Joe Morris MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jul 2025 · EU Trade Agreement: Economic Impact · Hansard source

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  I am pleased that the agreement secured with our largest trading partner, the European Union, will make it easier for food and drink to be imported and exported. Will the Secretary of State assure me and my constituents that all future conversations with trading partners will continue to prioritise high welfare standards and food standards on both sides of the Irish sea?

• 16 Jun 2025 · Farmed Animals: Cages and Crates · Hansard source

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  We need proper, targeted support that involves genuine conversations, and listening and engaging respectfully with those communities, as well as a trade policy that stands up to those imports. I was delighted that the Business and Trade Secretary announced trade deals that genuinely protect the interests of the agricultural sector. I do not believe that would have happened under the previous Government, when farmers were far too often put on the chopping block. I went out to farms throughout the general election campaign and have been out to them since; particularly in the sheep farming sector in my part of the world, farmers are sick of being sold down the river. So far, we have encouraged a move away from colony hen cages to free-range production through grants to laying hen and pullet farmers in England. Colony cages are already being replaced with non-cage systems that directly prioritise the welfare of hens. The Government are supporting major supermarkets in their pledge to stop selling eggs from chickens kept in colony cages by the end of 2025. While the previous Administration saw eggs from caged production reach 44% of the market in 2018, this Government saw that proportion reduce to 20% at the end of last year. In addition, 50% of the national sow-breeding herd are giving birth in outdoor units—we have heard some of the arguments in favour of indoor production. While the move to more outdoor units is a step in the right direction, it is imperative that we constantly investigate how to improve animal welfare standards. As the hon. Member for Bridlington and The Wolds (Charlie Dewhirst) said, that must be part of a genuine conversation between industry, campaigning groups and the Government. The work to promote animal welfare is never fully complete; we will hopefully have the debate in the years to come, and it will never fully be laid to rest. I pay tribute to the farmers in my constituency, who strive for the highest animal welfare standards and look after their environment. They need our support in terms of both international trade and respectful, positive engagement with the Government. I am a Member of Parliament for a constituency that borders Scotland, so it will be unsurprising that I mention the Scottish Government’s recent consultation on ending the use of animal cages. I am glad to see that all steps are being taken to reduce the confinement of farm animals, and the consultation will make significant headway in fulfilling the animal welfare agenda. I am pleased that the Government are carefully considering the use of cages and crates, and I thank all Members for engaging in this debate and sharing a commitment to protecting the welfare of animals. This is an opportunity for us to truly lead the way in protecting the welfare of animals and supporting humane farming methods. I warmly welcome the Government’s commitment to achieving the most ambitious animal welfare programme in a generation; I urge further consideration of the use of animal cages for farmed animals.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Farmed Animals: Cages and Crates · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship for the first time, Mr Mundell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) on leading this important debate. The Labour Government were elected on a manifesto commitment to introduce the most comprehensive animal welfare programme in a generation; I am pleased that we are already making significant headway on that. It was animal welfare that first politicised me as a child. One of the reasons why I joined the Labour party was the previous Labour Government’s partial ban on fox hunting. I look forward to finishing the job in this Parliament. My colleagues and I take the welfare of animals very seriously. The United Kingdom currently has some of the highest food safety, animal welfare and environmental standards for food production in the world, but we can and must go further. I am sure all Members present share similar concerns for animals trapped in cages. Sentient animals such as cows, sheep, pigs and chickens all have the capacity to feel emotion, ranging from happiness and joy to fear, pain and distress. It is stress inducing for animals not to engage in natural behaviours or to be unable to benefit from the landscapes across the country to which they are accustomed. Being trapped in cages that restrict animals’ movement and freedom prevents them from engaging in their natural behaviour. Not only are cramped cages emotionally distressing, but they cause clear physical discomfort and a greater likelihood of illness, disease and reduced lifespan. The United Kingdom was the first country in the world to introduce an animal protection law—the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822—and has subsequently stated that animals are sentient beings that deserve the highest standards of animal welfare protection. However, the previous Administration did not do enough on the issue. Instead, they broke promises regarding animal welfare, made U-turns and signed trade deals that allowed in lower-quality products that did not meet health and welfare standards by omitting any mention of imports having to uphold this country’s welfare standards for animal products. They quietly dropped the consultation on hen and pig cages and abandoned plans for mandatory welfare labelling.

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  I will keep my remarks fairly brief, and we have been treated to a lot of good, well-informed speeches. On respect and speaking up for what we believe in, it is important to remember the poison that was brought into the body politic before I entered this place. On the local election night I was particularly concerned in my constituency about the return of a Reform councillor whose Facebook page has been described by Hope Not Hate as “a slew of anti-Muslim content.” That really worries me. It worries a lot of my constituents, and it worries a lot of people across the country. I am very disappointed with Reform and question some of its vetting processes. To return to the matter in hand, I meet every week with businesses in my constituency—with farmers, small businesses, businesses that export and those that want to export but do not feel they have the facilities or support in place to do so. There are failures in the Brexit deal, and I know that there are many sober and mature Members on the other side of the House who recognise those shortcomings, and this summit is an opportunity to recognise that we live in a world that is changing every single day, where the demands of yesterday are not the same as the demands of tomorrow. We have a Government who are looking to the mature, reasonable and responsible thing to do, which is to improve the day to day lives of our constituents, which is what we are sent here to do. I speak to farmers who suffer from being caught up in red tape when trying to export or small businesses who do not have access to the “Rolls-Royce” access programmes that larger businesses do to go abroad, and that is one of the major failings of the previous Government’s trade policy. I hope that in winding up the Minister will address how we can get small businesses exporting across the world as part of the slew of trade deals that we have just signed. It is really important that we do not go into conspiracy-theory baiting on backsliding on the EU and what that means. I do not particularly care about chasing views from accounts amplified by Elon Musk: I care about getting good results, jobs and outcomes for my constituents. For far too long, my constituency was denied a voice because it was a safe Conservative seat. It was a seat where Members would go up every six weeks and not really engage with the solid issues. We have a school in my constituency that was built eight-and-a-half years ago that is already structurally unsound. That is a pretty damning failure of the Conservatives. We need to ensure that the system we have inherited works properly. I urge the Minister and the Government to get to the negotiating table, work through the kinks in the deal, work out what is going wrong and holding businesses back, and approach the issue with a mature, honest and genuine discussion on how we can improve things. As it says on my party membership card, we achieve more by our common endeavour; ultimately, we need that approach. We need an internationalist approach rooted in pragmatism that does not fall victim to some of the appalling cynicism and rather brutal mischaracterisation that we often see from Opposition Members.

• 12 May 2025 · US-UK Trade Deal: Northern Ireland · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the Secretary of State first on being papped in the away end on Friday night, and secondly on, twice in one week, upholding our world-leading environmental and welfare standards. Can he assure me that as these conversations—and, indeed, conversations with future trading partners—develop, further deals will always prioritise high food standards to protect both our farmers and our consumers?

• 30 Apr 2025 · Global Deforestation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) on securing this important debate. When I worked for UK Steel, it was always a pleasure to get in touch with him about carbon sequestration from steel, and it is a pleasure to speak with him now on the subject of deforestation. Deforestation does not simply cut down trees: it cuts off food chains, collapses ecosystems and drives animals from their homes. It is, as the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) said, a global crisis that will have impacts that reverberate down the generations. It is a devastating loss to our planet that up to 15 billion trees are cut down every year right around the world, and it does not only destroy the homes of vital species. I put on the record my thanks to Northumberland College at Kirkley Hall zoo, which kindly hosted me after my election to talk about its great work in preserving biodiversity. Deforestation is contributing hugely to the deeply concerning examples of climate change that we are seeing. I also put on the record my support for the responsible forestry industry—I have a lot of it in my Hexham constituency, where I see the jobs, employment and certainty it provides to local communities—and recognise the great Northumberland forest plan to plant millions of trees, which has commanded genuine cross-party support in my part of the world. I am conscious that we have local elections on Thursday, but we can get together with the Tory group at Morpeth and recognise that they do have some good ideas occasionally. We need to recognise that we cannot fight climate change simply by sacrificing biodiversity. In fact, we need to embrace it. We are stripping away the lungs of our planet and the homes of irreplaceable wildlife, sacrificing the Amazon and other great forests at the altar of industrial agriculture, as land is carved out for cattle and soy at the expense of our planet’s future. I am conscious that the Minister will not be able to speak on issues that affect the Department for Business and Trade, but I urge her, when she has the relevant conversations, not just to look at how we preserve and protect our high food standards. When we look at UK Government procurement, we should look at transport and the other emissions incurred by goods that are brought out of the planet using suboptimal methods, and ensure that, wherever possible, we use the best methods for getting products into the UK and make sure they are produced to a high standard, wherever they come from. That comes up in my inbox an awful lot. I feel incredibly fortunate to have grown up surrounded by the Northumberland landscape. We must preserve such landscapes not just in Northumberland but around the world. We must protect our climate and confront deforestation head on. I note the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West, and from other hon. Members who have far more experience of this than I do, about the practices of certain large corporations. To touch briefly on my previous life working in the steel sector, timber and lumber are products that sequester carbon far more effectively. We need to have a truly honest conversation with ourselves about how the 1.5 million new homes target can be achieved using products that are far kinder to the environment, that provide jobs here at home and that provide environmental benefits right across the world.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Family Businesses · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to follow some measured and passionate speeches from across the House on this important subject. As Members will know, I am very proud to represent England’s largest constituency by geographic area, and an area that was found to be one of the happiest in the country, with one of the best senses of community and belonging. Over the recent recess, I was able to host a roundtable with the conductors of the “Belonging Barometer”, which was attended by many local businesses and community organisations. As has just been said, family businesses are the glue that binds together many of the strands of our community, particularly across the Tyne valley. In the aftermath of Storm Éowyn, we have seen heartening examples of family-run businesses in particular coming out, helping their community, providing those places to stay and to recuperate for communities that have taken a battering from extreme weather events that are sadly becoming all too common. I was disappointed to read the Opposition motion. Once again, we are here discussing a kind of hodgepodge of various gripes and groans that the Conservatives have with Government policy. That is absolutely fine, and it is their right so to do—there are Members sitting on the Tory Benches now who I genuinely respect and, in some cases, admire—but they are better than that, and they should be better than that. [ Laughter. ] They can laugh if they want, although I know that some of them have considerable experience in writing manifestos that perhaps did not play out so well. Ultimately, we need to achieve an environment in which family businesses and small businesses across the country and across our constituencies are genuinely supported by Government. One of the things that has come to my attention since being elected as the first non-Conservative MP for Hexham in a century is that a lot of businesses have said to me, “It is nice to have an MP who is really connected to the constituency—one who is not complacent.” That compares with some of the treatment that rural communities have received from the Conservative party in years past. We have MPs who are genuinely rooted in their communities, who went to school in those communities and who got their first jobs in local businesses. They can speak to businesses in their constituencies and deliver messages down here. I have had conversations with businesses such as Brocksbushes farm shop, which did involve some patient disagreement over the Budget, but mainly involved real concerns over local infrastructure, such as the lack of bus stops on the A69 and the difficulties that the young people it employs have in getting to the business to work. The farm shop does a fantastic job. My now fiancée and I went pumpkin-picking there just after the election. It was a wonderful event, although I think Hana probably enjoyed it more than I did. Ultimately, from having those positive conversations and looking at what business needs, we can see that it is infrastructure and investment. They need a Government who listen, not one who embark on some kind of haywire, high-minded ideological crusade, as the Opposition did when in government. [ Laughter. ] They can laugh.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  Like the Minister, I am the product of a state school in the north-east, and I am tremendously proud of that fact. During the election, many teachers in Throckley, Hexham, Ponteland, Prudhoe and elsewhere told me on the doorstep that they felt the one-word judgment did not allow sufficient room for subtlety and nuance in the evaluation of schools, and parents felt the same. Will the Minister assure me that this is simply the first step in delivering the high and rising standards that we all need and expect for children across the country?

• 29 Jan 2025 · Rural Housing Targets · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I genuinely want to thank the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), who, until the last election, was my aunt’s MP, so I always get a letter when I speak in debates with him. I think this debate is less about rural housing targets and more about rural homes. I grew up in the largest constituency in England, as the right hon. Gentleman indicated, and now have the privilege to serve as the MP for it. It regularly hits me, as I walk down the street or go to my surgeries, that I am far more likely to bump into my mates’ grandparents or parents than I am to bump into them because they have had to move out to Newcastle, down south or out to Manchester. It is one of the great sadnesses of the job that I do not see communities thrive as much as they could because young people are forced to leave. Communities need those young people, frankly. I am frequently contacted by parents from across west Northumberland because Northumberland county council is trying to force some of our smaller schools to become two-form entry, rather than three-form entry. Rural depopulation is a major concern that transcends party politics, so I hope we can have a genuinely grown-up conversation about how we do better policy making for rural areas to support those communities. When I go out into the north Tyne, where I live at the moment, or go into the central town of Hexham, or Prudhoe, I am often asked about my views on specific developments. I genuinely always try to approach these things by saying that we need to make sure there are places for people to grow up, and for businesses to invest in their employees. I spoke to one medium-sized employer in Hexham that spends a lot of time training its apprentices, who cannot afford to live in Hexham so move to a rival firm in Blyth, on the coast, which therefore gets all the benefit of that employee’s wisdom and experience, and the investment the company put into them, at none of the cost. We really need to look at how to generate vibrancy in our rural economies. I have a slight issue with the definition of “rurality” given in a few documents I saw while drawing up this speech. “Rurality” is often defined as applying to settlements of fewer than 10,000 people. By the latest figures, Prudhoe has 10,288 and Hexham has 10,941 but no one walking down the street in either place would think of them as urban. Today, I received news of bank branch closures in my constituency and was incredibly disappointed to see that the branches were considered urban, despite the common-sense test of walking outside them and seeing the Tyne valley in all its beauty—it is possible to see right down to the north Tyne from Hexham. Prudhoe and Hexham are not urban communities. They are bigger than Barrasford, Wark, Humshaugh and plenty of other communities but they are not urban. Any great advances in house building and housing targets must come with improved infrastructure. I hope to see much-needed investment in the Tyne valley line. My staff said to me that if I could get the Tyne valley line improved, certain villages in my constituency would build a statue of me. I do not hope for that and I am not lobbying for that—the county council probably has enough against me before I start lobbying for monuments —but we need to make sure that that infrastructure runs on time. I also want to put on record that the limit in housing is driving the social housing waiting list crisis. Some of the main drivers of the cases coming into my inbox for my case workers are the special educational needs and disabilities crisis and the crisis in social housing in rural areas. I do not expect any hon. Members in this room to have a huge working knowledge of the diversity of Northumberland, but people are being rehomed from Ashington to Allendale, which are extremely different.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege to be called to speak in this debate. I will focus my remarks on the impact of this Bill on schools and parents in my constituency. However, first I pay tribute to the family of Holly Newton from my constituency, and to Northumberland Domestic Abuse Services, which campaigns tirelessly to provide protection for victims and young people in my constituency. This landmark legislation is a return to grown-up, sensible, solution-based politics and policymaking, which for 14 years this country has been denied. Unfortunately, all too often, parents in my constituency find the cost of uniform prohibitive. That additional cost places a burden on families who should be focused on sending their children to what will be, and in many cases are, genuinely world-class schools in my constituency. I was privileged to visit Acomb first school, Longhorsley Church of England first school and Hexham middle school before Christmas. I will be off on another school visit on Friday. The Bill is merely the start for this child-focused and child-centric Government. I am incredibly grateful to the Secretary of State for joining me on a pre-election visit to the middle school in Corbridge, where we met children and students, and where soon I will be pounding the pavements and knocking on doors for our excellent council candidate. I am probably the first Member to mention the local elections in 2025, so I guess it is now open season. Smaller schools across my constituency have really suffered from a county council that is not focused enough on the needs of parents and children. There is a lack of school transport provision, which I have spoken about in this place, and a lack of SEND provision, which I hear about at almost every single surgery that I hold. Genuine concerns have also been raised about Bellingham middle school. Parents and residents feel that the Conservative-run administration at Northumberland County Hall has simply abandoned the school and is content to let it wither. I am sure that there are some good-intentioned Conservative councillors at County Hall who would object to that, but that is the view of the community. In the 30 seconds that I have left, I would like to pay tribute to those on the Government Front Bench for their relentless focus on addressing the practical needs of my constituents. I thank the Secretary of State and the ministerial team for the time that they have given to me and to other Members from the north-east, for their focus on improving the outcomes for schools, and for the time that they have spent speaking about the challenges of smaller schools in my Northumberland constituency. I have finished my speech with five seconds to spare.

• 17 Dec 2024 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  I have never turned down an opportunity to slag off the Opposition. I am always happy to do so. The ultimate reason that the Budget was necessary was to raise the extra money to invest into the NHS. The extra infrastructure investment will support our rural communities, our rural GPs and our care homes. That is the fundamental point of the Budget. It is a reset moment to properly support our public sector once more, which the Conservative party failed to do, as the right hon. Gentleman well knows. We need to restore faith in our NHS and our small businesses that were so badly let down. I have spoken to many across my constituency who share my optimism about this Government and who are convinced of the need for that investment. [ Interruption. ] Opposition Members can chunter all they like, but it is true. Ultimately, those businesses know that we need to invest in the state in order to drive up standards and confidence and provide the stability that the country so desperately needs.

• 26 Nov 2024 · Project Gigabit · Hansard source

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  Clearly, I have got something wrong. I want to address a few of the issues experienced in my constituency. As many Members here today will be well aware, it is the largest constituency in England, taking in large parts of Northumberland, going all the way up to the Scottish border and all the way across to the border with Cumbria. I am regularly contacted by constituents who are trying to enjoy the dream situation of living in England’s most beautiful county, but who are unable properly to work, attend meetings with clients or generate the economic growth that this country so sorely needs. I speak to people in villages such as Stocksfield, Riding Mill, Hedley on the Hill or even Darras Hall, who I know have had frequent issues with getting the appropriate broadband speeds delivered to them. Residents of those villages are continuously working to try to get the broadband speeds that they deserve. There is a real feeling that for the past 14 years many rural communities were left to sit in splendid isolation, abandoned by the Conservative party. As the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon eloquently said in his opening remarks, they were left to fend for themselves. I am absolutely proud to be part of the Labour party that won a swathe of rural seats at the last general election, that is committed to ensuring our rural businesses can grow, and that can ensure that the world-class businesses across my constituency are able not only to access high-speed internet, but to do so in the very smallest communities. When I go out and meet constituents across the north Tyne area, internet is one of the bugbears most commonly raised with me on the doorstep, alongside a lack of housing and the state of the NHS. I hope the Minister will consider how we can get high-speed internet to those most rural constituencies and the hill farms that the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) mentioned, to ensure that they are given the opportunity to benefit from Project Gigabit.

• 19 Nov 2024 · Tourism: Northumberland · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister and everyone who has contributed to this very good and enlightening debate. To pick up on a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody) made, I should point out that I did grow up in Hexham and am very proud to have grown up in Hexham, although I do support Sunderland. As I said to many of my constituents during the general election campaign, if I can grow up in the north-east and support Sunderland during the 15 and 19-point seasons, I think I can go down to Parliament and advocate for us quite strongly.

• 12 Nov 2024 · School Transport: Northumberland · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered school transport in Northumberland. It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. In Westminster Hall today, I am delighted to see Members who share my concerns about school transport, not just in my constituency but across the county. I place on the record my thanks to organisations such as Contact, Adapt North East and local schools, in particular Queen Elizabeth high school, for their valuable contributions. The future of school transport is a pressing and increasingly concerning issue affecting my constituents —parents, students and teachers—in Hexham and in Northumberland more broadly. I grew up in Hexham. I was fortunate enough to have been educated at Sele first school, Hexham middle school and Queen Elizabeth high school. I am, and always will be, incredibly grateful to my teachers for the valuable education that I received. In particular, I mention Tony Webster, my former headteacher at QE—he filmed a video supporting me during the general election campaign—for his constant support and mentorship. Meeting students and teachers across my constituency—from Queen Elizabeth high school to Longhorsley St Helen’s Church of England first school and back to Sele first school, where I went a few weeks ago—has provided valuable insight into the issues affecting our local schools, and school transport in Northumberland is raised again and again. During my maiden speech, I said: “a great state education has the ability to change lives and to lift and change entire areas. I want every child in the constituency to have access to the kind of education that I was lucky enough to get.” —[ Official Report , 19 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 347.] That is my motivation to secure this debate. Ensuring that every child in Northumberland gets the best education is a commitment that I share with my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith), and with my hon. Friends the Members for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) and for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody), who cannot join us today. Home-to-school transport is an integral part of our education system in Britain. It ensures that no child of compulsory school age is prevented from accessing education by a lack of, or the cost of, transport.

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. When I go to places like Bellingham, where I have a constituency surgery coming up soon, I am often told about the impact of second homes on the community. It contributes to a decline in a sense of place and in opportunities, and of course it crowds out younger people from getting on to the housing ladder. I agree that we urgently need to look at that, and I hope that the Government will consider it strongly. Briefly, in the time I have left, I will celebrate the rural crime strategy. Members from all parts of the House have spoken about it a lot. During the election campaign, I spoke to a farmer who had someone try to nick her quad bike. She confronted him and had to wait 30 minutes for a police officer to arrive. She said that was a speedy response, and she was quite pleased with it. That just shows the level to which rural crime fighting sank under the previous Government.

• 29 Oct 2024 · Living Standards · Hansard source

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  1. What steps she plans to take to help improve living standards.

• 29 Oct 2024 · Living Standards · Hansard source

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  The Conservatives oversaw a living standards disaster. In places such as Hexham, Prudhoe and Throckley in my constituency, people saw hardly any improvements to their incomes in over 14 years. Surely the clearest sign of whether government is working is whether working people feel better off. Does the Chancellor agree that papering over Tory failure is not enough, and that in tomorrow’s Budget we must reset the foundations of our economy?

• 17 Oct 2024 · Business Property Relief and Agricultural Property Relief · Hansard source

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  I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point. I am glad that the last Government learned some of the lessons of the Australia trade deal and implemented them. It is important that we get an answer on APR and BPR. I am making a slightly political point, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will humour me for it, but it is important that we maintain that international trade is an ongoing piece and the agricultural sector does not exist in isolation. None of these reliefs exist in isolation. Farming, more than anything, is an industry with concerns that sit between the Treasury, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Business and Trade. More than almost any other industry, it is reliant on good cross-party and cross-departmental working, and we need to ensure that the Government do that. I hope that we do not consider these things just in isolation but overall and together, and we must ensure that the Government are working towards securing them. One of the main concerns that I picked up from my constituency is the inability of consumers to distinguish between British and foreign produce when it is badged up the wrong way. I hope the Treasury will listen to representations on how we can combat that kind of false advertising when foreign produce is repackaged as UK produce. How we keep the family farm going, and how we ensure that small farms are able to continue to produce in the Tyne valley, is deeply concerning to me. I have spoken to a lot of local farmers about land loss and about large corporations buying up prime agricultural land and using it to—I think it is fair to say—greenwash. That is genuinely a national issue that requires cross-party cohesion and cross-party solutions. My own hackneyed political point scoring is not going to help in that, but in the long term and in this Parliament, I would always welcome working to address that. However, I urge the Minister to remember that farms are businesses and they need long-term consumer confidence. They need an overall business climate that rewards investment and entrepreneurialism, but not one that is not built on sand. They need one that is built on secure, stable foundations and that is open to serious cross-party working. When we look at how we get the rural economy growing, it is really important that both land-owning farms and tenant farms in particular can continue to employ people and that there is money going out of those farms into the local economy. I have spoken to my constituents: they have had to take certain crops out of production to grow those that need less manpower. They would have employed people to work those fields or work that livestock, but they have been forced to change by often badly designed initiatives from DEFRA, and we need to work cross-party to ensure that those initiatives are better designed in future. They have been forced into those measures that, over the course of many years, slowly bring their workforce down and lead to less money coming into the local economy. In his response, I hope the Minister can ensure that the Treasury hears the pleas of rural communities. This issue is genuinely a concern across parties, and my constituents are very concerned about the ongoing removal of prime agricultural land from food production.

• 17 Oct 2024 · Business Property Relief and Agricultural Property Relief · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his highly unusual intervention. I will make a brief university point and say that it is highly unusual to have a Mansfield College MP intervene on a Mansfield College MP; it is probably the first time that has happened in this Parliament.

• 16 Oct 2024 · Access to Primary Healthcare · Hansard source

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  I want to speak about some of the challenges I experience when I am out in my constituency. Whether before the election or since, whether I am out in Throckley in the western reaches of Newcastle or in Otterburn, Bellingham or Wark in the Tyne valley, the inability to get a decent GP appointment is continuously raised with me as one of my constituents’ greatest frustrations, and they appreciate the sheer scale of the task that this Government have inherited. One of the things I want to gently ask of the health team on the Front Bench is that when we look at building the community health service that we so desperately need, we consider that our rural communities in particular have suffered from health services being hollowed out for 14 years. If people are forced to go on public transport and it takes hours to get between small towns and villages, the barrier to a GP appointment becomes all the bigger. That was communicated to me throughout the election in visits to wards that I do not think Labour canvassers had knocked in before. Many residents of Hexham raised it as one of the primary reasons for switching to the Labour party, and it is why I am stood here as Hexham’s first ever Labour MP. Five out of the seven dentists in my constituency are not accepting new patients. That crisis is particularly acute in the western part of Newcastle, in Callerton and Throckley—it has been raised with me multiple times on the doorstep—and the devastating impact of that crisis on families and on people’s mental health, as well as their physical health, has been illustrated by many of the contributions from across the House. The absolute disgrace of people getting visibly emotional when talking about their struggle to secure a dentist’s appointment in 21st-century Britain is one of the many badges of shame that the Conservative party should wear as it considers its future. I note the empty spaces on the Conservative Benches. Ultimately, I want to pay tribute to the GPs and frontline staff who work tirelessly to deliver healthcare across my constituency and further afield, but also to emphasise that the challenge facing the NHS has never been greater, particularly in rural areas. The NHS has been brought to its knees by 14 years of mismanagement and complacency, and we now need to rise to the challenge. I am confident that this health team and this Government will do so.

• 8 Oct 2024 · Farming and Food Security · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) on such an impassioned maiden speech, and I wish him the best of luck in his naming battles, as they develop. I have become very fond of saying that I am the MP for the largest constituency in England, where I am conscious that agricultural and rural communities have a significant stake. They make a significant contribution to the local economy. If the farms were taken out of the constituency, it would not just be the economy that is ruined; the landscape and tourism would also be ruined, and countless communities that have existed for centuries would be undermined. Unfortunately, our rural communities are in the midst of a crisis, including a depopulation crisis. Young people cannot find the jobs and homes that allow them to afford to remain where they grew up, and therefore we have an ageing population. Hospitality businesses are unable to continue to grow and are forced to close their doors. That is directly linked to the crisis in our farming communities, because they are often the customers for those businesses. Over the weekend I was privileged to visit Goodfellow Farming in Longwitton, on the eastern border of my constituency. I spoke to the owner about the shape of British farming and the very real crisis we have inherited from the Conservatives. The shadow farming Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), is a former Northumberland county councillor. He was very gracious in welcoming three new Labour Members for the area to this place, and I thank him for his friendliness and candour in doing so. I just complimented him on the beauty of the Alnwick ward, where I look forward to campaigning in the local elections that are coming up. The people of the Hexham constituency voted for Labour for the first time ever at the last election because they recognise the crises we face. I say that not to make a hackneyed political point, but to make a real point about the work that I intend to do, as a new Member in the House, to shine a light on the depopulation crisis we face. I gently remind shadow Ministers on the Opposition Front Bench that we know that we have inherited a very broken farming system. I was delighted to welcome my right hon. Friend the now Secretary of State to my constituency during the general election campaign to meet local farmers. I am confident that this Government and this Front-Bench team are listening to them and that we can work to drive up standards in our farming and secure generational farms for the future. Ultimately, a Department that managed to underspend by £300 million is not one that was functioning properly under the previous Government. I say that not to be overtly political, but simply to emphasise that we need a Government who work in the interests of communities up and down the Tyne valley and from the County Durham border up to the Scottish border.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Rural Depopulation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz; I will be brief. I applied to contribute to this debate because I wanted to speak not just about my experiences, but about the experiences of people I grew up around, people I was at school with and people who, in many cases, were forced to leave my constituency of Hexham, which colleagues will be surprised to learn is the largest in England. As the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) spoke about the beauty of his constituency, I feel compelled to remind people of the beauty of my constituency, which is in the county of Hadrian’s Wall, and to note that we will be marking the anniversary of the loss of the Sycamore Gap tree during the conference recess later in September. When I go through so many towns and villages in my constituency, I see that they are marked by exactly what Members have spoken about today: a lack of younger people, who have been forced—they have not chosen—to move away. They have been forced, by a lack of jobs and opportunities, to seek to make their lives elsewhere, often leaving behind families and caring responsibilities, which means large amounts of travel back home to meet those obligations. The last Government failed to grapple with this issue, which we know is a huge, inherited, generational and demographic challenge, and one that I urge our Government to take on fully. I spoke to some of the businesses in my constituency on the campaign trail. They want to take on more people, but they simply cannot find the skills they need or people who want to work and can afford to live in such an overheated and over-inflated housing market. That leads to a decline for those businesses and, for some of them, a slow death. One of the larger employers told me during the election that if they take on someone and train them up, but then they cannot afford to live in my constituency and move somewhere else, they bear all the training costs, only to see that individual go and work in a far more urban part of the country. We have spoken a lot about the rural premium and the rural cost of living, but there is a rural cost of doing business as well, which we should note very carefully. As the representative for the Hexham constituency—the first Labour representative for the constituency—and as someone who was privileged to be out knocking on doors with my school friends and my schoolteachers, I know that we are not just letting our young people down, but letting our older generations down. I am privileged to be able to go back to visit my grandma every week when I am back in the constituency, but I have friends who now live three or four hours away and are unable to do the same. This is having a genuinely devastating impact on a lot of families, particularly given the acute social care crisis that this Government have inherited. Ultimately, only by addressing this issue and the really biting crisis of rural depopulation can we turn our communities around and ensure that they can become the thriving engines of growth that the economy needs them to be.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  The Government the hon. Gentleman supported were responsible for driving living standards down, in the first Parliament on record in which that happened. Does he not agree that it is traditionally bad form for the arsonist to start criticising the fire brigade?

• 2 Sept 2024 · Banking Services: Rural Northumberland · Hansard source

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  I agree with my hon. Friend, and I thank her for giving me an unintended promotion. It may seem like we are just saying names on a map, but consider the vast scale of my constituency in our wonderful county of Northumberland. These places are separated by huge distances, and have a public transport system that does not always seem to work as it should. It is simply not fair that vulnerable people in my constituency are forced to travel for as long as an hour by car or 90 minutes by public transport, either way. It is unfair to expect our constituents to put up with a second-class service because they live rurally. Unfortunately that has been the case in large parts of our county. It is incredibly important that we address these issues. We all recognise that many of these communities, particularly in my constituency and in that of my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith), have historically voted Conservative, but they put their faith in the Labour party for the first time at the last election. We were elected to deliver meaningful change for our constituencies. I applied for this debate having spent my time as a candidate listening to the concerns of people across the constituency, but there is one area I wish to highlight. In Haltwhistle, and the towns and villages around it, the loss of Barclays last year is still damaging the local economy. I have been in touch with the chair of Haltwhistle chamber of trade, Ian Dommett, who told me directly that the loss of banking facilities in rural towns such as Haltwhistle has had a negative effect on every business. His members have been affected; most had accounts at Barclays because of its presence in the town. The replacement of an active branch with a peripatetic community hub has removed the relationship between business and branch. Many businesses deal in cash—Ian’s business is a bed and breakfast, with many guests paying in cash, and a lot of Haltwhistle’s passing trade is from tourist spend on Hadrian’s wall—but they have lost the ability to pay directly into the bank, with the nearest Barclays’ branch being 20 miles away. Haltwhistle businesses say that the bank has simply told them to use the post office, a separate business over which it has no control.

• 2 Sept 2024 · Banking Services: Rural Northumberland · Hansard source

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  I very much agree with my hon. Friend. We have seen far too many rural towns and rural economies facing a precipice when a bank closes. Businesses are left to deal with uncertainty and a deprivation of banking services, which has an ongoing effect on the economy, before anything else comes in. I hope that we can consider taking any steps necessary to mitigate the impact of those closures, and I agree that a move to a “last but one” system may be a more efficient way of dealing with things. Whitehaven on the Tyne Valley line is a town that shares many of the challenges that I am talking about, and that demonstrates the incredibly important nature of this debate. In constituencies such as mine and those of my hon. Friends, many residents and businesses already travel out of town for banking. When they are there, they do other shopping. They shop in the major towns or the cities, where they have access to other shops or services. That has a massive impact on the passing trade in Haltwhistle and other towns across the Tyne Valley. Ian Dommett, the chair of the chamber of trade, said: “For Haltwhistle, this has meant that every shop in the town has lost this trade and everyone of the Chamber of Commerce members who are retailers say they have seen a decline in business as it is now done in towns with functioning banks.” I would argue that Haltwhistle as a town has been and continues to be let down by the Conservatives. This is a stunning indictment of policy failure. The businesses that want to drive economic growth are being hamstrung. In some cases, shops have stepped up by offering some elements of consumer banking, such as cashback services and having ATMs in store, but they should not need to do so. Businesses should not be deprived of business banking when, ultimately, it is they who are the engines of our rural economy. We need to move away from the significant economic disruption that towns such as Haltwhistle have experienced for 12 months, since August 2023. I was incredibly proud this summer to be asked to become a patron of the Northumberland Domestic Abuse Services. Speaking with the staff there, I mentioned that I had secured this debate and was told that access to in-person banking services can be a lifeline for victims of domestic abuse. In a rural setting in particular, this can be absolutely vital. I urge the Minister to consider introducing plans for banking hubs in Haltwhistle in my constituency to ensure that residents can access in-person banking services, and to work with organisations to explore the impact that banking deserts can have on acute domestic violence. I was proud to stand for election on a manifesto prioritising rolling out banking hubs to banking deserts, but banking hubs should not be seen as a replacement for bank branches. They should not be seen as an opportunity for bank branches to be shut down, leaving others to pick up the pieces in our communities. When decisions are made far from the communities that they impact, those decisions are inevitably worse. One of the most meaningful ways that we can support towns to grow economies, and provide opportunities for young people and security for elderly residents, is to make sure that, at the very least, they have a banking hub in place—one that does not just serve one town, but that serves communities across the rural hinterland. I ask the Minister to ensure that the Treasury strongly considers and prioritises Haltwhistle as a location for a future banking hub, to reflect the opportunities and investment that that could bring, and to provide the opportunity for businesses to grow.