Lincoln Jopp MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 1 Sept 2025 · Borders and Asylum · Hansard source

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  The Stanwell hotel in my constituency is being used to house asylum seekers. I wrote to Home Office Ministers on 24 July, again on 25 July, and again on 29 July, and I have had zero responses to any of those letters. Please will the Home Secretary show some respect to my constituents and the people of Spelthorne and reply to their questions and concerns?

• 22 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Spelthorne residents Emma and John lost Holly to cancer in October last year. They set up the charity Holly’s Heroes in her name. Before she died, Holly was given a wheelchair by the NHS, and Emma and John cannot now give it back to the NHS for love nor money. I have raised this with the chief executive of the trust, but can the Secretary of State reassure me that this practice is not replicated nationwide?

• 21 Jul 2025 · Children with SEND · Hansard source

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  13. What steps she is taking to support children with SEND who do not have an education, health and care plan.

• 21 Jul 2025 · Children with SEND · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that answer. On Friday, I had the opportunity to visit the outstanding Springfield primary school in my constituency. It has 500 pupils, 30 of whom have education, health and care plans, with six applications in currently. Can the Minister reassure the parents of those six children and the many, many parents across the country that, while this review into EHCPs is going on, local education authorities will not slow-roll existing applications or fail them as a default in order for them to go to tribunal and try to beat the clock?

• 17 Jul 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The Leader of the House mentioned the statement by the Secretary of State for Defence about the super-injunction. The Defence Committee will undoubtedly embark on an inquiry, but before we do, can the Leader of the House state very clearly the Government’s position? Is it ever right to use a super-injunction?

• 16 Jul 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker. Following the magnificent success of the England cricket team earlier this week and the triumphal return of Mr Jofra Archer, does the Prime Minister agree that what he needs from his Ministers over the next 12 months is more pace and less spin?

• 16 Jul 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q11. I can see why you call these sessions Prime Minister’s questions and not Prime Minister’s answers, Mr Speaker.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and the tone of voice with which he delivered it. I commanded the Scots Guards in 2010 in Afghanistan, at the high watermark of violence. I was very well served by Naz and Mukhtar, and I will always be grateful both to the Ministry of Defence for getting them to Britain and to the communities in this country who have welcomed them to their new lives here. I want to focus on a particular phrase the Secretary of State used. The shadow Secretary of State asked whether it was a civil servant who carried out the leak. The Secretary of State said it was a “Defence official” and The Times is reporting that it was a soldier. I think it is worth clarifying exactly whether it was a civil servant, a spad or a soldier, because conflating the term “Defence official” to cover members of the armed forces is something that might come back to bite the Secretary of State if he continues to do it.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  We have been using floating solar technology in this country since 2016. Last month, the French started the largest plant in Europe, producing 74.3 MW. The Chinese have single plants that produce 350 MW. Given the scale of its use across the world, bar Britain, why did the Secretary of State refer to floating solar as a nascent technology? What is nascent about it?

• 14 Jul 2025 · Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the 170,000 people who signed the petition, particularly those from my Spelthorne constituency. I served four tours in Northern Ireland and dedicated three and a half years of my life to trying to bring peace to that place. My first tour was in Belfast in 1992. It was a guinea a minute—a young Captain Jopp and a young Lieutenant Ben Wallace were on the same tour. The IRA at the time was fully aware of our rules of engagement —the so-called yellow card that has been referred to today. In fact, the IRA designed a whole weapons system around it. It was called the coffee jar bomb. It was a coffee jar, funnily enough—usually Nescafé, although other coffees are available. The IRA would take a small piece of scaffolding and put it in the coffee jar alongside a detonator, a small amount of Semtex and what was affectionately known as “shipyard confetti”. The coffee jar also held a switch from a fridge so that when the jar was thrown and broke on the ground, the bomb went off and the bits went everywhere. We knew that these bombs were incredibly lethal because, a year before, one had been thrown at a dog handler called Darren, who had been feeding his dog. He had watched as his left leg flew 20 metres away, his other leg a smouldering wreck. We knew they were very dangerous. When we were training to deal with these bombs, we went to a cine range. We would be there with a sub-cal, looking at a movie screen that showed a street scene. The film would stop and we would see a threat. We were trained, when we went to Northern Ireland, to identify the presence of the abnormal or the absence of the normal in order to set the context. We would see a perceived threat, the threat would build up and we would be invited to fire the round. A little yellow dot would go on to the screen, and our instructor would say, “Congratulations—you have successfully carried out the rules of engagement”. However, the coffee jar bomb presented a massive dilemma. Could we shoot someone simply for having a coffee jar in their hand or being in the process of throwing one? It was purely designed to put soldiers, like me and the 24,000 others who served there, under incredible pressure. I remember one moment with a real dilemma in the cine film. I said, “Can I fire now?” The instructor said, “This is a very tough moment, but it is a moment to remind yourself, Sir, that it is sometimes better to be tried by 12 men than carried by six.” Pretty chilling—particularly when two of our guardsmen on that tour subsequently had to make a judgment in a shooting situation. One of them believed they had seen a coffee jar in a plastic bag. It turns out that they did not get tried by 12 men; they were tried by one. They were convicted and given life imprisonment. That is the point: all the cases that we have come here to talk about went through a rigorous judicial process at the time. It is horrific double jeopardy, and in some cases treble jeopardy, to put our veterans through that process again. The Veterans Minister knows this well, but there are three components to fighting power: the moral, the physical and the conceptual. It is a very well-known model; Napoleon said, “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” We undermine the moral component of fighting power at our peril. I was recently appalled to see a GIF that a veteran sent me on my phone. It was a picture of the Prime Minister very recently addressing a number of troops. The subtitle underneath said: “We want you to go to Ukraine to do things which we are going to prosecute you for in 30 years’ time.” We undermine the moral component at our peril. To understand the context in which these mendacious and vexatious prosecutions will be pursued, I remind the Secretary of State of the moment when Stormont was recalled because someone had put a vase of flowers in the lobby, and the whole Assembly had to be recalled to debate the colour of the flowers. Why? Because after the Good Friday agreement, everything becomes a proxy answer to the question: who won? The Good Friday agreement was, by necessity, a compromise—it was a peace agreement. However, ever since, everyone has been trying to relitigate the question of who won. It is essential that we do not allow our veterans and their prosecution to become pawns in that proxy game. I will leave it at that. I think the Veterans Minister and the Secretary of State are having a lively debate behind the scenes, but I invite the Secretary of State to listen very carefully to the Veterans Minister, who has the ear of veterans. I think I know where the Veterans Minister is coming from, and I expect the Government to do the right thing.

• 14 Jul 2025 · Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is giving a powerful speech. Will he put on record whether he thinks that any of the 500 veterans who he has met are naive?

• 14 Jul 2025 · Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 9 Jul 2025 · Draft Buckinghamshire Council, Surrey County Council and Warwickshire County Council (Housing and Regeneration Functions) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I declare an interest as a Surrey Member of Parliament, and my constituency of Spelthorne is the northernmost borough of Surrey. Can I just confirm whether the changes that we are making today still require Spelthorne borough council to give permission for compulsory purchase, when we have handed those powers to Surrey county council?

• 8 Jul 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  We had a long discussion in Committee about assessing how much this regulator was going to cost and how big it was going to be, but all the amendments we put forward were voted down. When will the Minister know that this thing has grown too big and costs too much?

• 8 Jul 2025 · Government Resilience Action Plan · Hansard source

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  The first line of defence in national resilience is us, the citizenry. The Health Secretary and the Education Secretary wrote recently lamenting the absence of much-needed grit among many of our young people. Now that that risk has been identified at the highest level of Government, does it appear on the risk register?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Government Performance against Fiscal Rules · Hansard source

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  Before the general election, the Chancellor said that this would be the most pro-business Government ever. She spoke recently at The Times CEO summit. Before she was introduced to the CEOs, the host asked how many of them thought that this Government are still pro-business, and not a single hand went up. Why does the Chief Secretary to the Treasury think that is?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The Mercure hotel in Stanwell in my constituency is used to house asylum seekers, and I have had multiple reports of asylum seekers there working illegally. Will the Department please put that on immigration enforcement’s radar, so that it can take the appropriate action?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  The way in which the Minister is talking about insurance buy-out suggests that, in the Government’s mind, insurance buy-out is still in some way a gold standard. Can he reassure the House that he is seeking to flatten the playing field, such that the increased choice available to defined-benefit pension schemes will mean that for perpetuals who run on—such as OMERS, which started off as the Ontario municipal employees retirement system and is now worth 140 billion Canadian dollars—there is as much safety in superfunds as there is in insurance buy-out?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  I regret that the Pensions Minister, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell), is no longer in his place; I wanted to pay him something of a compliment for getting the Bill here today with typical ambition and enthusiasm. I should, however, remind him of my grandmother’s favourite saying: an ounce of experience is worth a ton of enthusiasm. I stand here to talk about part 3 of the Bill on the basis of about four years’ experience as a director of the first pensions superfund, having attempted to get it through the Pensions Regulator and the interim regime put up under the last Government. That was ultimately unsuccessful; part of the reason why we are going to need the Pensions Minister’s enthusiasm and ambition is that he will come up against a series of vested interests. When we attempted —[Interruption.] I welcome the Pensions Minister back to his place and am grateful that he is here to listen to this. When we attempted to launch the pensions superfund, we were bombarded by people who wanted to strangle the superfund industry at birth: the Association of British Insurers; an extraordinary intervention by the Governor of the Bank of England—I am not sure whether the Minister has had a chance to reprogramme the Governor of the Bank of England recently, but I hope he is more enthusiastic about the Minister’s proposal than he was about the last Government’s—and lastly, the Pensions Regulator itself. I think the Minister wants to create a thriving market in superfunds. However, under the current interim guidance, capital requirements for superfunds are about twice those for insurers providing buy-outs, so it is hardly surprising that we have seen a number of recent new entrants to the insurance market but no new superfunds. The Solvency II regime—apologies for the slightly technical language, but the Minister will appreciate it—that applies to insurers works off a one-year 99.5% confidence level, but over time the industry has been allowed to apply a number of important adjustments, including diversification, matching adjustments and deferred tax credits. All have had the effect of effectively reducing the capital requirement for insurers. In combination, that means that the capital buffer for a buy-out provider is approximately half that of a superfund under the current interim regime, even taking into account the fact that superfunds are proposed to have a one-year 99% confidence level. The Bill must address that inherent unfairness if, as the Minister wants, the superfund market is to grow. At the moment, it is the proverbial baby who refuses to put on weight. Can the Minister assure me that the Bill will address the problem and create a more level playing field that will allow superfunds to offer the 10% to 15% pricing discount to insurers that his Department has said it is seeking? As the Minister knows, there are a number of techniques for achieving that. He might consider: specifying that superfunds should apply a 98% one-year confidence threshold; the creation of a rule similar to the matching adjustment that applies to insurers; extending a VAT exemption to superfunds for essential pension services, such as admin, actuarial and investment, including scheme origination and transfers of the scheme to superfunds; or—I suppose this is an “and/or”—allowing superfunds to use structured capital instruments such as subordinated debt and preferred shares to lower the cost of capital and enhance investment flexibility, without compromising quality. Lastly, I turn to the Pensions Regulator’s process of assessing superfunds and giving them a licence to operate—this is the bit where I have the scars on my back. Will the Minister take a close personal interest in this and change the way that the Pensions Regulator works, so that there are stricter and shorter time limits for assessing suitability—shorter than the limits currently in the Bill, which are six months as a default and nine months as a stretch? In the case of the pensions superfund, we had three applications and a similar timescale was used. One can just imagine why the investors’ patience finally ran out and the whole thing was wound up. I do not want the Minister to be in the position of his predecessor, Guy Opperman, who stood in this place and said that greenlighting superfunds was his greatest achievement during lockdown, yet as a result of a combination of the regulatory environment that was put in place and the vested interests of those who argued against the birth of superfunds, the whole concept was strangled at birth. I want the Minister to avoid that, so I encourage him to look back at the first efforts to produce superfunds and tell the Pensions Regulator a great deal more about how it should do its business. The reason why the Pensions Regulator became risk averse was because the last Government refused to cover superfunds in their Pension Schemes Bill, now the Pension Schemes Act 2021. The Pensions Regulator did not see why it should take any additional risk if politicians were not going to. I encourage the Minister to have the strength of his convictions to use primarily legislation to tell the Pensions Regulator the market that he wants it to regulate. Then he will give pension superfunds a fighting chance of coming into existence and consolidating. Notwithstanding some of the concerns that others have had, 5,100 of anything is not a working marketplace; it is ripe for consolidation—it was then and it is now.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  I was just googling “dirigiste” and my right hon. Friend’s everyman quote. Will he comment on the fact that OMERS, which he would probably agree is one of these megafunds that he thinks are slow and unwieldy and invest in infrastructure and illiquids, returned a 7.1% net return over the last 10 years and the London Pensions Fund Authority returned a 7% return over the last 10 years?

• 2 Jul 2025 · Secure 16 to 19 Academies Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a please to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cramlington and Killingworth on bringing forward this Bill. I have only one question for the Minister to answer in his summing up. On reducing the notice given to providers from seven to two years, I agree with the characterisation. In respect of the existing contract, however, has that had to be renegotiated— from the service provider’s point of view, obviously the Bill represents a significant change in the terms of the contract—and has that renegotiation cost the taxpayer any money?

• 30 Jun 2025 · Defence Sector Exports · Hansard source

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  Ametek, a defence manufacturer in my constituency, has reported to me that the process of getting a defence export licence has almost ground to a halt in the past 12 months. Could the Ministry of Defence send someone sufficiently threatening round to the Department for Business and Trade—perhaps the Veterans Minister—to persuade it to get a grip of its processes and speed everything up?

• 26 Jun 2025 · Driving Test Backlog · Hansard source

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  The post-covid backlog in driving tests was trending down under the last Government. At the time of the general election, it had got to 521,000, which was still too high, but it was coming down. Since this Government took over, the number has rocketed up to 600,000, a new record high, meaning that constituents like Oliver, in my Spelthorne constituency, have had to wait six months for a driving test. The increasing delays in driving tests are putting a handbrake on growth and productivity, so whatever the Government are doing, can they do more of it and faster please?

• 26 Jun 2025 · Driving Test Backlog · Hansard source

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  11. What steps she is taking to reduce the backlog for driving tests.

• 26 Jun 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I do not know if the Leader of the House is aware that if we installed just 15% of floating solar panels on the man-made reservoirs in this country, we would double the installed base of solar power without having to put a single new solar panel on agricultural land. I know what she is thinking: “If only some plucky Back Bencher had secured today’s Adjournment debate, the House could learn more.” I am happy to say that I have, so will she encourage Back Benchers from across the House to attend today’s debate to learn more about floating solar?