John Glen MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 19 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  Last year I visited the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Allerton project in Loddington. May I commend the contribution that it can make to defining sustainable intensification of agricultural food production? Perhaps it would be a suitable place for a DEFRA ministerial away day early in the new year, to help with the use strategy.

• 18 Dec 2024 · Future Earnings: Impact of Socioeconomic Disadvantage · Hansard source

  More

  In the City of London, one of the big remaining challenges is to ensure that the maximum number of people from the widest socioeconomic backgrounds can get into that industry. Recently, I met people from Progress Together. Vincent Keaveny, a recent Lord Mayor of the City of London, has made massive progress to understand that the data collection process does not need to be expensive. Will the Secretary of State get in touch with her ministerial colleagues and the Financial Conduct Authority to alert them to the opportunity to collect data at little expense, which would really raise the profile of the remaining challenge?

• 16 Dec 2024 · English Devolution · Hansard source

  More

  Fifteen years ago, just before I joined this House, we saw the reorganisation of Wiltshire county council into the unitary Wiltshire council, and the abolition of several district councils. It seems that another reform in the heart of Wessex will be the probable outcome of these proposals for Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire. Can the Minister assure the people of Salisbury, who still have some difficulty accepting the abolition of Salisbury district council, that the proposed changes will be positive in terms of the combination of resources for strategic investment in transport and other such services?

• 16 Dec 2024 · United Front Work Department · Hansard source

  More

  I acknowledge the transformation in the security threat that this country faces, and I urge the Government to move forward as quickly as they can with the implementation of FIRS. However, I draw the Minister’s attention to the website of the US Department of the Treasury, which today gave a read-out on the seventh meeting of the financial working group between the US and the People’s Republic of China, and set out a memorandum of understanding arising from the group’s discussions in Nanjing. The Minister should do everything he can to ensure that we have a sophisticated relationship with China. As uncomfortable as that may be, in order to preserve global and financial stability, we need to maintain our relationship.

• 9 Dec 2024 · Fireworks: Sale and Use · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend for introducing this subject. My constituent Annie Riddle has lived in the Harnham district of Salisbury for 34 years, and her four dogs have been left in the state of trembling wrecks as a consequence of the random use of fireworks. Does my hon. Friend agree that better public education on just how destructive the use of fireworks is to the health of many people—he mentioned veterans, for example—and to the animal kingdom is important to changing behaviours on the ground? That must be part of the solution.

• 5 Dec 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  The right hon. Lady will be aware from her constituency of the economic value that HOME has brought as a venue for theatre and the arts. In Salisbury, we have a new executive director of Salisbury Playhouse. Will she ensure that, when thinking about regeneration, Ministers from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government come together to centre investment in our high streets on the therapeutic value of arts and culture? That has had such an impact in many other places, and it now must happen in Salisbury.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Employer National Insurance Contributions · Hansard source

  More

  I recognise there are political differences across the House, but the hon. Gentleman surely has to be concerned about the overall impact of the decision on national insurance on the ability and inclination of those who invest in the real economy to generate the wealth and tax revenues that will sustain the economy going forward. Surely he can recognise that the decisions made by his Government are having a negative effect on growth, which will mean more taxes and more borrowing.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

  More

  It is a privilege to contribute to the debate. I represent Salisbury and south Wiltshire, which has a large number of farmers. A large number of them visited me here in the House of Commons and, a week later, I had the largest meeting of farmers I have ever had in Salisbury. They were gravely disappointed and concerned about the implications of this Budget measure. It was a shock, because it was widely expected that this measure would not be on the table when the Labour Government came in. One of the greatest privileges of my career was to spend most of the past eight years—six and a half of them—in the Treasury in various roles. I was PPS to a Chancellor, Philip Hammond, and then I was Economic Secretary and Chief Secretary. I understand the dynamic between spending Departments and the Treasury in the run-up to a Budget, and I have a serious degree of sympathy for the Ministers who were in DEFRA in the run-up to this Budget, but when APR and BPR were put on the table in front of me and my ministerial colleagues at numerous points during our time in the Treasury, we said no. I acknowledge—I am trying to be as reasoned and as reasonable as I can—that other choices would have had to be made, and I recognise the difficulty of those choices. We faced difficulties when we came into government in 2010 with a 10% deficit. This Government had a different set of challenges, although I would dispute some of the numbers. However, I want to keep my remarks focused on the measure at hand. The reason I would never have wanted to progress the removal of APR and BPR was that that policy was the product of a technical desktop economist’s view of tax raising. It was not an option when one took into account the reality of what would actually happen to the rural economy and the implications for farming. A number of colleagues have rehearsed excellent examples where farms of quite modest size but serious capital value would be massively compromised by that policy, even with an opportunity to repay that inheritance tax interest-free over 10 years, as the Chancellor said to the Select Committee. I acknowledge that—it is standard practice for this sort of relief—but given the profitability of the typical farm, it is just not a realistic prospect. I have had some dealings in the past with the farming Minister, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), and I genuinely have a great deal of respect for him—I do not want to embarrass him by saying anything more. He has a large number of issues to deal with, and I think all of us in this House want to see some clarity around the land use framework, and how we reconcile the question of where we build more homes with the challenges of renewable energy. However, we have to keep in focus the core function of our farmers, which is to produce food. I recognise the point made in an intervention earlier, and I am not suggesting that the Government are going to say, “We are going to have solar farms everywhere,” but we do need to have a coherent farming policy as a whole and a land use strategy that people understand. The issue with this policy is that it is going to decimate the number of family farms unless there is a significant increase in thresholds, there is an age limit on when the policy applies, or an alternative tax mechanism like business asset roll-over relief is examined by the Treasury. Unless those changes happen—and there is time to consider those changes before the legislation comes before this House, which will probably be at the end of next year—we in this country are going to be in real trouble with the legacy of this decision. I urge the Minister’s colleagues in the Treasury to think again and come back with better proposals for their colleague.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. In view of the point that has just been made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), will he not consider, at the very least, looking at some dispensation for farmers above a certain age, given the lack of time that they will have to plan for this intervention? The truth is that someone who is near retirement age will be faced with the prospect of 10 years of all their projected profits being eaten up by this tax, which will mean that the farm cannot go to the next generation. The hon. Gentleman must surely look at some mitigations to deal with that reality for so many farmers who are concentrated in that older age group.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

  More

  Let me tell the Minister what concerns me most. There has not been an impact assessment, but if the major driver for the Government, whether we accept it or not, was to raise some money from this source, why were other more effective mechanisms not used, such as business roll-over relief, where a business could be sold in another context and rolled over into buying the land, deferring capital gains tax? If that mechanism had been used, the money would have been taken from much wealthier people who were not actually producing food in the first place. Now, we are capturing a massive proportion of small family farms completely unnecessarily, because due consideration of better alternatives was not done by the Minister.

• 2 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  If Wiltshire embraces the opportunity to join Dorset and Somerset in an elected mayoral authority, will there be local elections all-out in Wiltshire next spring?

• 26 Nov 2024 · “Get Britain Working” White Paper · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome the Secretary of State’s ambition in many of the areas she has set out, and particularly the “Geep Britain Working” initiative. As a Parliament, we must come to terms with the obesity and mental health crises, so I welcome what she is doing with the Secretary of State for Health. May I bring to the Secretary of State’s attention the work of South Wilts Mencap? I recently met Robin Clifford, and over 14 years I have seen the work that that group of trustees does with the adult learning disabled, a particular and special group of individuals in my constituency. I would welcome the opportunity to meet the Minister for Social Security and Disability to look at programmes that could be started or pilots that could be undertaken to get the learning disabled into meaningful activity where they can make some contribution through paid work.

• 25 Nov 2024 · Storm Bert · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I also acknowledge the enormous work done by Philip Duffy in the Environment Agency. He came down to visit my constituents in Britford in the first quarter of this year and made an enormous impact. In addition to the £30 million, for which the people of Salisbury are very grateful, for the Salisbury river park scheme that has just completed, it is important that smaller schemes, driven by parishes such as Britford parish council, are given licence to combine both their own precept and investment from the Environment Agency to come up with bespoke schemes. Will the Secretary of State ensure that attention is given by the EA to how it can give as much flexibility as possible, so that small schemes can also move forward at parish level?

• 21 Nov 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  Following the Budget, Matthew Clover, from Salisbury Orthodontics, wrote to me. He said: “The recent Budget will hit dental care across this constituency. Dental practices are small businesses…The cumulative changes to National Insurance and the National Minimum Wage will add tens of thousands to the wage bills of a typical practice.” The Budget brings a huge increase in overheads, but offers nothing by way of support. When can we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care about what ameliorating interventions will be introduced to assist dentists who are trying to do their best to fulfil their mandate on NHS dentistry, as well as other work?

• 21 Nov 2024 · G20 and COP29 Summits · Hansard source

  More

  Everyone in the House welcomes high ambitions for our country, but given the complexity of delivering against the ambitious targets that the Prime Minister set out, there will be apprehensiveness about other countries going down the track at a different pace, which will have implications for our economy. May I draw his attention to the excellent comments made by his Chancellor about the financial services industry last week at the Mansion House? What assessment has he made of the prospects of another economic and financial dialogue with China, building on the one I attended in 2019 in London, as an opportunity to extend economic dialogue, which has to be positive for the UK economy?

• 19 Nov 2024 · Food Banks · Hansard source

  More

  I represent Salisbury, where the Trussell Trust was founded. The hon. Gentleman is making an important point about the fact that the people who use food banks have many dimensions to their poverty. It is important that we address that, rather than believing that just by giving more food, we are doing people a true service in the long term. Ten years ago, the all-party parliamentary group on food banks looked at the deeper causes and how to build stronger foundations to stop people having to use food banks repeatedly. Does he agree that we should look at that now?

• 19 Nov 2024 · Infected Blood Inquiry · Hansard source

  More

  I think it is it is a good sign that there are fewer Members of Parliament in the Chamber, because it shows that there has been meaningful progress. I do not see tetchiness from the Minister; what I see is somebody who has listened carefully to the representations of the community and acted on them. I accept and acknowledge that there are outstanding matters, but actually, when infrastructure has been set up—in some cases for 20 years—to campaign, it can be quite difficult to adjust to delivery mode.

• 19 Nov 2024 · Infected Blood Inquiry · Hansard source

  More

  May I first commend the hon. Member for Gedling (Michael Payne) for his maiden speech? I think we can all agree that it was very moving, and that he does great credit to his family and constituents. I apologise for not having been here for the first few minutes; I was running over from Portcullis House. I had the privilege of being the Minister with responsibility for the infected blood compensation scheme. On 21 May, I brought the scheme to the Floor of the House, speaking from the Government Dispatch Box. In the six months prior, I had been determined—not knowing when the election would be called—to do everything I could to bring that compensation scheme to life after so much delay. That delay has been, as the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) rightly said, totally unacceptable for too long. In my remarks to the House, I will pay tribute to the victims, explain some of my experiences as a Minister, and make some observations on what lessons and next steps may need to take place. First, I acknowledge the work of my successor as Paymaster General, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds). He has done virtually everything that I would have done, had the electorate overall given us a different outcome. Though I will always be available to members of the public to ask questions in this House, as is my responsibility as an Opposition Back-Bench MP, I believe that he is doing everything he can to move the scheme forward as quickly as possible, and I will come on to the mechanics of that in a moment. During the month of May, I participated in 18 meetings. I met representatives of 40 groups in London, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh. Each meeting was a profoundly emotional and moving moment for me and the officials who accompanied me. I met people who had gone through unimaginable suffering and uncertainty for not just a matter of months, but, in some cases, a number of decades. Some had been infected through their marriage. Some had been born as haemophiliacs and had been treated in ways that had the consequences we have spoken about today. Some had transfusions when giving birth to their children. Some received blood transfusions from imports that proved to be defective. Some had hepatitis C or hepatitis B. Some had HIV. Many had a combination of different conditions. Some had been family members of those who had been infected. It was a humbling but tragic set of moments. In those conversations, I looked those individuals in the eye and said, “I am deeply sorry on behalf of the British state.” It was a great privilege to be asked to do that on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, but we must learn lessons collectively from the enduring failure to come to terms with what has happened over the course of so many Governments and so many decades. Many of the individuals I met had campaigned relentlessly, and I pay tribute to them today. I will not draw on individual names, because there are just so many people, and it would be unfair to all those whom I met. It was right that we brought forward a second interim payment, and it was right that we recognised the affected communities as well as the infected communities. It was tragic to see that there were sometimes disputes and divisions among many of the communities, because so much time had passed and so much fear existed around who would be looked after first, and about whether there would therefore be constraints on the money available. I will step back to last year. After the Remembrance weekend in 2023, I was asked to move from my long tenure in different roles in the Treasury to the Cabinet Office to become Paymaster General. The year before, I had had some exposure to the challenge of making provision for compensation, and my immediate predecessor, the former Member for Horsham, had done a lot to try to ascertain what had been done collectively in government. The truth is that there was a very wide envelope: it may have been between £2 billion and £20 billion, and it had moved around according to what analysis could be done. That was because the parameters were fundamentally going to be based on how much compensation we would pay the different groups who were infected and affected. My predecessor started that process, and I pay tribute to him for what he did. I also pay tribute to the former Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt), who said to me when I left the Treasury, “You have one duty in that job. That is a moral duty to resolve the compensation scheme.” I honestly believe that he was critical in ensuring that we got to where we did on 21 May. I pay tribute, too, to the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), who did so much. At every question session, she sat just behind where I stand now, challenging me on what I was or was not doing. As the Paymaster General knows too well, there are always constraints; his officials will say, “I wouldn’t say that at this point.” We are always trying to say more, but I was acutely aware of how frustrated all the communities were, and that unless what I said was crystal clear, it would set off another storm of speculation on social media. On the advice of my officials, I appointed Sir Jonathan Montgomery, who in the early months of 2024 assembled a small group of technical experts to advise on how to translate the compensation study of Sir Robert Francis into a full compensation scheme. We asked how, across the five heads of loss—injury impact, social impact, autonomy, the care award and the financial loss award—we could put a number on the relative suffering across all the different conditions. How could we put a number on the loss of a normal life, the loss of the ability to work, the loss of a sense of respect from the community in which people lived, and the stigma that other Members have referred to? It was suggested to me at the time that I had done it the wrong way round—that I should have engaged with the community. I took the view that we were not going to get this resolved if we had done it that way round, but I knew it was critically important for all the communities to be engaged with, and I always had that expectation and intention. That is why, when I announced the scheme to the House on 21 May, I established a series of engagements where Sir Robert Francis met representatives of the infected and affected communities to go through the scheme and establish where changes needed to be made. Those engagements happened in June. I pay tribute to my successor, the Paymaster General, who engaged with the output of that work and—as per the timetable that had been agreed—made virtually all of the changes that were requested. Today, understandably, I hear speed being urged across the House—that this should happen quicker to get the payments made. I totally understand that, and to some extent, I agree with it. However, I want to reassure the House that David Foley, who is now setting up and, I think, heading up the Infected Blood Compensation Authority as an arm’s length body of Government, is a superbly experienced civil servant. Neither I nor the Minister could have written the cheques ourselves to set up the processes and systems for evaluating entitlement and getting money out as quickly as possible. For those infected individuals who are alive—around 4,000—speed is obviously an imperative. The reason I took the decision on the £210,000 second interim payment, alongside the £100,000 from October 2022, was that I received advice, and I pressed and challenged my officials to get to a number that was the maximum that everyone would receive. However, it is of course wholly necessary not just to get a first tranche fully paid out, but to get everyone else paid out. I acknowledge that there are questions about how to verify the date of infection, but despite all the bad things that have happened, obviously we must reconcile speed and effective decision making with ensuring that we pay the people who are entitled to the payments. In Sir Brian Langstaff’s seven-volume report, of which I went to see the publication on Monday 20 May, he made a number of recommendations, and the Minister has indicated the Government’s willingness to honour those—the national memorial, and biannual meetings with those who have suffered in order to get to grips with the duty of candour. I want us as a House to be clear and honest about what we are really asking for, because the report spanned decades and different generations of Ministers, civil servants and orthodoxies in the medical profession. We need to encourage curiosity among individuals who see things going wrong but are held back from being truly candid because there tends to be group-think which prevents a thorough interrogation of what should be done. Distortions happen, recollections have varied and medical professionals would make different judgments now from those they would have made at different points in the past. We need to be wise about what the duty of candour will look like, but we need to grasp the core argument that Brian Langstaff makes: we have to change the culture across Government and public service and in politics. I hope the Minister does not move on, but if he does, I hope he moves up. If he stays in his position, however, he can have an impact over time. When Ministers move, they have a received wisdom from their officials of a previous iteration, and we sometimes need to encourage the infusion of new Ministers to ask challenging questions and allow progress to be made. I have profound concerns about public inquiries. A lot has been said in recent months about the multiple public inquiries that have occurred—how we can make them more systematic and aligned; the secretariats and the processes they run can obviously be streamlined. They are presented as the only cathartic method for the British state to come to terms with something that has gone wrong, and they are often not constrained in any way. They are typically led by retired High Court judges, and I have nothing against them, but we sometimes need to broaden the expertise such as by having economists and other people involved in looking at these things. I pay tribute to Brian Langstaff, because the inquiry was a massive undertaking, but seven years is an enormous amount of time. I am not an expert on this, but let us think about the read-across to the covid inquiry. Many people have expectations of what that will deliver, but in other countries such analyses have brought forward recommendations and changes much more quickly. We have to get the balance right—not to cover up anything, but because we end up putting things into the long grass for so long. We as a Parliament need to come to terms with that. I have probably spoken for too long, but I hope I can be forgiven for doing so given the role I had. I want to pay tribute to the work that has been done by those responsible for bringing us to this point. I pay tribute to all the victims and campaigners who have been so determined despite numerous knock-backs from Governments over the years. My own Government absolutely have to take their full share of the blame. Interim arrangements were made and ad hoc compensation schemes were set up, but responsibility was not taken by the British state, and it is absolutely right that we have done so now. I do not think that social media is very helpful in trying to come to terms with the trauma of all this, or in giving clarity to those who need it. I wish David Foley and the IBCA well. I think there will be a series of letters about how to interpret individual recommendations, but he is setting up an efficient mechanism which, once it starts delivering, will deliver more and more rapidly—I am convinced of that. For some it cannot come soon enough, but I hope that very soon we can draw the right enduring lessons from this national scandal, and I hope it will never happen again.

• 19 Nov 2024 · Infected Blood Inquiry · Hansard source

  More

  I endorse what the Minister has said about the way in which IBCA has been set up. It seems to me an entirely sensible arrangement that respects the need to have some distance from Government, but clearly there cannot be a bespoke arrangement for every single entity that is set up. This was the point I was trying to make, respectfully, about Sir Brian Langstaff earlier: he did a brilliant job, but some aspects of this issue will need a slightly different judgment made by Ministers. I welcome the decision that the Minister and his colleagues have made.

• 18 Nov 2024 · Financial Services: Mansion House Speech · Hansard source

  More

  I warmly welcome much of what was announced last week—the work on listings, mutuals and the remit refresh—but I say to the hon. Lady and the Minister for pensions that there is considerable reticence in the pensions industry when it comes to many of the drivers of change highlighted last week. We need a complete cultural shift and change in appetite from those who lead the pensions industry. I urge her to keep under review the fiscal incentives, and the transparency and accountability rules, so that we can see the performance gap that results from not making some of these changes. I look sympathetically on the aspirations that she has set out today, and I wish her well as she moves forward with these critical changes, which should have a lot of support from across the House.

• 14 Nov 2024 · Council Tax · Hansard source

  More

  Will the Minister rule out additional council tax bands being among any changes that the Government make?

• 14 Nov 2024 · Flood Resilience · Hansard source

  More

  Many of my constituents who live south of Salisbury are concerned about the interaction between flood risk assessments and new house building. Will the Minister assure the House that her work is fully integrated with the Government’s house building plans so that people can be reassured that, when land is designated for building new homes, flood risk is properly taken into account so that house building is restricted if there are no mitigations in place?

• 14 Nov 2024 · National Insurance Contributions: Healthcare · Hansard source

  More

  Julia’s House hospice does amazing work across Wiltshire and Dorset, but its chief executive Martin Edwards came to Parliament on Tuesday to tell me that the additional national insurance contributions will cost the hospice £250,000 a year. For that hospice, and Naomi House, which does similar good work, the changes are a significant concern. I know that the people of Wiltshire and Dorset will do as much as they can to raise additional funds, but will the Minister reflect on that unexpected gap and offer some reassurance?

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman is a serious individual on the Government Benches, and I respect him very much, but does he not understand that given the delicate set of constitutional arrangements we have, it is not unreasonable to expect the Government to come forward with a plan that sets out several steps, taking us on the journey that they intend to go on, with some substance behind it? Given the number of years the Government have had since the previous changes over a quarter of a century ago, it is not unreasonable to expect a little more detail on those second, third and fourth steps, or a timetable.

• 11 Nov 2024 · Defence: 2.5% GDP Spending Commitment · Hansard source

  More

  May I commend to the Secretary of State the role of Ploughshare, which is used to deal with the increasing commercialisation of opportunities at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, in my constituency? In the context of the Ministry’s holistic review, which is now under way, will he undertake to ensure that that organisation is not held back from extending its opportunities to commercialise assets emerging from MOD research?