Lincoln Jopp MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 26 Nov 2024 · COP29 · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State is in consensus-building mode. May I offer him the opportunity to address the 10,975 members of my Spelthorne constituency who will lose their winter fuel payments, or the 100,000 pensioners who will be plunged into poverty? Can he explain to them why they are wrong when they see the Government taking money from their pockets in order to be able to have enough money to send overseas?

• 20 Nov 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q7. The Spelthorne Litter Pickers is an outstanding organisation of 1,000 volunteers who do great work up and down my constituency, come rain or shine. Last week, they were awarded the King’s Award for Voluntary Service. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Would the Deputy Prime Minister, the Government and indeed the whole House like to join me in congratulating the Spelthorne Litter Pickers and thank them for all they do?

• 19 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T4. I recently met a GP who was in the market to hire a new seven to eight session GP to meet demand. Following the Budget and the increase in national insurance contributions for employers, he can now only afford a three to four session GP. What advice does the Secretary of State have for my friend the GP?

• 18 Nov 2024 · Independent Armed Forces Commissioner · Hansard source

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  Will the Armed Forces Commissioner’s powers of investigation extend to being allowed to visit troops deployed on operations, to question them, and to seize documents?

• 13 Nov 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q4. Now that Sue Gray has, remarkably, turned down the opportunity to be the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the nations, will he finally admit that it was an invented job on taxpayers’ money for one of his cronies? If it wasn’t, is he going to hire a new one?

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rail Performance · Hansard source

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  People can only go so far out of London into the Spelthorne constituency on their Oyster card; they have to buy a train ticket for the last couple of stops. This anomalous situation means that major employers such as BP and Shepperton Studios send buses up the line to pick up their workers to do a day’s work. The Secretary of State will soon be the proud owner of South Western Railway, Transport for London and Great British Railways, so can she please make herself an absolute hero in Spelthorne and get it into the Oyster zone?

• 5 Nov 2024 · Education and Training for Prisoners · Hansard source

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  A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Bronzefield category A women’s prison in my Spelthorne constituency. I saw that prisoners doing work were rewarded with small amounts of money, but the weighting of their pay preferred people who take part in numeracy and literacy over skills, such as working in the bicycle repair shop or the hair salon. Is that a national approach, or is it something the governor has done pragmatically to fit his personal circumstances?

• 5 Nov 2024 · Education and Training for Prisoners · Hansard source

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  18. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of education and training provided to prisoners.

• 31 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  We have an anomalous situation in Spelthorne whereby people can use an oyster card to pay for six different red buses, but not the train. That is crippling small businesses and people going into London. Will Ministers in the Department use their combined might to lobby on my behalf and get me a meeting with the Minister for Rail, so that we can get Spelthorne into the correct zone?

• 30 Oct 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q13. First we had the embarrassment of the Labour party being sued by the Trump campaign. Then we had the national capitulation— [ Interruption. ]

• 30 Oct 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker. Then we had the national capitulation of the Government over the sovereignty of the Chagos islands, and now we have had the personal humiliation of the Prime Minister at the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit, all of which begs the question: how on earth does the Foreign Secretary still have the full confidence of the Prime Minister?

• 28 Oct 2024 · Remembrance and Veterans · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point and places on the record distinguished veterans and their contributions to national life, and I thank him for it. As a former soldier who has lost men, let me get one thing straight: these men and women died for us all to be free—free to do whatever the laws of the land permit us to do; to wear a poppy; not to wear a poppy; to remember; not to remember. It is our freedom. It is our choice, and on days like Remembrance Sunday there is not a soldier, sailor, airman or Royal Marine for whom that question could matter less. They are in another place: they are seeing the faces of lost friends; they are feeling guilty for having survived when their friends have not; they are trying to hold it together long enough for opening time to come at the pub. If I may say, on their behalf: “Thank you. Thank you for being here in this debate today and at the constituency gardens of remembrance earlier. Thank you for the respect. Thank you for your thank you.” The act of remembrance is a little like going to church: some people go to church once a year, some once a week. For remembrance, it could be two minutes’ silence once a year for some, or just finding two minutes’ peace in a day from the awfulness of the loss of a son or a daughter for another. Regardless, here today we will remember them and we will honour our fallen.

• 28 Oct 2024 · Remembrance and Veterans · Hansard source

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  May I start by joining others in wishing the Royal Marines a very happy 360th birthday today? It is a superb unit with a proud and distinguished history, albeit slightly shorter than my own regiment’s. They call us “Pongos” and we call them “Bootnecks” and it is an honour to share this House with so many distinguished Royal Marines—my hon. Friend the Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed) and the Minister for Veterans and People, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) among their number. When I was 14 my English master, Mr Smale, gave us a poem to read and it annoyed me very much. It was written by Philip Larkin, and it ends like this: “Crowds, colourless and careworn Had made my taxi late, Yet not till I was airborne Did I recall the date— The day when Queen and Minister And Band of Guards and all Still act their solemn-sinister Wreath-rubbish in Whitehall. It used to make me throw up, These mawkish, nursery games: O When will England grow up? —But I out soar the Thames, And dwindle off down Auster To greet Professor Lal (He once met Morgan Forster), My contact and my pal.” I think what got to me then was the soaring, sneering cynicism of the persona that the poet had created of the travelling academic looking down both metaphorically and literally on the Cenotaph service here in Westminster. I think it offended my sense of fairness. Soldiers by and large have little choice in what they are called to do. Equally, they have little choice in the way in which the nation subsequently remembers them. They just do what they are called to do.

• 24 Oct 2024 · Horseracing · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) for securing this important debate. I declare an interest: just 12 miles or so from here, and just round the corner from where I live in Sunbury in my Spelthorne constituency, is Kempton Park racecourse, where I enjoyed Jump Sunday as a guest of the Jockey Club last Sunday. It was a glorious and memorable day, and all my family will be back on Boxing day to enjoy the King George VI and Kauto Star Novices chases. To the people of Spelthorne, the all-weather flat and turfed jumps courses are much more than that. The racecourse plays host to the weekly market and to the fortnightly international antiques market, now in its 40th year, where the buyers from the nearby Shepperton studios create the sets for the around 31 soundstages there. The annual total attendance for the racing is 20,000, multiplied many times by the global television audience, and for the antiques market it is 80,000. The course regularly hosts school visits and police training, and has a sell-out fireworks display in early November. At its heart, Kempton Park is about the racing and the 70 or so meetings held there every year, and it is every bit as important to our national fabric as Formula 1, our world-leading track cyclists and the premier league. But, as my hon. Friend described, British horseracing, having led the world from its inception, is in danger of falling behind the leading group internationally. Where horseracing fails, it fails fast, and the Government want no piece of that. Enough of the stick—what about a bit of carrot? The Minister has a huge opportunity to be the jockey who rides in a winner, generating growth and prosperity for our nation. With a swift and judicious settlement of the levy and protection from egregious taxation and regulation, the Minister will lead a late run on the stand rail. Glory awaits; I hope she achieves it.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  When I was 14 years old, I started delivering Meals on Wheels on Christmas day for the disadvantaged around west London, and I have done so every year since that I have lived in London. The scheme is organised by Age UK and it is a privilege to be invited into people’s homes in midwinter. I look forward to doing it again this Christmas, and I hope that those I visited last year will be there this year. The Government are seeking to raise money, and I get that. They are seeking to do so by getting those with the broader shoulders to take the heaviest load, and I get that too. In order to achieve those goals, the Government are means-testing the winter fuel payment—and there is the rub. By choosing that means test, the Government are indeed taking the winter fuel payment from millionaire pensioners, but they are also taking it from the much less well off and from the not well off at all. In short, they are cutting too deep. Mistakes happen, but it is how we deal with mistakes that is important. I spent the weekend listening to the Prime Minister using the word “tough” as many times as he possibly could. On the battlefields of the world, which I have been on for the last 25 years, toughness was not one of the things that people looked for in their leaders. The two things they looked for were courage and competence. Courage—moral courage—sometimes means that people need to admit when they have made a mistake and change their plan. However, the people of Spelthorne—and, I suspect, the pensioners across the country—would just settle for a bit of competence. This Government need to get good at governing, and they need to do so quickly.

• 25 Jul 2024 · Code of Conduct and Modernisation Committee · Hansard source

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  I join others in welcoming you to your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you for giving me the chance to make my maiden speech, and to contribute to this important debate on second jobs, speaking for the people of Spelthorne. I pay tribute to all Members who have made their maiden speeches, in particular my immediate predecessor, the hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott). He is clearly going to be a fearsome and fearless advocate for his constituents, based purely on the fact that he is prepared to risk the opprobrium of the people of Colchester, the people of Norwich, and perhaps most impressively of all, Mr Ed Balls. I congratulate him. I thank the House staff for the impeccable welcome that they gave us all as new Members. I was, for quite a long time, a soldier, so I was brought up on the mantra that two minutes early is three minutes late. It was therefore no surprise that at five minutes to 7 on the Monday after the election, I was the first in the queue at the top of the ramp. I saw two armed police officers, but there was also a Doorkeeper, resplendent in his uniform of morning coat and gold badge, and his beard. Not knowing what to expect, I approached him. He said, “Good morning, Mr Jopp.” I was beyond impressed. He continued, “You might not recognise me under this beard, sir, but I’m Matt, and I was with you in the Scots Guards in Afghanistan.” I went from being impressed to being deeply touched. Having had the chance to listen to a large number of maiden speeches, I have noticed that when the name of the Member and their constituency flashes up on the screen, that is sometimes met with a knowing smile and sometimes not, depending on the name of the seat. It is like that excellent episode of “Yes, Prime Minister” when Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby start discussing somewhere called St George’s Island. Both of them suggest that they have some form of superior insight into St George’s Island, but it quickly becomes apparent that neither of them has any idea where on earth it is. Lest my maiden speech become something like that, I thought that I ought to tell the House where Spelthorne is. Spelthorne is everything south of Heathrow airport until the Thames. We are in the administrative county of Surrey and the historic county of Middlesex. We are inside the M25 but not in London. Crazily, you can use an Oyster card to take a London bus there, but not the train. We are outside the clutches of the Mayor of London’s dreaded ultra low emission zone charge, but according to the Church of England, we report to the Bishop of Kensington. Hon. Members might think that all those special circumstances would give rise to something of an identity crisis for the people of Spelthorne, but not a bit of it, because no one who lives there actually calls it Spelthorne anyway. Instead, people say they live in Staines, Stanwell or Stanwell Moor; in Ashford, Shepperton or Laleham; in Halliford, Charlton Village or Sunbury. By the way, all hon. Members sitting in Parliament today are here thanks to a notable resident of Stanwell: Thomas, later Lord, Knyvet. It was he whom the King dispatched to search the cellars beneath Parliament, resulting in the capture of the treacherous gunpowder plotters. Clearly, Lord Knyvet’s ability to navigate this place was a great deal better than mine. I pay full tribute to my immediate predecessor as Member of Parliament for Spelthorne, Kwasi Kwarteng, who had represented the constituency since 2010. Hon. Members will not be surprised to hear that his name came up frequently on the doorstep in the last general election. Kwasi was a much-respected Back Bencher and Minister, as well as being a charismatic performer in this Chamber. A strong advocate for small businesses in Spelthorne, he instigated the Spelthorne business plan competition, now in its 10th year. Spelthorne people are some of the hardest-working people in the country, so it is appropriate that I should be making this speech in a debate on second jobs; many of my constituents have them. I too have had a selection of jobs. As a friend of mine recently remarked, “Blimey, Lincoln, 25 years in the Army and 10 years in private equity. Where did you see more violence?” Now I am in Parliament, with the huge honour of representing the people of Spelthorne, and I am struck by just how important that is, particularly at the moment. I am sure that all Members want to be a strong voice for their constituents and a local champion for their area, and I do too, passionately. However, we are also here to fulfil our second jobs: to make thoughtful contributions to the national and international debate on issues of great moment, none of which is more important, in my view, than the defence of the realm, given that the world is the most dangerous it has been since the end of the cold war. We are having a defence review, which will take time; but time may be running out, and the right course of action—increasing defence expenditure—is all too clear now, let alone in 12 months’ time when the review reports. I gently suggest to all Members of this House that to govern may be to choose, but it is also to act, and that the answer to autocracy is rarely more bureaucracy. To finish on a lighter note, I hope that hon. Members now know a little bit more about Spelthorne. They are welcome to visit any time, whether to hear about the work of BP’s global technology centre as it seeks to decarbonise the world, or to see the largest film studios in Europe and the second biggest in the world after Hollywood. They might instead be interested in a flutter on the horses at Kempton Park—not that we on the Conservative side of the House are allowed to bet any more—or maybe just to potter along the Thames like “Three Men in a Boat”. Madam Deputy Speaker, I said I would finish, and I do not make promises I cannot keep. I made one promise to the people of Spelthorne. It was that if they elected me, we would move to the constituency. Thanks solely to the efforts of my amazing wife Caroline, we picked up the keys to our new home in Spelthorne on Tuesday, and will have moved there by the end of the weekend. That is the first promise I have kept to the people of Spelthorne. I look forward, as I serve them, to there being many more.