Jonathan Brash MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Sept 2026 · Online Safety · Hansard source

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  Like parents and grandparents in Hartlepool, I find it incredible that technology companies even had to be asked to put software in place that protected against child sexual abuse. Having been asked, they apparently have said no. As the Secretary of State rightly points out, there will be further loopholes that need to be closed. Would it be better just to assume these companies’ moral bankruptcy and not ask in future, and just to legislate straightaway?

• 1 Sept 2026 · Policing in Cleveland · Hansard source

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  I join the Home Secretary and the whole House in paying tribute to PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough, and in sending our heartfelt condolences to their families and loved ones. Matthew was a coach at my son’s football club, FC Hartlepool, and at Seaton Carew FC. The teams played each other last Saturday, when I was proud to join so many other Poolies in paying tribute to a remarkable man who was so loved by everyone who knew him. I also pay tribute to our police and all emergency services personnel, who are getting up every single day grief-stricken at the loss of their two colleagues, but are still doing their jobs to an amazing extent. These tragic events did not materialise out of the blue. The lawlessness that we are seeing in certain parts of our communities did not happen overnight. It is the consequence of systemic underfunding of our police and our fire service. I welcome the £2 million announced by the Home Secretary today, but does she agree—I join my colleagues in saying this—that we need a long-term solution to fix the funding formula, for both our police and our fire service, if we are to protect all of our communities? I hope that she is sincere about ensuring that that happens.

• 14 Jul 2026 · Coastal Communities: Isolation and Hidden Deprivation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. Hartlepool is a town with a proud coastal and industrial heritage, but above all, it is a town of proud people. We spend a great deal of time in this place talking about the concept of freedom, by which we usually mean freedom from something—whether that is freedom from regulation, from taxation or from the state. Although those debates matter, there is another freedom that we speak of far less: the freedom to become everything we are capable of becoming. The freedoms to earn, to learn, to build a secure life through our own hard work, to raise a family with confidence and to fulfil our potential—those freedoms matter every bit as much, if not more. Freedom is not simply the absence of restraint; it is the presence of opportunity, but that is what deindustrialisation and globalisation robbed from communities like mine. It did not simply close factories; it took freedom away from working people. It took away their freedom to earn a secure wage and build a career, or to believe that if they worked hard, there would be a decent job waiting for them at the end. It took away the freedom to know that our children will enjoy a better future than we did. The scars were never just economic; they were social, cultural and deeply personal. To solve this issue, education must be the engine room of freedom. In Hartlepool, I am so proud that our FE college is taking a visionary approach to ensure that children have that freedom. Not every young person wants the same pathway, and vocational excellence is every bit as valuable as academic excellence. Through our partnerships with X-energy and Centrica, whereby the new nuclear that we are bringing to Hartlepool partners with our FE college, we are once again giving our young people the freedom to believe that their future will be better than the lives their parents had.

• 13 Jul 2026 · Illegal Immigrants: Offshore Detention and Deportation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate, and I am grateful to the 1,744 people in Hartlepool who signed the petition. That is a significant number of my constituents, and their concerns deserve to be heard and taken seriously. Let me begin by saying something very clearly. The people of Hartlepool are entitled to be angry about immigration. They are entitled to expect secure borders. They are entitled to expect that those with no right to be in this country are removed. They are entitled to expect fairness in the asylum system and fairness for the communities that feel they have carried more than their fair share, and I share in those expectations. I have supported the Home Secretary’s measures to reduce illegal immigration, strengthen border security and increase returns, and I will continue to support this Home Secretary, including on the measures that will be laid before the House later today, which I hope this House will pass in full. The truth is that progress is being made. Net migration has fallen dramatically from the peak under the previous Government’s Boris wave: it is down 82%, delivering the reduction that was promised for years but never achieved. Indeed, the figures are now entering the tens of thousands that Conservative Administrations promised for so long. Small boat crossings are down 41% this year, while deportations of those arriving by small boat are up 16%. In Hartlepool, the number of asylum seekers living in dispersed accommodation has fallen by 14% since the general election. The new immigration and asylum legislation will further strengthen the powers available to remove those with no right to be here and deter those attempting to enter illegally. That is the serious work of Government. It requires law enforcement, international co-operation, proper returns agreements, faster decisions and a system that can distinguish between genuine asylum claimants and those who have no right to remain. I fully understand why people sign a petition like this. They see boat crossings in the channel. They see asylum accommodation in their communities. They see the pressure on housing, schools, public services and community cohesion. They feel that for far too long the broken system —broken by the Conservative party—has not worked, and they want action. They are right to expect it, but we also have a responsibility in this place to be honest. Offshore detention is something that I support in principle, but it is not a magic answer. It is expensive, it is legally complex and it does not remove the need for returns agreements, effective administration and tackling the criminal gangs who profit from human misery—but I reiterate that if we can make it work, in principle I support it. More importantly, the language we use matters. It affects how people view their neighbours, it affects how communities feel and it affects people’s lives. That brings me to a point that I want to make very clearly. A constituent, Jasvir Singh, came to see me a couple of weeks ago after experiencing repeated racial abuse in the community where he has lived and served for almost 30 years. He owns a local business and has paid his taxes; he has contributed to Hartlepool and built a life there. He has done exactly what we say we value, yet he came to see me because the rhetoric around immigration has made his life harder. Jasvir is not an illegal immigrant, and he is not a criminal; he has every right to be here and he is part of our community, yet a small minority accuse him of being an illegal immigrant, of having arrived on a small boat and of having no right to be here, and they do so for one reason alone: the colour of his skin. When politicians blur the line between voicing legitimate concern about illegal immigration and using language that encourages suspicion of people because of their background or their skin colour, it is people like Jasvir who pay the price. That is why the rhetoric we use matters. There is a line between wanting secure borders and stirring up hostility; there is a line between removing those with no right to remain and portraying whole communities as a threat; there is a line between legitimate concern and racist dog-whistle politics, and it is my view that that line has been crossed repeatedly by the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe). When that happens, the consequences are not confined to Westminster Hall. They are felt by people like Jasvir. They are felt by families in Hartlepool. They are felt by children who hear abuse on their way to school. Words spoken in this place do not stay here. They travel into communities and workplaces and on to social media. That does not mean that we should avoid the issue—quite the opposite. We must continue to reduce illegal immigration, we must continue to strengthen our borders, we must remove those with no right to remain and we must dismantle criminal gangs and restore public confidence, but we must do so in a way that is serious, lawful and above all decent. Hartlepool understands the pressure that the issue creates. One of my first actions on being elected as MP for Hartlepool was to meet Mears, the company responsible for asylum accommodation locally, because Hartlepool carries more than its fair share compared with neighbouring areas. I made clear that the system had to be fair, that responsibility could not simply fall on communities already facing significant challenges, and that local people deserved answers. Following those conversations, new asylum accommodation in Hartlepool was halted and numbers fell. I will continue to raise this issue with Ministers because fairness matters. Hartlepool is a proud and welcoming town that believes in fairness. Fairness means secure borders and removing those who have no right to be here, but it also means standing up for the people who belong here and ensuring they are not made to feel like strangers because of the colour of their skin or the sound of their name. That is the balance we need: strong borders, faster removals, proper enforcement, serious government and politics that does not make innocent people pay the price for failures in the immigration system. The people who signed this petition deserve answers, and my answer is this: I will continue to support firm action to reduce illegal immigration, I will support strengthening our borders and I will support practical measures that work, but I will not support rhetoric that puts my constituents at risk, I will not support language that turns legitimate concern into racial hostility, and I will not stay silent when people who have lived in, worked in and contributed to Hartlepool for decades are made to feel that they no longer belong. We can have secure borders without losing that most fundamental of British values: common decency. We can have firm immigration controls without attacking decent people based on their skin colour, and we can tell the truth about illegal immigration without turning on our neighbours. We will not import Trumpian politics into our country. That is not the British way.