom is Ireland’s largest trading partner, and Ireland is the sixth-largest trading partner of the United Kingdom. We cannot pretend, as the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim rightly pointed out, that there are not continuing economic and political challenges in the relationship between our countries. I therefore welcome the close political co-operation, east-west and, increasingly, north-south. Speaking from a personal perspective, I recognise some of his comments about the difficulties of dealing with the Irish state back in the 1980s. In those days, I well recall the then Attorney General expressing considerable frustration at extradition applications being refused because of typing errors and grammatical inconsistencies. That is just a little historical note that I wanted to add to the account given by the hon. and learned Member. We had a UK-Ireland summit as recently as 6 March, and it was noticeable that the Taoiseach said: “we make the greatest progress when our two governments work together, particularly to support peace, prosperity and reconciliation on this island. Rooted in our commitments as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement, I am confident that today marks a new chapter in the Irish British relationship.” That is what this debate, among many others, is doing. It powerfully supports a bringing together of our two nations, and a focus on and recognition of our shared history and future. May St Patrick inspire us all to further friendship and co-operation across the British Isles.

• 27 Mar 2025 · Passenger Rail Performance · Hansard source

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  We are told that nationalisation is the answer to improving passenger rail performance. If that is the case, surely it would make sense to start by nationalising the worst performing operators. CrossCountry comes last out of all train operating companies for passenger satisfaction and it is not complying with its obligations. The Secretary of State could call in that contract, so why is it not the first operator to be nationalised under GBR?