Kanishka Narayan MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 18 Dec 2024 · Copyright and Artificial Intelligence · Hansard source

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  He lives in the Vale of Glamorgan.

• 18 Dec 2024 · Copyright and Artificial Intelligence · Hansard source

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  May I convey to the Minister my disappointment that his ChatGPT prompt yielded the Sugababes and “Football Manager” but not the enduring institution of “Gavin and Stacey” from the Vale of Glamorgan? I know that that is an omission that ChatGPT will correct. This is a critical debate, because the path to prosperity for nations has to be a path through technology. In that context, the primary question on my mind is whether the Minister can set out plans for how data accuracy and completeness in the creative sector can underpin the Government’s wider AI action plan, and ultimately drive national growth.

• 16 Dec 2024 · “Get Britain Working” White Paper · Hansard source

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  2. What recent estimate she has made of the number of people who will be supported into work through the proposals outlined in the “Get Britain Working” White Paper.

• 16 Dec 2024 · “Get Britain Working” White Paper · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend for her response, not least given the dire inheritance from the previous Government: the worst performance of an employment rate in the G7 since the pandemic. I see that inheritance in my community, in Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan, where individuals carry not the indulgence, and not the offence, but the misfortune of ill health. What is the Secretary of State doing to tackle economic inactivity, so that we give hope again, not just to those individuals, but to my community?

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

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  I thank the shadow Chancellor for giving way; my interest was piqued by his talk of deficit financed tax cuts. Does he agree with his boss, the Leader of the Opposition, that the Liz Truss mini-Budget, which is the prime example of the thing he criticises, was the right package, but just with the wrong communication?

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

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  The Vale of Glamorgan, and Wales more broadly, is full of small and micro businesses. The Office for National Statistics and the OBR have both told us that most small businesses and micro businesses will be better off or the same as before. The Vale’s businesses get not only better public services but a good tax set-up. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a great Budget and a great proposition for small businesses in the Vale?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to speak while you are in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. It was also a pleasure to hear the brilliant maiden speech from my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett). We are colleagues and partners in crime in the cause of technology. I know that she has a glittering career in front of her, and I look forward to witnessing it. In view of the instruction from your predecessor in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, I studiously read the Budget briefing from the House of Commons Library, which explained the history of the Finance Bill. Broadly, that history commends this country’s stability and its financial institutions—broadly, but with one great blip. Let me start by recognising the context of the Bill: the wreckage from which we emerge—the wreckage of the “growth plan”, as the Conservatives called it under their Prime Minister Liz Truss. The briefing, for which I thank the Library’s staff, tells us that not setting out the prospective flow of a Finance Bill from that was a total aberration. From the wreckage, however, has come the return of stability. In fairness, I recognise that at the time, the present shadow Chancellor—the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride)—called the party leader out. He said that she was “flying blind”, and others were following her blindly. It seems that blind flight is contagious on the Opposition Benches today. The right hon. Gentleman talks about opposing, about being the party of “no” rather than the party of government. He did not tell us how he would fund public services; he did not tell us what taxes he would raise if he opposed all of ours. I am conscious that he also once called the pension triple lock “unsustainable”. This is not someone to be trusted with government or with opposition. I note that the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) has just left the Chamber, having said that he was not interested in choosing. He stands for the 100%. As my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) said, to govern is to choose. To avoid choice is to play the fantasy politics of opposition, and I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has found the warm Benches opposite.

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  Has the hon. Member reflected on the fact that the Liberal Democrats, instead of being just the party of no, were the party who enabled the coalition Government, which she is criticising?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  May I recognise, with warm comfort, the traditional place of the Scottish nationalists as total enablers of Conservative Governments? The hon. Gentleman talks about fiscal credibility. May I point out the absolute wreckage of the Scottish Government, who have wasted almost half a billion pounds of offshore wind proceeds on day-to-day spending because of their fiscal mismanagement? If he is taking tutorials alongside the Conservative party, may I ask him to invite his colleagues in Scotland to them? Those will serve them very efficiently. From my experience of the City of London, and of investing in this country and abroad, the broad lesson I have learned is that finance is always contingent, but the fundamentals matter. For that reason, the Bill has to be seen in the context of what it enables. Where the Conservatives treated the working people of this country as their cash machines, we are protecting payslips. Where they did not support healthcare in this country and wrecked the waiting list system, as I experienced growing up in this country, we are supporting the NHS. Where they slashed public investment and took cowardly decisions across their Finance Bills, we are investing in our future. I want to mention a proposal in the Bill that is close to my heart: the relief on draught duty, which will affect the Lamb and Flag in Wick, the Three Golden Cups in Southerndown and, closest to my heart, Finnegans on Barry Island. When the “Gavin and Stacey” Christmas special is shown, I will make sure to make the most of the draught duty relief—particularly at Finnegans, but across the Vale of Glamorgan. Let me return to the choice at the heart of this Bill. As the Treasury’s distributional analysis shows, the overall context of what we have done, both in the Bill and more broadly, is that 90% of households in this country will be better off. That is the amazing distributional context, after 14 years of what we experienced under the Conservative party. What a daffodil-laden Budget we have! The Bill offers the biggest ever budget settlement for Wales; it means £1.7 billion for Welsh public services. Some 70,000 minimum-wage workers in Wales will be better off. There is £100 million for our coal and steel communities, and a timely £25 million of support for coal tips. For the daffodil-laden Budget and the Bill that undergirds it, I am very grateful to the Chancellor.

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that the proceeds from the Finance Bill will allow us not just to invest in the future but to recognise our heritage, compensate mineworkers, and in particular support coal tips in Wales?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member keeps talking about his Government having been in the process of making a mark on productivity. Having left us with the worst productivity slowdown in 250 years, will he tell us how long the process would have taken?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  On that point, will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege to speak in this historic Budget and on this historic day, and I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and the Treasury team. For 14 years, the people of the Vale of Glamorgan and this country have carried the weight of hope, pent up inside. Today the Chancellor has weighed up their hopes, looked them in the eyes and lifted them. For that I congratulate her and the entire Treasury team. Government is supposed to be the means by which ordinary people exercise their collective agency to shape our communities. For 14 years, the Conservatives denied ordinary people their voice. They denied us collective agency and a sense of hope in our community. Per-worker productivity growth in the past decade was the weakest on average since 1850. That is the worst foundation for shared prosperity. Public services are on their knees. That is the worst foundation for shared dignity. Our Army has shrunk and our prisons are bursting. That is the worst foundation for shared security. And through it all, we have had the double whammy of high borrowing rates and low nominal growth, through which they punched into our weak foundations a further £22 billion fiscal black hole. As a side note, it is astonishing to me that the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) talks about fiscal responsibility and semantics. I do not think he was rising and talking about that during the sharpest spike in overnight gilt yields this country had seen in the 21st century. This is a national embarrassment for the Conservatives. They should be standing here and apologising. They should be pointing the finger down, as they ought to have been doing at the time, and apologising for what they were doing, but I see no contrition on that side of the House. There are those who ask why we talk about the £22 billion black hole the Conservatives left, and why we dwell on the past. I do so because, if we are to grip the urgency of where we must go, we have to know where we have come from. Even more, amid the worst foundation for prosperity, dignity and security and the final punch of their fiscal black hole, there is a deeper inheritance, which is one of diminished trust and diminished hope that we can get out of their hole. That is why the Chancellor’s Budget is not just good for our economy but essential for my community in the Vale of Glamorgan. It says with strong conviction, “That was them. This is now us.” It is the voice of ordinary people expressed in our collective agency. Foundations that were wrecked by them will now be fixed by us. The OBR that was trashed by them, and is still being trashed by them, will be affirmed by us. Investment in our future, our health and our jobs that was structurally slashed by them will be regained by us.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I will say to them what I said during the campaign, which is that I see the pain inflicted on them over the past 14 years. The fact is that the animal welfare and environmental standards of our proud Welsh and British farms were sold down the river in trade deals negotiated by Conservative Ministers while the right hon. Gentleman laughed along. It was absolutely unacceptable. That is what I will say to them, and I will confirm that we will not allow any of it to happen again. Structural investment in our future was slashed by the Conservatives, but it has been restored by us. Borrowing rates shot up under them, including the biggest overnight spike in short-term gilts in the 21st century, but they have been brought back to par with the United States by us. The markets were decried as conspiracists by them, but those same markets now hail the return of British fiscal credibility due to us. Wales was denied a voice by them, but it is now front and centre again thanks to this Budget and this Government. Real wages were squeezed by them, but the national living wage is now rising again. Fuel duty has been frozen, carer’s allowance has been increased and, much to my heart’s delight, 1p has been taken off the price of a pint in pubs in Vale of Glamorgan and across the country. At the heart of it, trust, the most critical foundation of my community, ripped up by them, and now, brick by brick, rebuilt by us.

• 17 Oct 2024 · International Investment Summit · Hansard source

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  Diolch yn fawr — thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the privilege of making my maiden speech in this House. I follow a long list of maiden speeches and so I perhaps offer no novelty, but I will take the opportunity of offering familiarity. I come to this debate on the international investment summit having spent the last decade on the frontline of investment, backing the inventors of artificial intelligence data and wider software businesses across this country and the United States. I therefore know the cause with depth and personal experience, and in particular I know that no working-age person in this country has seen a start-up go to the FTSE top 10. In the United States, eight out of 10 have experienced that. In the last decade of innovation, Britons in this country and in the Vale of Glamorgan have been denied the opportunity of shaping their destiny. Decline no more, because I know from speaking to investors, including those at the summit, that they believe what I know with this Labour Government: change is on the way and has begun. My role has been to put the Vale of Glamorgan front and centre in that wave of change, but I start by also recognising the dual impact that change in this House always has. For every maiden contribution, there is a contribution that has been, and in my case I wish to recognise that of my predecessor, the right hon. Alun Cairns, Conservative MP for the Vale of Glamorgan for 14 years. In those 14 years Alun served our constituency with sincerity. In fact, he was so sincere that I remember knocking on doors in Cadoxton in Barry with the best constituency Labour party in the country, only to have my hopes dashed by a lovely elderly lady who said, “I am going to be voting for Alun, the best Labour MP this town has ever had.” We all carry an inflated sense of our personal vote in this House, beyond our political allegiances, but in that moment I have to say that I felt and saw one. I congratulate Alun on his service and wish him the best with the inevitable duality of change that we share, but I also commit to him some continuity in the service that he and his predecessor, the Labour MP John Smith, offered the constituents of the Vale of Glamorgan—and continuity also because the cause of Barry’s development, which I know Alun initiated, will echo for years to come as my top priority too. I offer continuity because in fact the Vale of Glamorgan stands out for its continuity. There is continuity as the world centre of education. It was in Llantwit Major and St Illtud’s church that the UK’s first college was sited, not only home to St Illtud, but also host to St David in the early sixth century. In was in Cowbridge in 1795 that one of the first Gorsedd of the Bards was hosted by Iolo Morganwg, since then a font of appreciation for the Welsh language, Welsh literature and Welsh poetry. There is continuity not just in education but in energy, with Barry being the world’s powerhouse and the largest coal exporting port in this country, and indeed the largest in the world in 1913, and with Aberthaw not just one of the most advanced power plants of its time, but now the host of my and my constituents’ future dreams of a centre of excellence in green energy. Alongside energy and education, there is continuity in the world’s pinnacle of natural beauty—a title I will only share, perhaps, with my hon. Friend the Member for Bangor Aberconwy (Claire Hughes), with our shared Welsh background. My hon. Friends from Dorset and Devon might have the Jurassic coast, but I confess that in the heritage coast of the Vale of Glamorgan we have every bit of the beauty and the history, and perhaps, for being a better kept secret, a brighter future too. Finally, there is continuity not just across education, energy and the beauty that we have, but in the heart and humour of the people of the Vale of Glamorgan. Barry is the town that hosts “Gavin and Stacey”, and in particular the heart and humour of Uncle Bryn, my favourite character, who when driving down the M4 blasting out James Blunt songs has been a personal inspiration to me each time I leave this esteemed Chamber for the even more esteemed comfort of Barrybados. I have seen the heart of the community spirit across the Vale of Glamorgan in Big Bocs Bwyd, which is an initiative across schools that started in Barry and now goes beyond it, ensuring that no child goes hungry when they are learning. There is the real struggle and the fight that I see each week in the Vale Domestic Abuse Services in my constituency, fighting the onslaught of violence against women that we have seen not just in the vale but across this country, and there is the powerful heart of the voice choirs of Barry, Llantwit Major and Cowbridge, which were able to combine the pure heart of “Calon Lân” with the deep optimism of “The Greatest Showman” in one night. I come here with news of the heart and humour of the Vale of Glamorgan, but also to report its honest challenges. We have the honest challenge of Barry, where, when delivering medicines as a volunteer, I learned that the pharmacist was issuing multiples of painkillers per patient, compared with the same pharmacist in Cardiff. We have the honest challenge of our beautiful farmlands, where third and fourth-generation farming families are fighting a great but difficult fight against the combined challenges of weather, disease and uncertainty. We have the honest challenge of the veterans of the Vale of Glamorgan, who are not seeking the world, but simply seeking a bit of public service for the exceptional national service they gave us. Money does not buy most things in life. It does not solve most of our problems, but its absence and the deprivation entrenched over the last decade are at the root of many of them. In particular, that has chipped away at the dignity of my community. That is why I come here with the twin ambitions of greater prosperity and a deeper bond of dignity in the Vale of Glamorgan and across the UK. I do so not as a political slogan or out of political theory, but out of a history of personal gratitude, because it was 22 years ago that the Vale of Glamorgan and south Wales, including Cardiff, offered a newly arrived set of parents the opportunity of a minimum wage and a night shift to subsidise the sleep of their young boys. In the absence of any holidays, it was Barry island that first gave those two young boys the opportunity of relief, and perhaps even some delight, over the weekend. It was south Wales, where I grew up with my brother in a situation of particular economic stress, where I felt, through the deepest privileges of education, that I could go on to advise the Prime Minister and the civil service, to advise FTSE boards across the City, to invest in tomorrow’s inventors and ultimately to stand before the House as Wales’s first Member of Parliament from an ethnic minority background. When I stand for my twin ambitions of prosperity and dignity for the vale, I will do so out of that personal history of gratitude. For as long as I serve as the vale’s voice here in Westminster, I will fight each day for the people in my community.