Martin Wrigley MP: speeches

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Speeches

22 Jan 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source
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We hear an awful lot from the Government about building sovereign digital capabilities in the UK, and this morning we heard about Britain becoming Britain’s biggest customer, yet Government procurement contracts continue to go to giant American providers—in the Ministry of Defence, in the NHS and even in the Cabinet Office. Will the Leader of the House make available Government time in the Chamber for us to debate the meaning of a sovereign AI capability? How might we change Government procurement to enable British firms to bid for these intensely important elements of Government mechanisms?
22 Jan 2026 · Government Insourcing · Hansard source
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I have been trying to get records from the Cabinet Office of a meeting held between Peter Thiel of Palantir, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings on 28 August 2019. I am getting conflicting data back. Is it in the public interest that the management of this information is being outsourced to Palantir?
21 Jan 2026 · Water White Paper · Hansard source
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I welcome the White Paper and a more effective regulator, which is really good. However, I am concerned by the lack of urgency on clean water supply capacity. The report talks of a shortage of 5 billion litres a day by 2050. Meanwhile, we read warnings that seven English regions will be in serious water stress by 2030, and gov.uk and the NFU have warned of potential droughts this summer if not enough rain is captured over January, which has been dry until now. Will the Government accelerate plans for more clean water supply before the 2050 and 2055 dates?
19 Jan 2026 · Disclosure and Barring Service · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend raises very good points on this matter. There are two issues that I have always seen with the DBS check. First, like an MOT, it is only as good as the date when it is issued, and people do not have to subscribe to the update service. Does she agree that updates should be mandatory? Secondly, a DBS check cannot be passed from one organisation to another—people need a fresh one every time—which seems to be an unnecessary waste of time. Does my hon. Friend agree that her card idea would probably solve that?
19 Jan 2026 · Iran: Protests · Hansard source
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For me, this is personal. It reminds me of what I saw when I was in Tehran nearly 50 years ago, at the beginning of the revolution. My father was appointed naval attaché to the British embassy in Tehran before and during that revolution, and we saw some awful things. What kept us going when the nights were cold, the power was off, the phones were cut, the guns were going off outside and people were demonstrating on rooftops nearby was the British World Service broadcasting; we could rely on that information. What extra support is the Minister giving the BBC to ensure that the World Service and BBC Persian are boosted in that area, so that we can get information through, and give people the lifeline that I had as I took the last flight out before Khomeini arrived back?
19 Jan 2026 · Arctic Security · Hansard source
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I agree with the Foreign Secretary that we should be working with our allies—I welcome that approach—but I fear that Donald Trump does not agree with her. What are the Government doing to harden our infrastructure? We are heavily dependent on several American IT systems, including Palantir, controlled by Peter Thiel, who is well inside the coterie of Donald Trump’s Administration. On sanctions, we have seen that they could switch off Microsoft’s provision of services to the International Criminal Court. Will the Government look into ensuring that Palantir is not a single point of failure in our critical systems—in the health service, defence, the Cabinet Office and now the police?
14 Jan 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source
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Like many in this House, I stand with Ukraine and its defence of the frontline of Europe, and I am proud to do so. A couple of weeks ago, I was helping some of the local Ukrainians who are living in my constituency under the Homes for Ukraine scheme to move home. They were being visited by their father, who is a senior officer in the Ukrainian navy. He was very grateful for the fact that we are keeping his family safe, and he said how important it was to the Ukrainians that we were able to do so. However, there are still some things that we need to do to ensure that they safely remain here in the UK. One of the daughters had just applied for the extension to Homes for Ukraine—the Ukraine permission extension scheme—to which people can apply only 28 days before their visa runs out. She had been waiting for more than 28 days, and she was worried that she would not be able to stay without a visa. I ask the Government to look at enabling the renewal of those visas sooner than 28 days before they end. Last year, I was able to win an extra two years’ certain stay for Ukrainians on those visas. That was fantastic, and I thank the Government for doing that. However, we still do not know how that is going to work and whether we will still have the problem of the 28 days and people having to wait right up until the very end of their visas. None of the Ukrainians I know in the UK are sitting back and waiting for help; they have all gone out and got jobs. They are starting businesses, doing things and rebuilding lives here, and we need to look at how we can make that work. One of the issues for the family was qualifications. Their daughter had highly rated qualifications in maths and physics from a Ukrainian school that were not recognised by the school in the UK. It would be helpful if the Government could provide guidance to our schools on the extent to which they can recognise qualifications from Ukrainian schools. That was one of the family’s explicit asks. Let me add that we should look at what we can do in terms of dentistry. I have a Ukrainian dentist in my constituency who is going through an elongated process to try to requalify to practise dentistry in the UK. Goodness knows that we need all the dentists we can get, so let us help them and make it easier for them to settle here for longer. There is a problem with the Ukraine permission extension scheme. If Donald Trump is able to magic a ceasefire out of thin air, which I and probably this House feel is very unlikely, we will be in a position where we technically and potentially have peace in Ukraine—I dream of that day, but I do not expect it to be soon. However, if we have peace, we know that the Ukrainian visas will be ended. The visas will finish, and we will expect people to go back, but we all know that there is a difference between peace and safety. We know that Ukraine is covered in unexploded ordnance and landmines, which could take up to 40 years to clear. The land could gain peace, but it will not be safe. I have a lady in my constituency whose village is in the Russian-occupied zone; it has been demolished, and her house is rubble. She has lost her husband, brother and father, and she has nothing to go back to. I want to ensure that we look for settlement in the long term. Ukraine has recently changed its law to allow people to hold second passports, but the UK is not yet on the list of countries with that agreement. I urge the Government to look at that to ensure that we have a process towards long-term settlement in the UK, so that those industrious Ukrainians who have started businesses can thrive and develop and contribute not only to our economy, but to the rebuilding of Ukraine. We can do many things. I applaud the Government for all that they are doing, but we can do more. I ask that they please help the Ukrainians to help themselves and to help us. Slava Ukraini!
12 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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T6. In February’s Government consultation on local government reorganisation, will the Minister consult on all four—I think it is four—options put forward by Devon, and how will she weight the criteria, so that she can decide on a selected, amended or perhaps new proposal in June?
7 Jan 2026 · Rural Fuel Duty Relief · Hansard source
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Does my hon. Friend agree that the relief scheme could be complemented by a pumpwatch scheme, whereby the petrol price comparison platform has rapid publication of all fuel costs for forecourt prices? That is approved by the Competition and Markets Authority and the RAC estimates it could take up to 3p off a litre, in addition to the specific rural relief scheme that he mentions.
5 Jan 2026 · Venezuela · Hansard source
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What message does the Foreign Secretary think that this weekend’s outbreak of unilateral acts of violence, kidnap and taking assets outside of international law sent to Valdimir Putin, particularly with reference to Russia’s view of the need to seriously negotiate peace with Ukraine? Will the Foreign Secretary confer with her Ukrainian counterparts about giving our Ukrainian guests the option of a right to settle in the UK? Will the Minister meet me and Ukrainian guests to discuss options moving forward?
17 Dec 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source
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I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I am a sitting councillor in Teignbridge. Looking at the figures—which I have been desperately trying to do, although they are tiny—it looks to me like Teignbridge is getting a negative change in this year’s settlement of -0.07%, while Devon gets a small increase. I suspect that might not adequately make up for what Devon lost last year in the rural services grant. Does the Minister have any hope for our finding a way to solve the problem of delivering services in a rural area, even though we have areas of high deprivation? That is a common thing across the House, and it is clearly hitting everywhere.
16 Dec 2025 · Quarries: Planning Policy · Hansard source
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The hon. Member’s situation sounds very familiar to me. In my constituency, in the middle of Kingsteignton, we have a large clay quarry called Zitherixon, whose operators are trying to extend their permission for mining, even though it has been established for some 300 years and planning permissions are somewhat ancient. Does the hon. Member agree that, however the mining is permitted, whether by appeal or by planning some time ago, those doing it must be held to the most modern and best possible environmental and residential standards for local people?
10 Dec 2025 · AI Safety · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. We have had some interesting contributions so far. I fully agree that we need to look at regulation, but I question whether we can regulate a technology. Today, every search we do is already powered by AI. To regulate a technology is a bit like trying to regulate a wheel rather than regulating the car. We need to look at how it is used and how it is then delivered. We have talked about many different types of AI, and we must be clear that today’s artificial intelligence with pretrained generative output is different from the potential future of general AI, which is something else again and a whole new question. Today’s technology takes a question and gives us an answer. Most of the harms that we have heard about in the debate are not new—they can already happen using other means—but AI makes them quicker, faster and easier to deliver, so what could have been done in PaintShop five years ago can now be done with AI in moments, and without the same levels of skill. There are not new harms; there are just new ways of using those tools. We need to look carefully at regulation and not focus too specifically on it as a technology, but think about the outcomes and how people are using. That is what needs to be regulated. AI is very good at pattern recognition. Essentially what we see today in ChatGPT and others is the same technology that I was taught at university many years ago; it is just that now we have the compute power to run those neural networks that can recognise patterns. They are trained: feed them 5,000 pictures of a cat and they can identify a picture of a cat. It is slightly more subtle and advanced now, because we have added good natural language processing and large language models— that big data. We are feeding them much more data so that they can recognise more things. There is huge value and opportunity in that, which we must be careful not to regulate into insignificance. I will say one other thing. There is a fundamental problem with AI: it is non-deterministic. Because it is recognising patterns, we cannot predict what it will do. Therefore, our current testing methodology of a known set of data, a known process and an expected set of outcomes cannot be relied on, because AI will give an answer that could be this, that or t’other. We must think about how we use it in processes and how we expect the output to be regular, because it will not be. We do not get the same answer twice—but that has been true of Google for a long time. If any hon. Member asked the same question as me on Google, they would get different answers.
10 Dec 2025 · Village Schools · Hansard source
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It is a similar story in rural Devon. In my constituency, schools in Broadhempston and Bishopsteignton are seeing falling roll numbers. Without the critical input of a core funding floor and help with transport, those schools may eventually close, which will kill those villages. We must not allow that to happen.
9 Dec 2025 · Net Zero Transition: Consumer-led Flexibility · Hansard source
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That had not occurred to me, but it is an amazing idea; people taking their mobile power source with them—fantastic. That brings me on to other solutions that we should be looking at, particularly community energy generation, community networks and community power consortia, as well as business inclusion—businesses that can generate more electricity during the day than they are using. We should be encouraging those things to happen, moving away from the centralised model of the past and towards the distributed and inclusive model of the future. While flexibility is an excellent step, it will obviously not solve all the issues. We still need to fundamentally change energy generation contracts to de-link the cost of electricity from the price of gas. That will need to be done as well, but all these things are largely contractual issues, not technical ones. We do not need to reinvent something humongously different; we simply need to get the contracts right and change the energy market. I say “simply”—I understand that these changes have their complexities, but they are achievable. We know what we need to do. The other massive energy issue is home insulation, which must not be forgotten. It is the single most important thing we need to do to reduce our fuel usage. The district council that I led demonstrated that very well—I draw hon. Members attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which notes that I am still a councillor on Teignbridge district council—when it started building council houses for the first time in 30 years. The first pair of semi-detached houses that we built are well insulated, with solar panels on the roof and air source heat pumps. At the height of the gas price crisis, the power bill for that home was just £500. We can do that with modern insulation and modern efficiencies. Flexibility is one extra piece that we need to further reduce the cost. It is all part of a journey, and we are going in the right direction. I urge the Government to take faster action and to do everything they can to make it happen. As we have heard, industry is already looking for it. Let us make it happen.
9 Dec 2025 · Net Zero Transition: Consumer-led Flexibility · Hansard source
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May I draw to the hon. Member’s attention the analogy with off-peak train tickets? That is a similar way of using flexibility and offering consumers cheaper tickets when the trains are empty. He would have us believe that that is not a good thing, but it is exactly the same with offering flexibility in electricity consumption.
9 Dec 2025 · Net Zero Transition: Consumer-led Flexibility · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. My hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) has made the case extremely well. I think I have heard unanimous opinion around the Chamber that we should not only do this, but do it now with some urgency. Flexibility first is the way to go. I will go one level further than the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who called this a “win-win”: I would call this a win-win-win. We can shave £1.3 billion off infrastructure costs through actions like this, which will be reflected in every single person’s bill. That is a massive win. It is also a win for producers because it is easier to balance production and consumption, and it is a win for individual consumers who will reduce their individual prices. It is three wins in one. Why would we not want to do that? I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel)—we should have done this yesterday. The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago; the second best time is now. We are at the point of the second best time, but let us use this time and make sure that it happens. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate in pushing the Government to take action urgently. When preparing for this debate, I remembered a geography school trip I went on where we looked at last-century solutions for balancing the grid. We went to visit Dinorwig, which is a pumped storage system—or was; I am not sure it is still going—in the hills in Wales. During the night, it pumps the water from the lake at the bottom of the hill up into a corrie at the top—aptly, as it turns out. As was quoted in the ad break in the middle of “Coronation Street”, when people switched on their kettles and created a power surge, that system could switch on in 30 seconds and provide significant amounts of power into the grid. It was a very good solution, but it is last century’s solution. What we need is an information-based solution, an individually empowering solution, such as we are talking about here, with consumer flexibility coming first.
8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Member give way?
8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Member give way?
8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source
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The hon. Lady is very kind. Is she aware that the Government papers also describe using digital ID for the right to rent as well as for the right to work?
8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source
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Perhaps I misunderstood, but I think that the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) has just asked for the police to have the right to demand digital ID on the spot—therefore, “Papers, please.”
8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Lady give way?
8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Member give way?

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