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Mike Martin MP: speeches 2025

112 published records · newest first.

Speeches

  • 2 Jun 2025 · UK Nuclear Deterrent · Hansard source
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    I am in favour of this new method of delivery, which gives us more options and probably makes it less likely in the long run that nuclear weapons will be used. However, cost is key, and with 20% of the defence budget already taken up by the defence nuclear enterprise, it is clear that our conventional capabilities are suffering. Can the Minister tell us whether the increased cost of these new warheads will come out of the Ministry of Defence’s budget, or out of a special Treasury reserve, as has sometimes been the case previously?

  • 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source
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    Will the Minister give way?

  • 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source
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    I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is being very generous, although I might suggest that he works on his queuing system a little bit. I understand that the timetable issue is a difficult one, and most things seem to be arriving in the spring with this Government, but could we talk about the format? Are we going to have the consultation, then a White Paper and then a Bill? Is that what it is going to look like? Will that perhaps be in the next King’s Speech?

  • 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source
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    rose —

  • 14 May 2025 · Gaza: UK Assessment · Hansard source
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    Very few issues in politics, particularly international politics, are black or white, but this is one such issue. The Israeli Government are using collective punishment of the civilian Palestinian population, which is illegal under international law and contravenes the Geneva conventions, to which Israel is party. Does the Minister think that the British Government have lost their moral and legal compass in continuing their tacit support for Israel?

  • 13 May 2025 · Flooding: Planning and Developer Responsibilities · Hansard source
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    Hawkhurst parish council and Southern Water recently came to see me to complain about a number of developers in my constituency who have mixed surface run-off with foul water, which is illegal. Does my hon. Friend agree that, although we of course need big housing developments, if developers are proven to have illegally mixed surface run-off and foul water when building them, they should have to make good what they did?

  • 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source
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    The hon. Lady is a great fan of honesty in this Chamber, so I am sure that she will give me an honest answer. One way of understanding Brexit is that it replaced a circular flow of people with a one-way flow of people. Does she think that Brexit increased or decreased migration into this country?

  • 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source
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    Does the Minister find it strange that in a debate on a Bill so important to Reform UK—indeed, it is the party’s raison d’être—80% of Reform UK MPs have left the Chamber and are, presumably, in the pub?

  • 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source
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    Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?

  • 7 May 2025 · Defence Sector Financing · Hansard source
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    The hon. Member is speaking eloquently about the need for joined-up financing and fundraising for defence, but the other side of that issue is clarity about what the Government want. A key example is space: the UK has significantly underperformed and punches well below its weight in defence space, which is spread across two Ministries. There is no clarity. The sector says, “We want just one person in Government to tell us what they want.” Does he agree that, as well as sorting out the funding, the Government’s key role is to be clear about what they want? I think that that is the strategy of which he speaks.

  • 2 Apr 2025 · British Indian Ocean Territory · Hansard source
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    This is perhaps a question for the Minister for the Armed Forces, who I notice is also on the Front Bench. On the buffer zone, can the Minister state categorically that it will be sufficiently wide to protect all the capabilities on the base?

  • 1 Apr 2025 · Support for Ukraine · Hansard source
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    As the Foreign Secretary knows, we have substantial engagement with, and deployment to, Estonia. Talk of peace in Ukraine is of course welcome and Britain should play its role in supporting that peace, but does he accept that any deployment of British troops to Ukraine increases the risk to the UK and its forces in Estonia?

  • 1 Apr 2025 · Support for Ukraine · Hansard source
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    16. What steps his Department is taking to support Ukraine.

  • 1 Apr 2025 · Royal British Legion · Hansard source
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    I noted when I spent time with the RBL in Tunbridge Wells that there has been an age shift, and that it is the old and the bold who are manning the barricades, as I am sure that many of us have seen that in our local branches. Will my hon. Friend join me in urging the Minister and the Government to connect service leavers—people of our generation, as my hon. Friend and I served at the same time—and the RBL in the areas where they are going to live?

  • 31 Mar 2025 · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Hansard source
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    One detects the hand of Russia here, much as one does across the entire periphery of Europe, from the High North, Ukraine, the Balkans and the Caucasus, which the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee mentioned, to the Sahel, the Maghreb and Libya, right over to the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. Will the Minister describe the British strategy for rolling back Russian destabilisation across the entire periphery of Europe?

  • 26 Mar 2025 · Resettlement of Ukrainians: Coatbridge · Hansard source
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    As the Minister knows, last month the Ukrainian permission extension scheme came into force, offering a further 18 months in the UK to our Ukrainian friends. Will she shed some light on the situation facing those Ukrainian guests who seek to enter further education, perhaps for three years, but who are unable to do so because they only have an 18 month extension to their visa?

  • 26 Mar 2025 · UK-China Relations · Hansard source
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    There are well-documented links between Russia and China. It is publicised and well-known that China buys Russia’s oil and all the rest of it. We are fighting Russia at the moment in Europe; it is our primary adversary. Why on earth would we want to have a close and stable relationship with China?

  • 24 Mar 2025 · European Union: UK Membership · Hansard source
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    Marvellous! Ladies and gentlemen, that was a perfect example. I could list example after example of small business owners who say, “You know what? We have had to stop 20% of our business. We are no longer able to turn a profit on it because of the time we have to spend filling out forms.” I will move on from the direct effects of Brexit on our trade with the European Union to its wider effects. One thing we see in the current geopolitical moment is the threat of tariffs. If we are honest, we probably thought we had seen the back of those in the early 1930s. But we are in this new world, which includes the United Kingdom becoming a target for tariffs from our supposed closest ally. We have seen a supine response from the British Government to the setting of tariffs against our steel industry. We are a market of 70 million people and the sixth largest economy in the world, but were we part of a market of several hundred million people—the largest trading area on the planet—would we be so supine? EU membership is about not just economics but security, which Brexit has damaged in many small ways. I speak, of course, of intelligence sharing and access to databases—the sharing of data across borders. We used to have the Dublin convention, which allowed us to negotiate the return of refugees, in a way that is not open to us now. However, damaging our relationship with Europe has damaged us in a more profound way, which is being exposed by the actions of the Trump Government, who are withdrawing the American security guarantee for Europe. We can quibble about whether that is happening, but the comments this weekend from Steve Witkoff should certainly give us pause for thought, and we should at least consider it a significant possibility. The Americans’ removal of that security guarantee exposes us all, and I will give hon. Members a very real example that happened just last week. The EU set up a defence fund that put money into European defence industries to pump-prime them and get them building equipment and munitions, but the UK has been excluded because we are not a member of the EU. We can quibble about the politics of that fund and about whether France’s role in it was right for European defence, but 20% of the European defence industry—the UK’s defence industry—is separated from the money that will buy all that kit. I will conclude by focusing on the economy and security, which are interlinked: a strong economy enables us to build strong defences, and the stability created by security and defence, appropriately deployed, allows economies to grow. It is also true that the money invested in defence helps our economy to grow, and Brexit is stopping us doing that. We must forge a closer relationship with Europe so the UK can start to shape the future, rather than have the future shape us.

  • 24 Mar 2025 · European Union: UK Membership · Hansard source
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    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. We are at a key geopolitical moment, which encompasses both economic issues and security and defence issues. Britain leaving the EU has damaged our economy. That is not a supposition; it is a fact. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the watchdog the Government are beholden to listen to for economic forecasts, says that our economy has been reduced by 4% because of Brexit. We can also look at the trade deals—for example, with Australia—that were held up and touted as a benefit of Brexit. We would have to look very hard, with a very powerful microscope, to see the bump in the UK GDP figures that we gained from the Australian trade deal, but we do not need to look hard to see our farmers’ anger and ire about the changes to food safety standards and the agricultural market in the UK. Small business owners I speak to in my community of Tunbridge Wells are absolutely appalled by Brexit. No matter what their small business is—whether they sell books, grow and export apples, or make art—Brexit has been a disaster.

  • 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source
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    Is one of the main causes of child poverty not the two-child benefit cap that the Conservative party introduced and the Labour party is continuing?

  • 19 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source
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    The shadow Minister has mentioned cafés, and when we have been debating this point previously in the House, I have mentioned Basil’s café in Tunbridge Wells. It now informs me that it is having to put its prices up because of the NIC rises. Does the shadow Minister think that we are going to see a bump in the inflation figures as a result of this tax?

  • 18 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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    T9. Kent county council plans to introduce 10,000 on-street car chargers over the next decade. To put that in context, Kent has a population of 1.6 million people. At this rate, Kent will have burned down by the time we all have electric on-street car charging. What can the Secretary of State do to speed this up?

  • 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source
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    On Friday, I visited Kent college in my constituency, which has recently instituted a ban. Phones are collected in the morning and put into pouches, and at the end of the school day, the children can get them back. The school has found benefits for the collection of lost property, which is attached to the cages that have the phones in them. Is the right hon. Member aware of any cases where a school has instituted a ban, and it has been seen to have negative, rather than positive, outcomes?

  • 12 Mar 2025 · Housing Development Planning: Water Companies · Hansard source
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    My hon. Friend has just said that a lot of sewerage is unadopted. Say it was built in the 1800s by public subscription and nobody has adopted it since. That allows water companies to shrug and say, “Search me, guv’” when there is a problem. Does she think that the Government should by statute or law require that all of these unadopted watercourses be adopted by a water company or the Environment Agency, so that when there is a problem there is someone we can point to and say, “This is your problem to solve”?

  • 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source
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    Could the shadow Minister describe Liz Truss’s growth test?

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