Mark Francois MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am not quite convinced by the Minister’s argument. I understand what he is saying, but if Corporal Tommy Atkins, his wife and their special needs child in Wiltshire are posted to Edinburgh castle, Fort George, Leuchars or wherever in Scotland, that is not their fault. The amendment would help to reduce bureaucracy by requiring the receiving LEA to take the EHCP. The fact that it was created in England does not mean that it should not be valid in Scotland. The currency we use is valid in both nations, so I am not quite convinced by the Minister’s argument—and either way, it does not help the service personnel or the child much, does it?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  I was hoping to approach this in a relatively non-partisan manner, but if the hon. Lady wants to mix it, I am happy to do so.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Let me just reply to the first intervention, and then I will be happy to take another. It is definitely true that there is a backlog in granting EHCPs in Essex, for a number of contractual reasons. To be fair to the county council, it now has a new contract and has invested heavily in catching up, but let me get back to the service personnel aspect.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  I accept the hon. Lady’s point, but in effect the EHCP relates to the child, and the parents have to fight the system to get it. I am very happy to take her advice on board if I bring the amendment back on Report. Nevertheless—this is why I have placed an emphasis on budgets—the cost of SEN still places a significant in-year pressure on local authorities that are trying to set realistic budgets. Of course, there is the related issue that many Committee members will be familiar with—the cost of home-to-school transport for SEN children, some of whom are driven from home to school, in some cases over quite long distances, often effectively in taxis provided by the local authority. Amendment 11 relates specifically to the portability of EHCPs, but it is important to understand that in the February 2026 White Paper, the Government delineated three tiers of SEN support, which I will briefly summarise. The first or lower tier is targeted support. That is defined as providing targeted support in the child’s education setting, which is set out in an individual support plan—an ISP, as opposed to an EHCP. That could include small group interventions to develop language skills or pre-teaching key vocabulary to help access the curriculum. The second tier is targeted plus, through which support from the setting will have input from education and health professionals, and may include access to a support base. That will involve time-limited support in an alternative provision or specialist setting. The third and highest tier is specialist support, where support is provided through an EHCP, whether in a mainstream or specialist setting. It may also be provided through a specialist base at this level. Once reforms are completed, EHCPs will be provided only at this level of support. In other words, they will be more difficult to get. According to the White Paper, these layers will be guided by national inclusion standards to be developed in the coming years, which will set out what the layers should look like in practice. Again, as so often, we await further Government guidance. I have deliberately gone into this level of detail because, at the moment, the amendment is drafted only to include EHCPs. To be clear, it is my intention today to deal with this effectively as a probing amendment to promote debate. Depending on the Committee’s reaction, I would like to bring back a refined amendment for discussion in Committee of the whole House or on Report. I am signalling in advance that I might withdraw the amendment today and tweak it to bring in those other levels of support.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  By way of some brief introductory remarks, Mr Offord—

• 24 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am sorry, Mr Efford. I was thinking of a previous Member.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  I apologise, Mr Efford. As you say, get it right! This was not a contentious Bill on Second Reading. As we said during that debate, we think our role is primarily to act as a critical friend to the Bill. That does not mean we will not disagree on anything at all, but it does mean that, now we are in Committee, we will attempt to approach the Bill in a constructive manner. I hope we can do a lot of that in a collegial way. I want to place on record our thanks and, I am sure, those of all right hon. and hon. Members, to the Clerks and yourself, Mr Efford, for organising some extremely effective evidence sessions—we have already taken a lot of evidence on the Bill—and in particular for organising an extremely effective visit to Portsmouth to look, among other things, at the operation of the service justice system and defence housing. That has all been a positive start and, within reason, we will attempt to continue in the same manner. We have no objection to clause 1 standing part of the Bill.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  I do not want to labour the point, but in reality, a lot often comes down to the calibre of the armed forces champion in a particular council; I am sure that the hon. Member for North Devon was an excellent one. If such a champion were in a debate in full council—on how to amend housing policy to advantage veterans, say—it would be far more effective for them to be able to point to a section in an Act of Parliament than to paragraph 212B(III) of some Government circular. An argument is far more effective in a council chamber if a person can wave an Act of Parliament; I have seen people do it. Does the Minister not accept that if we are trying to empower armed forces champions to deliver at ground level, having a definition in the Bill would be very helpful?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making an extremely good speech. As he and the Committee know, there is a major reform of NHS England going on. At the ground level, it means that there will be far fewer integrated care boards. In Essex, we are going from three to one, and that approach is mirrored across the country. Is not my hon. Friend’s amendment therefore very timely, because—this should appeal to the Minister—we are trying to slim down NHS bureaucracy and give ICBs more power within the system? Would my hon. Friend’s proposal not tie in extremely well with the reorganisation of integrated care boards, which hold much of the budget within the NHS?

• 16 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I was asking about the current Prime Minister, not the next one. After previously denying that the Prime Minister was instructed to act in a case against veterans by Phil Shiner, on 24 February the Veterans Minister had to come to the House and correct the record because the Prime Minister did, in fact, act for Phil Shiner in the al-Jedda case before the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. That case effectively opened the floodgates for prosecutions against British Army veterans, which the troubles Bill now threatens to do all over again. To save the Veterans Minister having to come back here again and correct the record twice, can she or this Minister simply tell us why Labour is led by a man who partly made a living out of helping to put British Army soldiers and even their commanders in the dock?

• 16 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  There are growing rumours that the Government plan to bring back their ill-fated Northern Ireland Troubles Bill to the Commons next week. If that is true, it will give us the perfect opportunity to debate the Prime Minister’s links with Phil Shiner, the disgraced lawyer who was convicted of fraud and struck off for making multiple false allegations against British soldiers. The Northern Ireland Secretary has told the House repeatedly that there is no such thing as a vexatious prosecution. Do MOD Ministers now agree that that is not just naive but simply untrue, especially after the case of Phil Shiner —a man universally hated across the British Army?

• 9 Mar 2026 · Middle East: Defence · Hansard source

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  Iran!

• 5 Mar 2026 · Consular Assistance · Hansard source

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  Where is Yvette?

• 5 Mar 2026 · Commonwealth Troops: First World War · Hansard source

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  I see that the Minister is nodding in assent. The Australians also made a major contribution to the first world war. Over 400,000 served in what was known as the Australian Imperial Force. Over half of them became casualties, either killed or wounded. Perhaps the most famous Australian contribution, combined with their comrades from New Zealand, was in the ill-fated campaign at Gallipoli in 1915 when the Australian and New Zealand army corps, now forever known as the Anzacs, suffered heavy casualties attempting to overcome the extremely well dug-in Turkish defences on the peninsula. Nevertheless, it is important to record that Anzac troops also served bravely in other theatres of war, not least in the middle east and on the western front. India, which many hon. Members referred to, made the largest contribution from the Commonwealth, particularly if we include those from what is now modern day Bangladesh and Pakistan. I think it contributed more than a million troops in total over the course of the first world war. I should declare an interest here as my great-grandfather-in-law Colonel William Sanders served as part of the Indian Army, and at one time commanded a battery of artillery towed by elephants. [ Interruption. ] He did. He then transferred to the Royal Garrison Artillery on the western front, winning a Distinguished Service Order at the battle of St Quentin, about which the family are obviously proud. The Indian Army of today, and its Bangladeshi and Pakistani counterparts, maintain proud regimental histories that date back to their actions in the first world war. South African regiments also made an important contribution to the allied war effort, including the 1st South African Brigade, who famously fought at Delville Wood, which the troops nicknamed “Devil’s Wood”, on the Somme. Given what they went through, that was probably appropriate. The South Africans fought not just on the western front but against German troops on the African continent itself, including in both east and south-west Africa. It is also important to record the contribution of some 60,000 black South Africans who served mainly in support and logistical roles rather than as frontline infantry but nevertheless made an important contribution to the allied war effort, as indeed was recognised by General Jan Smuts.

• 5 Mar 2026 · Commonwealth Troops: First World War · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is clearly a subject matter expert. I entirely agree with her sentiment about both the contribution of those South African labourers and the vital work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It is also important to commemorate the contribution of Caribbean troops to the allied war effort. Most of them, as we have heard, served in the West Indies Regiment, which saw combat in France, Italy, Africa and the middle east. Indeed, that was pointed out in particular by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton. Albeit from a different conflict, I can reveal to the House that the records of the ship’s company of HMS Victory at Trafalgar record the presence of a seaman whose name was John Francois. He was on Victory. I do not believe he was a direct relative, as he was recruited from the Caribbean—none the less, I can assure the House that there was at least one Francois at Trafalgar who served on the British side. In the limited time available, I have been able to refer with only the briefest outline to the contribution of troops from across the British empire and the Commonwealth to what was believed—at that time, at least—to be the war to end all wars. Unfortunately, that proved not to be the case; the world was involved in a second major conflagration barely two decades later. Let us passionately hope that in our lifetimes—indeed, in those of our children and grandchildren—we never see a third. Although I say humbly to the hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth, as the Roman military theorist Vegetius taught us, “Si vis pacem, para bellum”: he who desires peace should prepare for war in order to deter it. In thinking of how to conclude, I came upon some lines from Rupert Brooke. In his eternal poem “The Soldier”, he wrote: “If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England.” If that be so—and I believe it to be so—then there is also a part of a neighbouring field that is forever Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, South African, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and African and Caribbean, too. Without the contribution of all those nations from right across what was then the empire and is now the Commonwealth, we would never have defeated the militarism of the Kaiser’s Germany, and Europe undoubtedly would never have been free. We thank them all and their nations for their service. Lest we forget.

• 5 Mar 2026 · Commonwealth Troops: First World War · Hansard source

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  As the son of a man who fought in the second world war, I am privileged to be able to sum up on behalf of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition in this debate about those who fell in the first world war and the vital contribution made by Commonwealth troops during that epic conflict. The first world war turned out to be a manpower-intensive conflict in which the contribution of Commonwealth troops was invaluable. The National Army Museum at Chelsea estimates that over 3 million soldiers and labourers from across what was then the British empire, today the Commonwealth, served alongside the British Army in multiple theatres of operations. We have heard a number of erudite and touching tributes from hon. Members to that effect this afternoon, and I will refer to a few of them, but before I do there is one other important point I want to make. Where is Reform? We are here to debate the contribution of people from all nations, of all colours, of all cultures, made 100 years or more ago, to defending the freedom of what was then the empire and is now the Commonwealth. Why is Reform’s Bench yet again empty when we debate defence-related matters? If those plastic patriots who love to wrap themselves in the flag aspire to be a party of government, let them at least come to this House and behave like it. Turning to the contributions of Members, I commend the hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) for securing this debate and, if I may say so, for introducing it so brilliantly. He spoke memorably about the extraordinary contribution of the Indian Army—Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs all joined together as one army fighting for freedom against tyranny. He said that honour transcends borders. He was right. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) spoke very knowledgably about the vital work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, not least because she worked for it. She highlighted the commission’s marvellous endeavours to commemorate the sacrifices that were made in defence of freedom. On behalf of my party, I would like to commend the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for everything that it does. The hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi) spoke powerfully about the contribution of the Indian Army, and especially its Muslim regiments. The hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) followed her in a similar vein and spoke in particular about the Sikh regiments who have a proud martial tradition in British service, not least in the first world war. The hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) made, if I might say, a very socialist contribution, but he also paid tribute to those who served. The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) paid a fulsome tribute to Commonwealth troops. The Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding), reminded us that after the largely regular British Expeditionary Force was wiped out while holding the line in 1914, it was eventually citizens’ armies, including from the Commonwealth, who replaced it to win the war. As there were multiple contributions from across the empire and the Commonwealth during the First World War, it would be invidious to attempt to highlight any one as more important than the others. It might be better to attempt to summarise briefly—in the few minutes that I have to cover a war that lasted four years—some of the national contributions to the wider war effort. I begin with the Canadians. Following the outbreak of the war, Canada established the Canadian Expeditionary Force, principally for service on the western front. The Canadians fought in many of the major battles in that theatre, including the second Ypres, the Somme, Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele. In so doing, they were supported by troops from Newfoundland, although that did not formally become part of Canada until after the second world war. The Newfoundland regiment also fought at Gallipoli and then on the western front, including in the so-called last hundred days when the allied armies—the British Army in particular, but with Commonwealth support—broke the back of the German army in the field. That victory, fully utilising the principle of combined operations including infantry, artillery, tanks and aircraft working in concert, should not be underestimated. It is often highlighted by military historians as a significant feat of arms, completely contrary to what might be called the “Blackadder” version of the history of the first world war.

• 4 Mar 2026 · Ministry of Defence · Hansard source

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  I hope that the Chairman of the Select Committee, who is making an excellent speech, will forgive me for interrupting him. He has referred to readiness and timings. Is he, like me, concerned about the comment on—from memory—page 43 of the strategic defence review that we must be prepared to fight a peer enemy by 2035, which is nine years from now? We may not have that much time.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Power to Cancel Local Elections · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I commend the Chair of the Petitions Committee, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), for the skilful way in which he introduced this important topic. The Government’s original reason for postponing the elections was that councils were too busy with local government reform. In Essex, we had the bizarre situation where some of those involved in LGR thought they were not too busy to have elections, and some—mainly Labour-led councils—thought they were. I served on Basildon council in the early 1990s, when we went around this buoy before, under John Major’s premiership. The idea then was not to have mayors, but to have one unitary system across the county. I was involved in the negotiations between Basildon and other authorities. In the end, to cut a long story short, the whole thing broke down because no one could agree on who to team up with. There were too many old rivalries and too many differences between towns, and the whole thing collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. When I heard we were going around that buoy again, I confess, perhaps based on my previous experience, that I was deeply sceptical. I remember saying to my local Rayleigh and Wickford Conservative association at one of our quarterly executive meetings more than three years ago, “Don’t take it as axiomatic that this will all happen. It fell apart last time; it could yet fall apart again.” Where are we now? We were supposed to have mayoral elections this May; the Government have postponed them to May 2028. We are supposed to have a mayoral combined authority, so now we face the bizarre position where we would have an unelected combined authority—it is an unelected committee of a handful of senior councillors drawn from several constituent councils—but with no mayor. The fate of the combined authority now appears to be effectively in abeyance. Labour’s whole argument for doing all of this is to move from a two-tier system to a single-tier system. That is not true. The two-tier system we have at the moment is Essex county council as the upper tier, with a series of district, borough and city councils below. The third tier of parish and town councils are basically unaffected either way. We are now moving to another two-tier system, where we will have a mayoral and a combined authority as the upper tier and a bunch of unitary authorities—whether three or four or five—as the lower tier. We will have gone through all this cost, misery and uncertainty to go from one two-tier system to another. The whole argument is nonsense from the get-go. Moreover, I have been door-knocking in my constituency for 25 years, and I have never—not once, ever—had an elector say to me on the doorstep, “I want a mayor of Essex.” Members can take it from me: if Essex people want something, they are not shy to let their politicians know. [ Interruption. ] I see that the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) is grinning; he has obviously experienced that himself. They do not want a mayor of Essex. If they do, they have not said so. It has no demos. There is no public demand for it. People are not clamouring for a mayor. We have never had one in 1,000 years, but suddenly the Government think we need some Sadiq Khan for Essex. That is about as popular as a bowl of—well, it is not very popular. Where do we now sit? Southend unitary authority—forgive me, it is Southend city council, for which my great friend Sir David Amess campaigned for many years; if he were here, he would chide me now. Southend city council conducted its own consultation about a year ago, and two thirds of the people who replied did not want any change at all. The Government instituted a wider consultation county-wide—for the avoidance of doubt, that is Greater Essex, including Southend and Thurrock—which closed on 15 January. When the Minister replies, perhaps she could tell us, some six weeks on, what the result of that consultation was. If she does not have that information to hand, perhaps she could tell us when she intends to publish the results of the consultation. I am sure that that will be before the local elections—before we get to purdah in the third week of March—so that the good people of Essex know what their fellow county people have said before we go to the polls. I am going to take a punt: it is going to reveal that there was little enthusiasm for any local government reorganisation whatever in Essex. If the Minister wants to prove me wrong, she can publish the results of the consultation. Labour sought to postpone these elections and now, thanks to campaigning by—I admit—Reform, and by the Conservatives and others, but overwhelmingly due to public pressure, which perhaps both parties have managed to articulate in our different ways, the Government have given in. Now those elections are back on, and people in Southend, Basildon and Thurrock can go to the polls and peacefully and democratically express their opinion on the Labour mob who run those three councils should be allowed to carry on.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Power to Cancel Local Elections · Hansard source

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  My constituency is pronounced “Rayleigh”, by the way. My advice to the Minister is to cut your losses and drop the whole thing in Essex, because it is a shambles. However, under the Government’s plans we will have a unitary tier, and then a tier above that which is a combined authority drawn from some of those councils and a mayor. It is patently obvious that that is two tiers of local government replacing two different tiers of local government. To pretend that it is one is fantasy.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Power to Cancel Local Elections · Hansard source

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  The Chairman of the Petitions Committee is introducing the debate very well. I was a local councillor too, in Basildon in the early 1990s. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is a good thing that the Government have done a reverse ferret, so we can now have local elections across the country, including in Labour-led Basildon, Labour-led Southend and Labour-led Thurrock? Those councils will now have to face the electorate on their appalling record.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Power to Cancel Local Elections · Hansard source

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  I have two responses to the hon. Gentleman, whom I have a great deal of time for, as he knows. First, the Chairman of the Petitions Committee laid out clearly the responsibilities of local government, so I shall not try your patience, Mr Mundell, or that of the rest of the Chamber by repeating them, but it is everything from planning to housing, adult social care and education. These things affect people’s everyday lives, and they are really important. People should have a democratic right to decide which councillors run those services, which they pay for as customers via their council tax. So of course there should be elections. Secondly, and on a personal note, and I hope that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and other colleagues here will understand this: nobody delayed the general election. I went into battle 20 points behind in the polls. No one gave me a bye; I had to fight to be here. I had to convince my employers, in my constituency, to renew my contract of employment to represent them, and so did everyone else in this House this evening, so why should it be different for local councillors? Why do they not have to get their contract of employment, in effect, renewed by their employers at the ballot box? I thank the Minister for the fact that the local elections will now go ahead. She may recall that we had some sparky exchanges in the Commons Chamber about this, but we have ended up with the right decision, albeit after far too long. So if the people of Essex wish to support the Government’s bonkers housing targets—mandatory and top-down, imposed by some Whitehall civil servant who could not find Essex with a TomTom, and supported by a mad computer algorithm—they can go and vote for that. If, conversely, they want to vote for Conservative councillors, who care about the area they live in and want to defend the green belt and carry on providing good services to people at a cost that they can afford, they have the chance to vote Conservative—although, for the record, other products are available. People can actually have elections in Essex and pass a verdict, and I very much hope that in my corner of the world—for Essex county council, for Rochford district council and for Basildon borough council—they will vote Conservative. But however they vote, whomever they choose, whomever they give the very important mandate to run those really important services to, the fundamental point is that they will be allowed to exercise their right to choose. It was this Government who very nearly took that away and we should never let them forget it. Other than that, I have no firm view on the matter.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Power to Cancel Local Elections · Hansard source

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  I give way to the right hon. Gentleman from Northern Ireland, because no debate in Parliament would be complete without him.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Power to Cancel Local Elections · Hansard source

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  And Wickford for good measure.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Power to Cancel Local Elections · Hansard source

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  Just as a matter of record, we had a general election in Britain in July 1945, when we were still involved in fighting the second world war in the far east. If we can have a general election in wartime, I see no reason why we could not have local elections this May in peacetime.

• 25 Feb 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I am not an insurance expert and would not claim to be, but surely there is more that we can do. It is not a state secret that Lloyd’s of London is a world leader in maritime insurance, and surely there is more that can be done here. We promised—all of us—that we would relay this back to the House. Minister, over to you.