John Hayes MP: speeches 2025

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Speeches

4 Sept 2025 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source
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Just to refresh my memory, which Government instituted the arrangement whereby a certain number of hereditaries stayed and the kind of election that the hon. Gentleman describes was introduced? Was it a Tory Government, or was it a Labour Government?
4 Sept 2025 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source
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I want to inject some energy. Let me tell the hon. Gentleman why I am energetic about this matter. It is preposterous to abolish the hereditary peers in the House of Lords, on the basis that they give good service that, as I have already described, legitimately can be derived from a variety of sources. Many of them are disproportionately active in that Chamber. I accept that there is a manifesto commitment, but this could be done in a much more measured, sensible and moderate way. Is that enough energy for him?
3 Sept 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source
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Q14. Mr Speaker, I know you will agree that flags and banners, in bringing national pride, nourish individuals’ sense of worth and nurture our shared sense of belonging. Will the Prime Minister take steps to ensure that across every part of our kingdom, alongside the crosses of St George in England, St Patrick in Ireland, St Andrew in Scotland and the red dragon in Wales, our flag is flown on every Government and public building—hospitals, schools, police stations and railway stations—for every Briton deserves the chance to see a forest of flagpoles and the flutter of the Union Jack?
2 Sept 2025 · Draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Qualifying Worldwide Revenue) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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I know that the purpose of these regulations is to clarify and provide for the definition of revenue in accordance with the original legislation. I simply say to the Minister that this is a helpful further step, building on the progress that my hon. Friend the shadow Minister has described. It is vital that we ensure that these measures are implemented by Ofcom regularly and with enthusiasm where online providers are doing damage; that is their purpose. Parliament as a whole took too long to regulate the internet. The last Government did the right thing in doing so, and now we need to use this instrument to its full effect.
22 Jul 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source
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On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will know that long ago—indeed, before we were born—tens of thousands of young men were sent to a far off place to witness the first British nuclear tests. Ever since, some of us have been campaigning for their interests. Earlier this year, the Government announced that there will be a review into the blood and urine tests taken at the time of those tests; you will appreciate the significance of that, Madam Deputy Speaker, because of the risk of radiation poisoning. The Government have said that the review will be published, but we have no clarity as to when. There are tens of thousands of these records, which are being examined as we speak. Have you had any notice from Ministers on when they will come to the House with an interim report? These men are now elderly; they are dying, of course, because of their age, by the week and month. However, I, along with the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) and the descendants of these men, will not give up this fight. It is vitally important that the Government are clear about when those tests will be published—I wonder if you could help in that regard, Madam Deputy Speaker.
22 Jul 2025 · Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment · Hansard source
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Will my hon. Friend give way?
22 Jul 2025 · UK Internal Market · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend, with typical generosity, says that we are all trying to get this right. I established that that is largely true, with the possible exception of the EU itself. There are those in the European Union, stung by the wise decision of the British people to leave that awful body, who have never really accepted that decision and have made life as difficult as possible—both for this country and for the businesses described by right hon. and hon. Members in this debate.
22 Jul 2025 · UK Internal Market · Hansard source
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I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Is not the real problem, as identified by the FSB and articulated by the right hon. Gentleman, that there is an unholy alliance of Eurocrats and bureaucrats, of separatists and globalist corporates, who are acting in a way that is injurious to the interests of small and medium-sized businesses that trade across our United Kingdom?
15 Jul 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source
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There are two fundamental macroeconomic problems facing this country. One is productivity, and the second is mass immigration, which has displaced investment in domestic skills. The Budget did nothing about those, and yet the tax system could be used to address both.
15 Jul 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend is right about the cost of benefits, but he is also right to suggest that they need to be directed to those in the greatest need—the most deserving. That is what we all want across this House. Sadly, because of family breakdown and the fragmentation of communities, the state has stepped in to do what was once done, in my early life, by families, individuals and communities. It is really important that this welfare reform is seen in that broader context, and that we direct the money to those with the greatest need.
15 Jul 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source
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I am mindful of two of her predecessors in Birkenhead. The first is F. E. Smith, the great Tory, who talked about “all must have prizes”. Sometimes, in our modern Britain, it feels that all must have state support. The second is the late Frank Field, who is much regarded and revered in this House for his honesty about welfare reform. The Minister is right that successive Governments have failed to grasp this nettle. The truth is that the relationship between the state and the individual has changed over time. We need a welfare system that focuses support on those in the greatest need. She surely believes that, and that requires bold welfare reform. Is she up for that or not?
15 Jul 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source
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I am proud to be a member of the party of Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Disraeli, who all understood that it is essential to free people from need, and that in that effort the state can be a force for good. But in freeing people from need we should not limit them to a life of dependency. It is entirely possible to believe that although welfare can be a force for good, so too can personal responsibility, and responsibility means making the kinds of choices that my hon. Friend has set out.
15 Jul 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source
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I spoke earlier about F. E. Smith, who spoke about all having prizes who had “stout hearts and sharp swords”. The stout hearts drive us to do the best for those in the greatest need, but our sharp swords should make us brave enough to recognise that there are those who are absorbing welfare expenditure that should be spent on those needy people. That is what the Government ought to do, but I heard none of that from the Minister.
15 Jul 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source
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rose—
14 Jul 2025 · UK-France Migration: Co-operation · Hansard source
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This is about principle and practice. The principle is that every country has the right and indeed the duty to secure its borders, and in practice ours have become porous. I agree with the Home Secretary that global instability continues to drive illegal migration, I agree with her that we need co-operation upstream and I agree with her that previous Governments have done far too little, but the scale of the problem requires more than she is offering today. The trend is up. If it continues, 85,000 people will cross, each one knowing that they are coming here illegally. This requires much more emphatic action. Everyone who comes should be incarcerated and all those who can be returned should be. We must recognise that the asylum system is being gamed on an industrial scale. Will she answer this very straightforward question: what evidence does she have that hostile states and organised criminals are using this as a route to get people to this country to do still more harm?
10 Jul 2025 · Children’s Social Care · Hansard source
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I am immensely grateful to the Chair of the Education Committee for the way she has introduced the report and the work she has done. I am particularly moved by what she said about disabled people, and I wonder if she would look at the relationship between that and special needs education as there is a close association between the two. Will she also look at the issue of the quality of parenting? I was at a school in my constituency just a week ago, and I was told that children are presenting to school really very poorly parented as that is related to the subject that the hon. Lady has studied. It is not all children, of course, but too many are suffering in that way.
10 Jul 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source
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On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will not know this, but I have learned that independent experts have advised that Lincolnshire police are now at real risk of having to issue a section 114 notice—the equivalent of a public body declaring that it can no longer balance its budget. It comes after a long campaign, run my myself and colleagues, about Lincolnshire police funding more generally. Has the Home Secretary advised you on whether she intends to come to the House to address that, for the people of Lincolnshire are acutely worried that policing services in our county will cease to protect them from the risk and reality of crime and disorder?
10 Jul 2025 · Resident Doctors: Industrial Action · Hansard source
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I have known the Secretary of State a long time. I knew him before he was an important man—although he was always important to me, of course. He will know that as a Minister, I worked with the trade unions in every sector for which I was responsible, as the RMT and the University and College Union will confirm, and I was also a member of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. I entirely endorse and amplify what he says. Responsible trade unionism requires people to be reasonable, and reasonable people in this House know that this strike against this background is entirely unacceptable, as he has described. I ask the Secretary of State this: will he ensure that this unhappy, unwholesome and unhealthy action does not jeopardise the health of my constituents, and will he write to the local authorities—the integrated care boards—in my area and others to set out how they can minimise the impact of this action? The last thing that you want, Madam Deputy Speaker, or that I or any Member across this House wants, is for those at risk to be put at greater risk as a result of this irresponsible action by these militant people.
10 Jul 2025 · Educational Attainment of Boys · Hansard source
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I had not intended to contribute to this debate, but the hon. Gentleman has provoked me to do so by the character of his insight. It is brave and right of him to deconstruct the nonsense about toxic masculinity, and to emphasise that white working-class boys, of the kind that are prevalent in his constituency, are particularly disadvantaged by a system that has underestimated, indeed neglected, their needs. He mentioned NEETs. As an education Minister, I did my best to address that issue, but successive Governments have done insufficient. I congratulate him on bringing this debate and on what he has said in it.
10 Jul 2025 · Educational Attainment of Boys · Hansard source
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I will praise the hon. Gentleman again. He is absolutely right about really valuing practical learning. I come from a similar background to him; I was not clever enough to be practical, so I had to become an academic. Re-establishing the idea that vocational, practical accomplishment has at least equal prowess to academic learning—I think it has greater prowess, actually—is fundamental. May I add one other example, with your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker? The hon. Gentleman will know of the Men’s Sheds movement, which is typically for older men. I visited the men’s shed in Long Sutton, of which I am president, and there was a youth shed bringing young people into a male community, allowing boys to share, learn and grow.
3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source
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I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her leadership of this campaign. The situation is worse still than she paints it to be, for the ombudsman made clear that the “DWP has clearly indicated that it will refuse to comply” with the ombudsman’s recommendations, inviting Parliament to step in to resolve the matter. This is officialdom closing ranks, is it not?
3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source
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The purpose of this place is, of course, to make laws, to amend them and sometimes, if we are in opposition, to stop laws being made. But it has another purpose: to hold those with power to account. We do that as individual constituency MPs all the time, taking up cases on behalf of constituents, but this case not only affects the WASPI women in my constituency; I take it up for all the WASPI women, inspired by the leadership of my friend, the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey), and others across the House. It is unusual in this place for Government Members of Parliament and the official Opposition—Labour MPs and Conservatives—the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the DUP and Plaid Cymru to all come together in common cause. That speaks volumes. It says that we recognise that these women were unjustly treated. But it is not just our recognition that counts; the ombudsman too recognised exactly that. When an ombudsman states that maladministration in DWP’s communication about the Pensions Act 1995 resulted in the complainants losing “opportunities to make informed decisions about some things and to do some things differently”, and that that diminished their “sense of personal autonomy” and financial control—and that is just one of its findings; maladministration, inappropriate communications and the failure to deal with complaints punctuate the ombudsman’s findings—for a Government not to respond to the ombudsman is frankly unacceptable.
3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source
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The Minister is right to say that no party—indeed, no previous Government—can be excused in this respect, because this matter covers the time in office of several Governments. The difference is that members of his party, in opposition, said, “This injustice can’t go on. I have been a longstanding supporter of the WASPI campaign”, and that Labour “will compensate” the WASPI women, as it is “their money”. That was said by the current Work and Pensions Secretary and the current Deputy Prime Minister.
3 Jul 2025 · Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress · Hansard source
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I do agree with that. It was a case powerfully made by the hon. Member for Salford that this case is very much about the relationship between the ombudsman and Government, and between this House and Government. That connection between independent scrutiny by the ombudsman and our ability as a House to hold the Government to account lies at the heart of this issue, and that is exactly what I was about to say. This question is about the WASPI women, but it is also about something still more profound. I hope the Minister will recognise that, in the decisions he takes, he will set an important precedent—a precedent that will affect exactly those kinds of relationships. I will reveal to the House what the Minister already knows: when this matter was considered by Ministers, a submission would have come forward from officials. I have no doubt at all that it would have offered several options. Option A might have been to satisfy the WASPI women in full; option B might have been to come to a partial settlement, which they perhaps would have accepted; option C would have been to do nothing. The Government chose—despite all the pledges in opposition by the Deputy Prime Minister, the Work and Pensions Secretary and the Prime Minister himself—to take that final option of doing nothing. I find that very surprising. Knowing how reasonable the campaigners are, I suspect that, had a partial settlement been offered, they might well have met the Government halfway. They might have understood that the cost was substantial and that they had to compromise to some degree—although let us just explode one myth: that all these women are privileged and advantaged. Many were not. Many, when they faced a longer period before they could retire, were in ill health. Many had caring responsibilities. Many were hard up. In campaigning for those women, mindful of those disadvantages, we are speaking for people who otherwise would be powerless. Minister, it is not too late to get this right. For the WASPI women have a just cause, and surely, in the name of decency as well as in the name of good democracy, justice must be done.
2 Jul 2025 · Corporate Businesses and Franchisees: Regulatory Environment · Hansard source
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I give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green.

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