Nick Timothy MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  On that point, will the Minister give way?

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I was inviting the hon. Lady to withdraw what she and her colleague said about my hon. Friend, because it was incorrect.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I do not know whether the Minister is allowed to intervene, but she would be welcome to do so. [ Interruption. ] She has been here longer than I have.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution, but the point is that the courts are interpreting the law as they see it. If we in this place believe that interpretation to be wrong, it is our job to correct it through legislation, and I think the appropriate way to do so would be to extend section 29J of the Act in the way I have described.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  Before I turn to my new clause, I welcome in particular new clause 7, on non-crime hate incidents, and new clause 150, proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden), which would ban sexual relationships between first cousins. This Bill presents an opportunity for the Government to support my new clause 108 to protect freedom of expression. That is urgently needed, because existing legislation has been manipulated to create a blasphemy law for the protection of Islam from criticism and protest. As I said in my speech last week, I am not a Muslim, and I reject any attempt to tell me that I cannot say what I think about any religion. No ideas or beliefs should be above criticism or scrutiny.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q6. The Home Secretary says that we should judge her success in smashing the gangs by whether the number of channel crossings falls, but under this Government the numbers are up by more than 30%. By which date should we judge the Home Secretary, and if she fails, will she be fired?

• 16 Jun 2025 · Iran-Israel Conflict · Hansard source

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  The Foreign Secretary has said, and just repeated, that no military threat can prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, but surely that is not correct. Given the danger to us all from Iran, which the Foreign Secretary acknowledged in his statement, and its continued attempts to increase its ability to enrich uranium, will he very clearly agree with me that Israel was right to strike the nuclear sites?

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

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  The official document published online by the Government says that the national inquiry will only “co-ordinate a series of targeted local investigations.” How many local investigations will the inquiry co-ordinate? Will it cover the whole of England and Wales—yes or no?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Decoupling Electricity and Gas Prices · Hansard source

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  If the hon. Member wants to talk about my constituency, he can talk about the betrayal of the Sunnica application, which is being imposed on my constituency by the Energy Secretary. The public will see that the answer was not a “no” from the Minister. Families across the country should be worried; this is becoming a pattern. For weeks, I asked Ministers about their plan to align with the European carbon price. For weeks, they denied that it would happen, and then, once the local elections were done, they did it, increasing electricity bills by stealth for every family and business in the country. Now it is the same for gas bills. When will the Minister be straight with people and admit that the Government are adding to the bills of families and businesses, not cutting them?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Decoupling Electricity and Gas Prices · Hansard source

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  Happy birthday, Mr Speaker. The Energy Secretary has said that there is a “principled case” for removing green taxes from electricity bills, and the cost being met by increases in green taxes on gas bills. That would be a net tax rise for every household—80% of the country—that uses gas. This was not an argument that he made before the election, so can the Minister take this opportunity to rule out any increase in taxes, charges or levies on gas bills?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Freedom of Expression (Religion or Belief System) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about freedom of expression in relation to religion or belief systems; and for connected purposes. I do not believe that Mohammed was a Prophet sent by God. I do not accept the instructions he said he received from the Archangel Gabriel. I do not accept that the Sunna, or body of Islamic laws, has any relevance to me. I respect the religious beliefs of others, but I do not mind if Mohammed is satirised, criticised or mocked. I am not a Muslim, and I choose not to live by the moral codes set out by Islam. I am a Christian, and I should make it clear that I do not think anybody should be prosecuted for satirising, criticising or mocking Jesus either. England and Wales abolished blasphemy laws in 2008, and Scotland abolished them in 2021, but even then, those laws had not been used for decades. The last blasphemy trial took place in 1977, and the state has not brought a public prosecution for blasphemy in more than a century, but now, blasphemy laws are back. I have been advised not to refer to two high-profile cases of people being arrested, charged and prosecuted for causing harassment, alarm or distress to Muslims or even, nonsensically, to Islam itself. While I will keep my speech to the conceptual, I invite the House to recall that there are real examples of what I raise in the criminal justice system right now. The issue is the way that sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 are being used—far beyond the intent of Parliament—to police what we can and cannot say about Islam. I will come to the details of sections 4 and 5, but first I want to say something about the intent of the Public Order Act. The long title of the Act makes it clear that its purpose was to abolish some common law and statutory offences to make way for new offences relating to public order. Nowhere in the Second Reading debate from 1986 did anybody raise the need to protect religions or followers of religions from offence. The context of the Act was football hooliganism and the riots in Brixton and Broadwater Farm. It is true that part III of the Act created new offences relating to racial hatred, and this was amended to include religious hatred by the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. However, section 29J of the Public Order Act, to which we will return, says: “Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents”. We can therefore be confident that the Public Order Act, even as amended, was never intended to become a blasphemy law. That obvious conclusion is reinforced by the fact that the controversies regarding blasphemy and Islam in this country began two years after its introduction, in 1988, with the publication of “The Satanic Verses”. Since that year, and the protests and fatwa against Sir Salman Rushdie, our public conversation about Islam has been limited through a mixture of self-censorship and more official restrictions, such as the definition of Islamophobia accepted by many public bodies. These restrictions are motivated not by a desire to avoid offence—consider the criticism and mockery made of other religions—but by fear of a violent response by those who are offended. Some say public order offences are not the same as a blasphemy law, and that it can be legitimate to prosecute somebody for saying something that might cause wider disorder. Perhaps in some circumstances that may be so, but we should interrogate this line of thinking. First, the Crown Prosecution Service gave the game away by charging one man with causing “distress” to the “religious institution of Islam”, which is pretty much the dictionary definition of blasphemy. Secondly, twisting the law to make a protestor responsible for the violent reaction of those who will not tolerate the opinions of others is wrong; it destroys our freedom of speech. Some argue that although this may be regrettable, it is now an unavoidable consequence of the multicultural society in which we live today. By this logic, the state must police the boundaries between different ethnic and religious groups to avoid disorder, but we should be clear that that means state intrusion and a loss of liberty on some occasions, and mob rule on others. This is the very essence of the two-tier policing row we have seen recently: rough justice for those belonging to identity groups that play by the rules, and freedom from justice for those belonging to groups willing to take to the streets and threaten violence. This is the logic of using the Public Order Act to prohibit us from saying what we like about a religion. A person may be found guilty because of the violent reaction of those offended by their actions. From Sir Salman Rushdie to the Batley teacher still in hiding with his family, the threat of violence is what lies behind these new blasphemy laws. Perhaps we should not be surprised. There are at least 14 Muslim-majority countries where the penalty for blasphemy or apostacy is death, and we have significant diaspora populations from many of them. With the number of people here who came from those countries growing and the increasing assertiveness of organised political Islam in Britain, this is a problem that seems likely only to get more severe. But the answer is not to surrender to the mob; it is to hold the line, and that is why today I bring forward this Bill. I said earlier that section 29J of the Public Order Act protects “criticism”, “insult” and even “abuse” of “religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents”. However, that applies only to part III of the legislation, because part III introduced offences relating to racial hatred, later amended to include religious hatred. Nobody thought sections 4 and 5, which in part I of the Act make it an offence to cause “harassment, alarm or distress” by using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” would be used to criminalise the expression of opinions about religious belief. This Bill would therefore extend the scope of section 29J to the whole Public Order Act—thus preventing the use of sections 4 and 5 as a de facto blasphemy law—and would apply section 29J also to section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. In so doing, this Bill would restore free speech as it applies to religion in England and Wales. It would stop the police, prosecutors and judges from creating a blasphemy law from legislation that was never passed for that purpose. It would send the strongest powerful message from this place, where political power legitimately and democratically resides, that this country will not tolerate intimidation, violence or censorship, that there will be no special treatment here for Islam, and that there will be no surrender to the thugs who want to impose their beliefs and culture on the rest of us. Question put and agreed to. Ordered, That Nick Timothy, John Cooper, Dr Luke Evans, Mr Richard Holden, Robert Jenrick, Rupert Lowe, Rebecca Paul, Jack Rankin, Sir Alec Shelbrooke, Bradley Thomas, Tom Tugendhat and Sir Gavin Williamson present the Bill. Nick Timothy accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 July, and to be printed (Bill 257).

• 10 Jun 2025 · Nuclear Power: Investment · Hansard source

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  Are you quoting Nick Clegg?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Nuclear Power: Investment · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. The Conservative party is a pro-nuclear party and we welcome any decisions, backed by investment, that increase Britain’s nuclear capacity, because we cannot deliver cheap, reliable and secure energy without it. Although the investment announced today by the Secretary of State is significant, it is a fraction of the £230 billion cost, which will ultimately be borne by consumers, of his plan to decarbonise the grid. Unlike the intermittent technologies backed at such cost by the Secretary of State, nuclear provides reliable baseload power. It generates inertia to stabilise our grid. Nuclear power plants require substantially less new grid infrastructure compared with dispersed generation from wind and solar. It is to the shame of successive Governments over many years that Britain relinquished its status as a world leader in civil nuclear technologies. In 1965, we had more nuclear reactors than the United States, the USSR and the rest of the world put together. Between 1956 and 1966, we built 10 nuclear power stations, but we gave all that up. The contribution of nuclear to our power generation peaked in 1994 and has fallen consistently since then. Labour came to power in 1997, saying that it saw no economic case for the building of any new nuclear power stations. In 2010, the coalition agreement ruled out public investment in nuclear. It was the last Conservative Government who planned the largest revival of nuclear power in 70 years and it is thanks to that work that the Secretary of State has been able to make many of these announcements today. Can he reiterate, despite the headlines this morning, that the final investment decision has not yet been made? He said in his statement that he will announce it in the summer, but can he give us a more precise date when we will be told the total Government investment and the private capital raised? This statement is a downgrade on what the previous Government put in motion. Today, the Energy Secretary has announced only one small modular reactor. There is no clear target to increase nuclear power generation and no news on Wylfa. The nuclear industry is expecting news of a third gigawatt scale reactor. The previous Government purchased the land and committed to build, but on this today the Energy Secretary said nothing. Can he commit to the planning inherited for a third gigawatt scale plant at Wylfa and will he recommit to the Conservative policy of 24 GW of nuclear power by 2050? Although it is good news that Rolls-Royce will build our first small modular reactors, this is a downgrade on what was previously planned. Can the Secretary of State tell us why he has awarded just one technology rather than two as set out previously? Furthermore, will he commit, as other countries have, to going faster? Canada has approved a plan for four SMRs by 2029. As things stand, Britain will not have SMRs connected to the grid until the 2030s. The contrast between this caution on nuclear and the Government’s rush to decarbonise the entire grid in just five years, while betting the house on unreliable and intermittent renewable technologies and shutting down British oil and gas in the North sea, could not be clearer. We need the Energy Secretary to focus on the positive, not to stake our country’s future and people’s bills on ideology.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. If the hon. Member for Ipswich were more confident in his arguments, he might want to stand up and take part. As I was saying, it is bad energy policy, reducing our energy security while increasing the cost of energy for families and businesses. It is bad farming policy because it puts some of our best agricultural land beyond use, and as this debate has shown, it is bad for public safety, because the Government, in their haste and zeal, want to ignore the very serious dangers these batteries bring.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations · Hansard source

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  I am pleased to close the debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition, and I hope to give a voice to your constituents, Madam Deputy Speaker, given the interest in this important subject in Romsey and Southampton North. I congratulate the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) on securing the debate and making such a comprehensive speech. He was even wise enough to quote the fire experts from the county that matters most—by which I obviously mean Suffolk. The fact that there were such clear themes from Members across the House and across the divides of the House—right and left, net zero enthusiasts and sceptics—shows that we are dealing with an undeniable problem that the Government have not yet gripped. There was a clear consensus across the House, from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), that there is a total absence of regulation with this risky technology. There was also agreement, from the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas), about the effects of the policy on the countryside, such as on the availability of good farmland and on rural roads, as well as the challenges of fire service response times in the country. The hon. Members for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) and for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) made the point that BESS fires can have serious effects on our precious rivers. I also want to single out the speech by the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage), who drew attention to the dodgy finances of a lot of the firms behind a lot of these applications. That is something we need to investigate further. There was broad agreement on the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) that these battery sites should not be allowed to go ahead until a proper system of regulation is introduced. I am afraid that I am going to breach the cross-party love-in by picking up on what my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) said about ideology. The Government are betting on battery energy storage systems thanks to their ideological aim to decarbonise the entire grid within five years, therefore choosing to depend on unreliable, intermittent and expensive renewables. That is the root cause of the dependence on the technologies we are debating. [ Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) can intervene if he wishes. It is the consequence of the zeal of the Energy Secretary that we are debating these subjects. Thanks to net zero policy costs, which are relevant more than wholesale gas prices, Britain already has the highest energy costs in Europe. Pushing policy to run faster than technology will allow risks a crisis in the grid and in our economy.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member will note the enthusiasm and ideological zeal of the Energy Secretary, which began, I think, in his very first week when he came to this House and announced that he was imposing masses of solar farms on parts of the country and, in the case of the solar farm in my constituency, completely disregarding the independent expert examining authority. That is a clear difference between the two Governments we are discussing. Mass solar is inefficient and produces less power even than wind, which has a higher load factor—between 10% and 11% for solar, between 22% and 28% for onshore wind, and between 30% and 38% for offshore wind. And that is wind, which is unreliable in itself. The comparison worsens next to nuclear, as it would take 8.5 million solar panels, taking up at least 10,000 acres of often top-quality farmland, to produce enough power to match an average reactor. To the surprise of no one, the World Bank says we are one of the countries with the “least generous conditions” for PV. Indeed, we rank higher only than Ireland. Batteries and solar panels also expose us to dependence on China, which produces more than 80% of the world’s solar panels. Many are made with slave labour, and perhaps all contain kill switches controlled by Beijing. While an amendment to the GB Energy Bill was passed to ban the Government’s new quango from using slave-made imports, it does not apply to private sector purchases. So much for ending our dependence on foreign dictatorships and human rights abusers. So much for our energy security. Giant solar fails even on its own terms, because it is four times more carbon-intensive than wind and nuclear. Apart from biomass, solar is the most polluting of all renewables. As this debate has shown, there are very real safety concerns about the battery sites that we must address. These battery sites pose a public safety risk that the Government are simply ignoring. With 150 BESS sites already in operation, and with well over 1,000 planning applications in the pipeline, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) noted, this needs to be confronted as a matter of urgency. Building these sites and trying to deal with the safety questions later is reckless, expensive and dangerous. When a fire starts at a BESS site, highly toxic emissions are released into the air. They include chemicals such as hydrogen fluoride, heavy metals and carcinogens, forcing people to stay indoors. These fires do not need oxygen to keep burning, so they can last for weeks. They can be reignited easily, and the health effects of exposure to these gases are a major concern. Just look at the fire in Liverpool four years ago, which several Members cited. It took 59 hours to put out. In answer to my written questions, the Government have confirmed that no environmental impact assessment has been made of that incident, so no lessons are being learned. And this year we have seen fires at battery sites near Rothienorman in Aberdeenshire, and in East Tilbury in Essex. I have repeatedly raised fire safety directly with Ministers, but no satisfactory answers have been given. The Government have made no assessment of the adequacy of fire services near battery sites. There is minimal oversight from the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency. The National Fire Chiefs Council recommends a minimum distance of 25 metres between grid-scale batteries and occupied buildings, but it is only guidance and there is no statutory requirement to maintain this distance. As the Liverpool fire proves, a major blaze can affect people over a much wider area anyway. We need clear involvement from the fire and rescue services in the planning application process for battery sites, looking at concerns around construction, fire safety and retrofitting. Henry Griffin from Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service has described battery sites as an “emerging risk”, saying: “There can be complications with vapour clouds and fires will last a long time.” Fire services have no legal power to enforce safety measures on battery sites. We need legislation and residents need a say. Sunnica is one of the biggest solar and battery farms in the country, as mentioned by my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane), and it has been imposed on our constituents by the Energy Secretary. Three days after entering office, the Energy Secretary approved the application, overruling the advice of examining authorities and, quite clearly from his answer to my question, he had not read the evidence—breaching his quasi-judicial responsibility. Sunnica will cover over 2,500 acres of prime agricultural land across West Suffolk and East Cambridgeshire. Three battery sites will be built, and the whole project will actually increase carbon emissions. Sunnica has treated residents with contempt and used consultants who specialise in questionable assessments of the quality of farmland. Sunnica is also located very close to the RAF bases at Mildenhall and Lakenheath, which host the US air force, and many service personnel live in the area. We believe Russia has already targeted those bases with drones recently, and the director general of MI5 says that arson and sabotage are part of the Russian modus operandi in European countries. To approve Sunnica without assessing this very serious danger is grossly negligent. Rushing towards mass solar and battery farms like this is an act of ideological irresponsibility. It is bad energy policy, reducing our energy security while increasing the cost of energy for families and businesses.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Yesterday, a man was convicted of a public order offence after burning a Koran outside the Turkish embassy. The judge said that the fact that the man was attacked was proof that he was guilty of disorderly behaviour. This is grotesque, and means that in effect, we have a blasphemy law. Does the Justice Secretary believe that this should hold, or will the Government back my Bill to put an end to all of this madness next week?

• 2 Jun 2025 · Draft Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  Forgive me, Mrs Hobhouse, although the main recipient of the subsidy that we are talking about is Drax itself.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Draft Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  The Government Whip could stand and refer to the names of the companies in receipt of the subsidies, if she so wishes.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Draft Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  If the Minister is interested in the security of supply, why will the Government not allow new licences for oil and gas in the North sea?

• 2 Jun 2025 · Draft Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  And, as I say, the main recipient of the public subsidy will be Drax. When will we see the NESO modelling justifying the extension of this subsidy scheme? When will the Government publish details of their new sustainability criteria and means of enforcement to ensure that biomass is properly sourced? The Minister should also answer why the Department only sought the advice of the Subsidy Advice Unit on its plans last Friday, knowing that we would be voting on the draft regulations today. The SAU is now running a two-week consultation and will not publish its report until 10 July. There should not be a vote on extending the subsidy until Parliament and the public have been able to examine thoroughly the SAU’s findings. These are big questions that should have been answered before the draft regulations were debated. Beyond those concerns, we must also ask ourselves whether subsidising companies like Drax is good energy policy. The evidence shows that it is clearly not. The company that I have been discussing is an expensive white elephant for which we have been paying ever since the Energy Secretary first held his post back in 2009. Since the ramp-up that he authorised, the company has cut down 300 million trees, six times more than in the entire New Forest. The company has received £6.5 billion of public subsidy. In the nonsensical world of net zero, it has been classed as clean energy, but it is far from being a source of clean energy. It is a plant for burning wood imported from forests across the world. As new forests are planted to offset the emissions from chopping down the trees, turning them into pellets and burning them, we are supposed to believe that it is clean. The truth is that the plant we are discussing produces four times the carbon dioxide emitted from our last coal plant, which itself produced twice as many emissions as gas. The imported wood has come from rare, at-risk and irreplaceable forests and arrives here on diesel-powered ships.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Draft Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I certainly will, but we are talking about legislation permitting the subsidy of biomass. It is not cheap to do so; we pay £500 million for the privilege, and the draft regulations will make it even more costly for taxpayers. Every megawatt-hour produced will now cost £160—more than double the cost of gas power—up from £138 before. Burning these trees is raising the cost of wood globally while reducing biodiversity in key areas and eroding natural carbon capture. It gets worse. The sixth carbon budget demands the removal of 23 million tonnes of emissions to avoid even more painful behaviour changes from the general public. This company is being used as an expensive “get out of jail” card, with more public money potentially coming down the line for carbon capture. It was for those reasons that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) withdrew Government support for schemes such as this last year, which led the chief executive officer of the company that we have been discussing to call her “reckless and irresponsible”. Cutting down and burning trees in the name of saving the planet is not just reckless and irresponsible, but complete madness. If Members here today believe that this is environmentalism and a solution to climate change, I have a bridge to sell them. The Climate Change Act 2008 has created a complex web of targets, quotas and regulations, as well as policies set by a monomaniacal and unaccountable quango tying the hands of elected Governments and twisting policy out of shape. It is producing an energy system that is less secure and more expensive, while doing nothing to prevent rising carbon emissions worldwide. That is why we will vote against the draft regulations. I urge colleagues from all parties to join us and show that they are truly committed to a secure and rational energy system, and not throw more money at the Energy Secretary and his very costly mistakes.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Draft Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse, and pleased to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. Today we consider the Government’s plan to go on subsidising Drax. Drax is of course not mentioned in the draft regulations, and Ministers had hoped to sneak through this contract for difference without much scrutiny, but we have a responsibility to examine what is actually a very significant change to our country’s energy system. The draft regulations will push ahead with the Government’s four-year extension of the subsidy scheme for Drax, from 2027 to 2031. Such a major move is being made without proper debate or awareness of all the facts. Ministers and Drax itself have kept vital information hidden from scrutiny, covering up the true costs and business practices of the company. Concern has been expressed about Drax in both Houses of Parliament in recent months. The Public Accounts Committee says that Ofgem allows Drax to “mark its own homework” when it comes to subsidy claims. The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has criticised the Government for not sharing key documents about the true nature and cost of their dealings with Drax. Just a couple of months ago, the company was taken to court by a whistleblower who claimed that Drax had made attempts to “deliberately conceal” the unsustainable sources of its wood and “had likely broken its legal obligations owed to its government funders”. Thanks to the investigations by BBC “Panorama” and others, we know Drax’s behaviour has not been honest. Drax executives have been caught misleading the media, covering up reports and manipulating evidence. Ofgem fined Drax £25 million for inaccurately reporting data about its sources of wood. We have seen evidence that Drax sourced wood from primary forests in British Columbia and elsewhere. There is more than enough cause for many to doubt the ethical integrity of Drax and whether it should receive more public money. Before presenting the draft regulations to the House, Ministers should have done their due diligence and published this evidence, so I ask the Minister these questions. When will we see the legal documents associated with the recent court case? When will we see the 2022 KPMG report on Drax’s accounts, which the Prime Minister said on the Floor of the House he would look at? When will we see the Ofgem audit? When will we see the NESO modelling justifying the extension of the subsidy scheme?

• 22 May 2025 · Remote Betting and Gaming Duty: Horseracing · Hansard source

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  1. If she will produce an impact assessment for the proposed remote betting and gaming duty on the British horseracing industry.

• 22 May 2025 · Remote Betting and Gaming Duty: Horseracing · Hansard source

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  The racing industry is getting a bit tired of the warm words and lack of action. At the last oral questions, the Secretary of State said that “we need to treat different forms of gambling differently”, —[ Official Report , 3 April 2025; Vol. 765, c. 412.] but the Government have since proposed a flat tax on all online gambling, which fails to distinguish between betting on sports like horseracing, which is limited by the number of races and requires knowledge and thought, and online casinos and gaming. However, problem rates for bets on racing are about the same as for lottery scratchcards. Will the Minister commit here and now to making sure that betting on sports like racing is not treated the same as betting on online casinos and gaming?