Julie Minns MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jun 2025 · Strategic Defence Review · Hansard source

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  I am proud that my constituency of Carlisle and north Cumbria is home to Europe’s only electronic warfare tactics facility, and proud that this Government have set out steps in the SDR to strengthen our electromagnetic and cyber-defences. Will the Secretary of State say a little more about why those elements of our defence are so critical?

• 24 Apr 2025 · Flood Preparedness: Carlisle · Hansard source

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  I do think there are lessons to be learned, not least because Carlisle has been so badly affected by flooding and it is so devastating. Lessons could be shared from the schemes that have been introduced in the city, particularly in relation to maximising the use of the floodplains. In a short while, I will discuss more generally some of the natural flood defence work that has happened on the outskirts of the city. There have been a number of schemes to the north of Carlisle. In the town of Brampton, natural solutions like tree planting and the creation of wetlands have been used to mitigate the risk of flooding from the Brampton beck, all while providing wider environmental benefits to the community. A new natural flood management scheme is currently being delivered at Brampton Fell farm, offering further protection to the town. There has also been the return of the “wiggling river” at Howgill beck, which was straightened more than 200 years ago. Thanks to the work of RSPB Geltsdale warden Jen Selvidge, a 1.8 km stretch of the beck has been returned to its natural wiggly state. During heavy periods of rainfall the river can now spill out on to the natural surrounding floodplain meadows, helping to reduce the chance of flooding downstream towards Carlisle, as well as having the added bonus of creating vital pools and damp patches for wading birds to feed on. I am delighted that earlier this month the restoration project won the prestigious UK river prize project-scale award for 2025. Natural flood management schemes like these have an important role to play, and I urge the Minister to look closely at how a redesigned sustainable farming incentive can best encourage and compensate farmers who do the right thing by their local community for the loss of the income that they might otherwise have earned from the farmland that they have given over to natural flood management schemes. One of the groups that particularly deserves praise in keeping Carlisle’s flood preparedness under the spotlight is the Carlisle Flood Action Group. Since its founding in January 2016 in the wake of the December flooding, it has done an excellent job of campaigning for the defences that our city needs. Indeed, it is one of many examples that show Carlisle at its very best. Our community is one that pulls together, and nothing encapsulates that better than it taking just 49 days from the 2015 floods to get the aforementioned Brunton Park back up and running and ready for matches once again. Some might say that, given our form this season, we could use a little bit of a delay to the end of it, but I will not dwell on that point. Let me be clear: more needs to be done. In January last year river levels threatened to overwhelm the city again. Last May, rainfall equivalent to a one-in-300-year storm led to the flooding of 100 properties in the village of Scotby, just outside Carlisle. Our changing climate only makes these sorts of storms more common. Indeed, the Environment Agency believes that the impact of climate change in the River Eden catchment, which covers near the majority of my constituency, will be more severe than in the vast majority of river catchments in England. At the very top of the list of what must be done is the Caldew flood risk management scheme, which many people in my constituency will know as the long-promised Carlisle phase 3 scheme—the one that was not delivered by the last Government. The scheme’s objective is to reduce flood risk to over 1,700 properties in the Denton Holme, Caldewgate and Willowholme areas of the city. I was grateful to Carol Holt, the Environment Agency area director for Cumbria and Lancashire, for accompanying me on a tour across the area in February this year, but despite assurances dating back years, residents have become frustrated by a lack of communication from the EA since the project was first paused in 2021 due to viability concerns. We are not the only community waiting for defences or even trying to get maintenance done to existing defences. After 14 years of Conservative dither and delay, some 3,000 Environment Agency high-consequence assets were below the required condition. That is one of the reasons that I am glad we now have a Labour Government, and an especially responsive Minister for Water and Flooding. I welcome the planned investment of a record £2.65 billion in the next two years to build and repair over 1,000 flood defences, better protecting 52,000 properties across the country. Last month, over £1 million was pledged towards a number of schemes in north-west Cumbria, including road surface work at Etterby Terrace and Wigton Road in Carlisle, and a property flood resilience scheme at Warwick Bridge, just outside the city, which I have been pushing the EA to deliver since I entered this place and which is planned to be finished by winter 2025. Some £300,000 was secured for the long-mooted Caldew scheme; I have been told that feasibility studies are due by the end of the summer, and although I look forward to their conclusions, I am concerned that even if a path is identified, it may be five to 10 years until the scheme can be delivered. Tackling the risk from the Caldew cannot just be about creating ever higher and more expensive and imposing flood defences. Instead, we need a range of measures, both in Carlisle and outside it, to help slow and hold the water away from the city, buying precious time for the river levels to ease. I understand that the Caldew scheme will be one of the largest schemes that the Environment Agency has ever undertaken, but it is vital to the lives of over 100,000 residents in Carlisle and to the prosperity of a place that has been the centre of trading in north-west England since before Roman times. I recognise that delivering the scheme will not be quick and I urge the Minister to ensure that a suite of measures is employed in the interim to mitigate the immediate threat from the River Caldew. Those measures could include a plan to remove aggregate and vegetation build-up that slows the flow of the river through the city. I wish to address one other aspect of flood preparedness: emergency planning. I am glad that further expansions of the flood warning provision have taken place in Carlisle, including two new flood warning areas at Warwick Bridge and Parham beck, covering a combined 330 properties. I am also grateful for the flooding text alerts that I receive on a regular basis, but one issue that has been pointed out to me, particularly by the Carlisle Flood Action Group, is the need for more information to be made available to the public ahead of an incident, so that people can see where their nearest emergency shelter is planned to be in the event of a flood. I understand that such information is not currently available, so the first time the public hear of those locations would be when a flood occurs.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Four Carlisle men, Rae Daly Armstrong, Ivan Cooke, William Lewis Johnston and Charles Ross, were among almost 500 casualties from the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit who served in the second world war. The casualty rate for that very small unit was the second highest in the war. When planning the debates and events in this House that will mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, will the Leader of the House give particular consideration to that small unit, which suffered such great losses during the war?

• 12 Nov 2024 · Pubs Code: Guest Beers · Hansard source

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  In 1916, during the great war, the Government introduced the famous “Carlisle experiment.” Concern about the intoxicating effects of Carlisle’s pubs on nearby munitions production resulted in the state ownership and control of the pubs and beer trade in my constituency from 1916 to 1973. How great, Members may ask, was the concern that it warranted the nationalisation of Carlisle’s pubs and breweries, including those of my own great-grandfather? A few short miles up the road from Carlisle lay His Majesty’s Factory Gretna. Regarded as the greatest munitions factory on earth in the first world war, it was where the cordite, nicknamed the devil’s porridge, was mixed. More a town than a factory, it stretched 9 miles from Mossband in my constituency to Eastriggs in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), the same distance as between this House and Wembley stadium. At the heart of this gargantuan site were 30,000 workers who lived in two purpose-built townships. The factory and the townships had their own independent transport network, power source and water supply system, but not pubs. For that the workers had to walk into the small town of Gretna, where the number of pubs could not cope with the demand, and so they would board the train to nearby Carlisle where pubs were so plentiful that it was said that one could swing from the door of one public house to the door of the next without touching the ground. Thirsty at the end of a long shift and doubtless relieved to have survived another day mixing cordite, evening-shift workers would often bribe the train driver to ensure they would arrive early enough to get the drinks in before closing time. Meanwhile, in anticipation of their arrival the barman of Boustead’s bar near Carlisle station would line up 500 shots of whisky. Drunkenness ensued. With the landlords away fighting for King and country, the elderly and the widowed who were left running the pubs, along with a depleted local police force, were powerless to control the drinking. The result was a fourfold increase in alcohol-related offences in the city, high numbers of absenteeism and low levels of production at the Gretna factory. The scale of the problem was so severe that it was thought to be the major contributing factor in the shortage of shells on the frontline. Something had to be done. The Munitions of War Act 1915 had given the newly formed Ministry of Munitions additional powers over factories and factory workers. A central control board was established with the power to control the sale and consumption of alcohol in areas, such as Carlisle, where the excessive consumption of alcohol was believed to be having an adverse impact on the war effort. With the Munitions Minister David Lloyd George already having declared drink to be the greatest deadly foe that Britain faced, Carlisle’s pubs and breweries were nationalised in June 1916. Some 138 out of 321 licensed premises were closed, with the remainder remodelled or rebuilt. The first state management pub, the Gretna Tavern, opened just a month later in July 1916. Members might be interested to know that the very last state management pub, the Border Reiver, opened in July 1971, just four days before the Licensing (Abolition of State Management) Act was passed. For almost 60 years, all of Carlisle’s public houses were completely tied to the state-run brewery in Carlisle. The beer was brewed at a reduced level of alcohol, its advertising was tightly controlled and specified by Whitehall, and the architectural design, both external and internal, was overseen by a state-appointed architect. Consumer choice, it is fair to say, was severely limited. Following privatisation, the pubs were sold in large job lots and snapped up by the major breweries of the day, meaning that even to this day the majority of our pubs in Carlisle are owned by large pub-owning businesses where the beer supply is tied to them. Today, pub landlords continue to face restrictions on what they can buy, sell or serve, meaning that they cannot always provide what their customers demand. For the small local independent breweries—including Great Corby, the Carlisle Brewing Company, West Walls Brewing Co. and the Old Vicarage brewery in my constituency—getting their locally produced beers sold in a local pub remains a challenge.

• 28 Oct 2024 · Remembrance and Veterans · Hansard source

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  At the heart of my constituency lies Carlisle castle, home to the museum of the Border Regiment, the excellent Cumbria Museum of Military Life. The Border Regiment has a long and proud record of service and was the first British unit to join a major engagement by glider, during the invasion of Sicily in the second world war. The regiment went on to serve throughout the Italian campaign, and I wish to pay particular tribute to those who served in that campaign. My dad was just 20 when he set sail for the Italian mainland, but the liberation of Italy had begun some months earlier with the invasion of Sicily. That invasion cost the lives of 6,000 allied troops, including men from Carlisle’s Border Regiment who were killed when their gliders failed to make land. The invasion of the mainland followed, but the allies encountered increasingly difficult terrain. In particular, Monte Cassino became the scene of some of the most hellish encounters of the second world war. Finally, in the early hours of 18 May, the British and Polish troops surrounded the town of Cassino and forced a German retreat. A couple of weeks later, Rome fell, marking a significant milestone in the Italian campaign. Sadly for those who served, their recognition was overshadowed by the events on the Normandy beaches. To add further insult to injury, a perception grew that those serving in Italy were sitting out the real fighting of the second world war, and the myth of the D-day dodgers was born. Nothing could have been further from the truth: infantry losses on both sides made Italy the most costly campaign of the second world war in terms of casualties suffered by infantry forces. That is why I believe that in this, the 80th year since Monte Cassino, it is right that that battle is commemorated as other key battles of the second world war have rightly been.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Pub and Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. May I also add my thanks to the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) for bringing this debate? As the Member for Carlisle, I can make a unique claim in this debate: the pubs and breweries of Carlisle were, for a period of 50 years, nationalised. What people drank, where they drank it, and when they drank it were determined just up the road from here, in Whitehall. Understanding that rather unusual state of affairs means returning to 1916: war is raging in Europe and just across the border, in Gretna, lies Europe’s largest munitions factory. Meanwhile, down the road in Carlisle lies one of the finest collections of pubs and breweries. Sadly, the bounteous supply of both beer and ordnance was not a match made in heaven, and the Government nationalised the pubs in 1916, and so that remained until 1973. The reason that is relevant today is that when those pubs were privatised, they were sold off in large job lots, which means that, even to this day, the majority of our pubs in Carlisle remain in the ownership of the large breweries. What that means for the independent breweries, such as Great Corby, the Carlisle Brewing Company, West Walls Brewing Co. and the Old Vicarage in Walton, is that getting their product into our pubs is difficult. I therefore urge the Minister to raise with his colleagues the application of the pubs code, so that we can ensure that more of our independent breweries have access to the customers in pubs in all our constituencies. The final point I would like to make, again, to support our wonderful independent breweries, is that we should consider increasing draft beer relief to 20%, which the Society of Independent Brewers and others estimate would be a huge boost not just to our local businesses but to the whole economy.