Nick Timothy MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 14 Jan 2025 · Employment Rights Bill (Twentieth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

• 14 Jan 2025 · Employment Rights Bill (Nineteeth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Government amendment 190 is about the powers in section 37 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which relate to the voluntary provision of a device for an enforcement officer to access. If there is not agreement, I am not sure what arises. The Minister just said that the proposal is about dealing with a situation whereby a negotiation between the fair work agency and the company has not led to a resolution. What happens if there is not agreement?

• 14 Jan 2025 · Employment Rights Bill (Nineteeth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Government amendment 190 seeks to amend the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 by extending the powers conferred by section 37 of that Act to enforcement officers for the purposes of part 5 of this Bill. Section 37 of the 2022 Act allows the authorities to extract information shared on electronic devices for the purposes, among other things, of criminal investigations. I have some familiarity with these issues from my time working with the police, security and intelligence agencies and other public bodies with investigatory responsibilities when I worked in the Home Office between 2010 and 2015. Then, we were confronted with the danger that changing technology meant that the ability of these important public agencies to access the communications data necessary for their work was diminishing. That was because the nature of the way we communicate was changing from conventional phone calls and written material to internet-based communication. That obviously included methods such as messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal but also messaging within other apps like Facebook or even within online gaming systems.

• 14 Jan 2025 · UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue · Hansard source

  More

  I am slightly worried that investors will be watching this statement and wondering what planet the Chancellor is on. She just said that she is investing in transport infrastructure, but she is actually cutting transport capital budgets. She has previously said that she wants only one Budget a year, and the March statement is billed only as a fiscal forecast. Can she rule out any new tax rises or departmental spending cuts in the March statement, or will the fiscal forecast become an emergency Budget?

• 14 Jan 2025 · Drones: High-security Prisons · Hansard source

  More

  Apart from the serious security concerns that this activity raises, it shows that prisons bring resource pressures for local police forces. In West Suffolk, where Highpoint prison is due to grow significantly in the years ahead, the police have asked me to ask the Minister to ensure they receive additional funding to reflect that pressure. Will he do so?

• 13 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  Can the Home Secretary confirm that none of her Ministers or officials engages with or is in touch with the Muslim Council of Britain, and that there is no correspondence between No. 10, the Home Office and other Departments about restoring ties with the organisation?

• 9 Jan 2025 · Public Finances: Borrowing Costs · Hansard source

  More

  The issue here is spending. Will the Chief Secretary confirm that the Labour manifesto said that a Labour Government would increase spending by £9.5 billion a year, and the Treasury Red Book is increasing that to £76 billion? Is that not the issue?

• 9 Jan 2025 · Employment Rights Bill (Seventeenth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I want to add my support in principle for the idea of a single labour market regulator. I have written about that in the past in different ways and can claim a small amount of credit for the commissioning of the Taylor review into the gig economy when I was working in 10 Downing Street. These issues are very important to me. Hopefully that will reassure the Minister and Labour Members of my cross-party credentials when that might be necessary. We can all think of ways in which different kinds of labour market exploitation—non-payment of the national minimum wage or living wage; breaches of terms and conditions, health and safety or holiday rights; and illegal working, among many other examples—can be difficult to address if the laws are tough but the enforcement is poor. Those on both sides of the Committee can agree on that. I want to add to the questions that have already been raised. I think the Minister said that the idea is that no additional powers will be granted and that this is just a consolidation. My understanding is that the fair work agency will not be a single monolithic agency; it is more about different strands of work being brought under a single leadership. If that is the case, presumably the different agencies that exist will do so until this legal change comes into effect. Presumably, the powers of the officers in each of those agencies differ in certain ways. Will that remain the case under the one body, or will there be interoperability and transfer of officers within the different sections under the single regulator? Or is the idea that the officers across those different entities will all assume the maximum powers that exist at the moment so that they can operate across all the different responsibilities of the new agency? I think that would still mean a net increase in powers across those people. What work has been done in the Department to give us an idea of the numbers we are talking about? If the Minister could answer that and then write to us with some more detail and statistics, I would be grateful.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I shared several hours twice weekly with the hon. Gentleman when we served on the Employment Rights Bill Committee. His creativity in defending the indefensible was admirable in that Committee, as it is today. On top of the things I have already listed, measures in the Bill before us will make things yet worse, including the compulsion to follow the national curriculum, which is about to be weakened by the review by Becky Francis, and the removal of freedom on pay and conditions. The Education Secretary has today failed to explain how she will meet the commitments she made to avoid cutting pay for some teachers. In addition, Ministers are granting themselves unspecified powers to direct academies in future; I think we know what that might mean. The Bill, and the other changes introduced by this Government, are a deliberate act of ideological vandalism. Standards will fall as a result, children will suffer, and the legacy of the Education Secretary will be the provision of a case study in what does not work in education.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I declare my interest as a former director of the New Schools Network. As such, I have worked with many great free school and academy leaders. I am enormously proud of the huge improvements in English schools over the last 14 years. In primary schools, English children are the best readers in the west. The PISA rankings show that we are: 11th in the world for maths, up from 27th under Labour; 13th in science, up from 16th under Labour; and 13th in reading, up from 25th under Labour. In response to various debates and questions, the Education Secretary has made it clear that she does not really like these statistics, but the same story is told by the “progress in international reading literacy” study and the “trends in international mathematics and science” study. It is a shame that Ministers cannot bring themselves to celebrate this success story, or even to congratulate the leader of the best school in the country, Katharine Birbalsingh of the Michaela community school. Facts are very inconvenient when Ministers are so ideological about education. The magic formula behind this success is one championed by Tony Blair, David Laws and all of us on the Conservative Benches today. The formula is freedom, accountability and evidence of what works. Through this Bill and other measures, the Government are unfortunately taking a sledgehammer to each of these principles. New free schools have been cancelled, the trust capacity fund has gone, and funds for schools that are planning to academise have been taken away. And this Bill is about to reverse academy freedoms, restore the powers of council bureaucrats and replace innovation with ideological uniformity. The clarity of Ofsted accountability has been ruined. Standard attainment tests in primary schools are in danger, and with them school accountability and progress data will go. On the evidence base, this Government are anti-data, anti-facts and, indeed, anti-evidence, as we have heard during the debate. There have been attacks on synthetic phonics, maths mastery, a knowledge-rich curriculum, teacher-led instruction and traditional academic subjects. We have heard some Members explicitly reject the concept of academies and demand state-run schools. There is a denial of the scientific evidence behind what has worked. From the neurological knowledge we now have about how children learn, to the work of E. D. Hirsch on cultural literacy, and the confirmation that higher-level skills are dependent on the automatic mastery of lower-level activity, the Bill is based not on what works, but on what we know does not work.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I invite the hon. Lady to look at the studies that compare English schools with those in other countries, internationally and within the United Kingdom. The PISA statistics show that the most disadvantaged students in England have the same outcomes as average pupils in Wales, but the Government seem to be basing their policies on the Welsh system. I invite her to look at the evidence, even if Ministers will not.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I share my right hon. Friend’s admiration for the speech given by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh). It was incredibly powerful and I hope Members on the Labour Front Bench listened closely to what she said, even if they are not listening to me right now—they are looking at their phones. The Government have made a deliberate decision to dismantle everything that has worked.

• 6 Jan 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse · Hansard source

  More

  One of the most shocking details in respect of the rape gangs is the evidence of collusion and corruption among police officers, social workers and local councillors. Will the Home Secretary commit today to establishing a unit in the National Crime Agency dedicated to investigating not only untried perpetrators but the police officers, social workers and local councillors who were complicit in these disgusting crimes?

• 6 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  Following the Christmas day attack on Finnish sea cables, what assessment has the Defence Secretary made of the threat to British interconnectors? Which individual Minister is ultimately responsible for their security?