Richard Foord MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 18 Dec 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q15. It was good to hear that the Prime Minister visited British soldiers in Estonia yesterday, before they have to spend Christmas away from their families. We would all like to see a lasting peace emerge for Ukraine in the new year, but Putin may take any deal brokered by Trump as a break in which to re-equip and rearm. What will the Government do to deter Russia from restarting its imperial war of aggression following any peace deal?

• 18 Dec 2024 · Post Office Redress and Funding · Hansard source

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  Recently I met a couple of constituents—Tony Hibberd, a former sub-postmaster, and Colin Chesterton, a solicitor who is representing him pro bono. During our meeting, they raised concerns about the delays and inadequacies of the Horizon shortfall scheme. My constituent has waited in excess of four years since his claim application and 14 years since he was forced to lose his livelihood. What percentage of the claimants to the Horizon shortfall scheme have received an interim payment, and what percentage have had their requests settled in full?

• 17 Dec 2024 · Old Oak Common Station · Hansard source

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  I recognise the particular plight of my hon. Friend’s constituents, who are as far south-west as one can go in England. My time is up, but I plead with the Minister to think again about the £30-million mitigation fund and whether it really offsets the costs that south-west residents will bear.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Old Oak Common Station · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. The south-west is a region with enormous untapped economic potential. We already have a brilliant clean energy industry, which is growing. We have a fantastic defence industry, with lots of small and medium-sized enterprises. We have a thriving agricultural sector and a flourishing food sector. We have a tourism industry that welcomes more than 20 million visitors per year. Our economy depends very heavily, with all these things, on reliable transport links. We in Devon are bucking the trend nationally. Since 2019, the proportion of rail journeys taken across the country has fallen by 6%, but in Devon, it has increased by 9%. Time and again, however, we have seen the west country miss out on rail investment, which has been concentrated in other parts of the country—in the midlands, the north of England and, of course, London. The south-west is left grappling with an underfunded and unreliable rail network. The construction of Old Oak Common will exacerbate some of those challenges. Over the next decade, passengers travelling on mainline inter-city services serving the south-west will face severe disruption. Planned works will reduce the number of available seats on trains that are already crowded and have slow journey times. We will see a fall in the number of direct services to London Paddington. Last month, the Government pointed to a £30-million mitigation package. That is woefully inadequate. Compare it with the £6.5-billion cost of Old Oak Common —by contrast, £30 million is a pittance. Worryingly, that £30 million has already been committed to operational adjustments such as depot changes and electrification in London, with little or no regard for the south-west. The Tories’ catastrophic management—or rather, mismanagement—of the rail system was exemplified by the two-year industrial dispute that cost taxpayers an eye-watering £25 million per strike day, and led to reforms that have saddled the public with hundreds of millions of pounds in additional cost. Nowhere is the previous Government’s legacy of transport failure more apparent than in relation to High Speed 2, where flip-flopping over the last 15 or 20 years has led to ballooning costs, neglected communities and misery for passengers. I want to point out how that has affected people in some west-country communities. It might be supposed that it is only HS2 communities—people in the midlands and the north—who have been affected by some of the cost overruns and the indecision, but that is not so. When we saw the cancellation of HS2 by the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), there was then some big announcement about Network North, and we were promised that HS2 money was therefore going to be ploughed into stations and the redevelopment of stations across the country. In the constituency I represent, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton came to visit. He hired a community room in a farm shop—a sort of farm shop conference centre. He and other Conservative activists held up British Rail placards with the word “Cullompton” underneath, as if to encourage people that somehow there was money from HS2 that could be invested in our local rail transport. That was absolutely not the case, as has since been revealed. Now we can see that those were all empty promises. Old Oak Common is one more step in this misadventure, with an additional 20 minutes that it adds to a journey from Paddington to the south-west. That could be enough to influence holidaymakers to choose other destinations overseas, which would be a tragedy for the south-west economy. I really hope that the Government look kindly on proper mitigation.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Community Pharmacies: Devon and the South-west · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. Growing up, people used to talk about going to the chemist, and at the time I saw that alongside going to the butcher or shoe shop—it was where we went to buy stuff. What I did not realise was how crucial pharmacies are to prescriptions and thus to people’s health and wellbeing, and I am ever so aware of that now that I represent a constituency in Devon. Under the previous Government, in the last two years alone, Devon has seen the closure of nine pharmacies, leaving the county with just 133. For the people I represent in Honiton and Sidmouth, that translates to just 16 pharmacies per 100,000 people—even fewer than in West Dorset. That is partly because income for pharmacies has stagnated, particularly what they receive from the NHS, and that is combined with rising costs, including energy bills and wages, as well as the cost of medication. Altogether, it makes for an unsustainable financial model. Yet pharmacies provide over 1.3 million consultations each week for people’s health concerns, which is keeping people out of the NHS and saving 38 million GP appointments every year. Just last month, a pharmacist in Devon noted that his team spends over two hours per day providing free, unfunded clinical consultations, and those prevent health conditions from deteriorating, and prevent hospital visits and additional strain on the NHS.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Community Pharmacies: Devon and the South-west · Hansard source

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  I think the hon. Gentleman has come up with an absolutely brilliant idea. Community hospitals are potentially hubs where pharmacies might sit in the future. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this debate; she has done a great thing by doing so.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Community Pharmacies: Devon and the South-west · Hansard source

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  It is flawed, particularly for those parts of the country that are rural and coastal, such as those represented by my hon. Friend and myself. In Honiton and Sidmouth, the average age of my constituents is 56. I went to a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on ageing and older people last week, and we hosted Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England. He described how, while in some societies people move away from the coast and rural areas to seek comfort and care in towns and cities, in England we do quite the reverse. That makes it even more crucial that we maintain our pharmacies in those rural and coastal communities. In short, we are calling for the Government to provide funding to halt the closures and stabilise the sector, ensuring that rural communities such as those in Devon are not left behind. We want to see the role of pharmacists expanded to give them greater prescribing rights and allow them to take on bigger public health responsibilities.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Israel and Palestine · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The ICJ advisory opinion is crucial, and the Government need to crack on with their rulings in the light of that opinion. My remarks are about the carve-out for the F-35 fighter jet and, specifically, the five licences that are somehow exempt in terms of international law. The licences are what are called open general licences—that is, they can be of an indefinite duration and an unlimited quantity. The British state does not have to set out the quantities of weapons being exported. At the Business and Trade Committee last week, Ministers from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Department for Business and Trade, and the Ministry of Defence talked about how the F-35 is different: 15% of it is British, and the other 85% is produced by a collaboration involving Italy, the Netherlands, the US, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Turkey and Australia—and, by the way, we contribute only the ejector seats, the batteries and the rear parts of the tail. The point is that we in the west have to abide by international law. The British Government have been asking for an immediate ceasefire since 4 July—the Liberal Democrats have been calling for one for a great deal longer—but Israel are not listening to the British Government. In the absence of any influence, the UK Government need to take the next step. I want to address those who allege that it is somehow contradictory to ask Israel to stop using arms while it has to defend itself against Iran. I am proud that the UK was instrumental in defending Israel against the attack by Iran last April, but I see no contradiction whatsoever. The withholding of arms exports to Israel is a policy lever that we now have to pull. Finally, we have to remember that we are talking about the principle of distinction, which is a firm principle in international humanitarian law that every British soldier is taught: that of distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants. Evidence gathered by Danish NGOs, for example, shows that 2,000 lb bombs delivered by F-35 fighter jets killed 90 Palestinians at the al-Mawasi camp on 13 July. That is little surprise, because a 2,000 lb bomb will kill people within a 360-metre radius of the detonation. The British Government are failing to comply with international humanitarian law. They need to abide by the principle of distinction. We need to abide by international law.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Israel and Palestine · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I will limit my remarks to arms exports, but before I do, I want to recognise what an appalling atrocity 7 October 2023 was. I also want to mention the 101 hostages who are still held captive, including the British citizen Emily Damari. Like the British Government, I demand their immediate release. I have just got back from King Charles Street, where the Foreign Affairs Committee was visiting the consular team. It is plain that they do really sensitive work with the families of British hostages held overseas. My remarks about arms exports to Israel are largely based on last Tuesday’s Business and Trade Committee sitting, where I was a guest as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which has been carrying out two inquiries, one on the middle east and one on soft power. We have found that British soft power has been damaged by the lack of full compliance with international law. It undermines the UK’s reputation if we do not pursue international law consistently. [Mark Pritchard in the Chair ]

• 12 Dec 2024 · UK Exports · Hansard source

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  The Italian press has been reporting that the global combat air programme consortium, involving the UK, Italy and Japan, might be extended to include Saudi Arabia. Can the Minister confirm this press report? How would that affect any future decision to suspend licences to export arms to Saudi Arabia, as the Government decided to in 2019?

• 11 Dec 2024 · Responsibilities of Housing Developers · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I am glad that the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) secured the debate, because this issue is vital. I will focus on the premature handover of sites from housing developers to management companies before the developers’ responsibilities are fulfilled. I will do that by giving a couple of examples from the area I represent: Pebble Beach in Seaton and Acland Park in Feniton, both in east Devon. In Pebble Beach, construction began on a site for 220-odd homes in 2014. I saw the Bovis Homes advert on YouTube earlier, and it shows drone footage over beautiful Seaton. It is absolutely stunning. Who would not want to live there? Sadly, the experience of people who have moved to the site is that it is very much incomplete. The hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley talked about a play area that was never finished; well, these people had a play area that was never started, despite having been pledged. The kerbs are so high that a child could sit by the road and eat their lunch off the pavement—such is the incompleteness of the construction. There are trip hazards and blocked drains, and the site has been more or less handed over to the property management company FirstPort without the developer having fulfilled its responsibilities. That has resulted in poor maintenance and the deflection of responsibilities, with the property management company pointing at the developer and the developer pointing back at the property management company. The residents are stuck in the middle, not knowing quite who is accountable. Last week, Liberal Democrat MPs met FirstPort and took the issue up with it. Also last week, the Business and Trade Committee met Vistry in Exeter. Vistry takes on board its responsibility as a developer, but it needs to get back to the site and fix the things it said it would. I will have to leave to another day my comments about Acland Park, which I have talked about in this Chamber before. The key point that I would like the Minister to take away is that we cannot have a situation where property management companies essentially take responsibilities from developers, and developers are therefore not held accountable.

• 11 Dec 2024 · Financial Inclusion: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  Residents have told me that they really valued paper statements. Some 6,000 bank branches have closed in the past nine years. Two of the new banking hubs are in the area that I represent, in Axminster and Sidmouth, but people cannot get hold of printed statements. Does my hon. Friend agree that they ought to be able to get them at banking hubs?

• 11 Dec 2024 · Rail Services: Devon · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Exeter (Steve Race) on securing this debate. I want to reflect on some of the things that hon. Members have said. It is plain that Exeter is a real hub for Devon and, as the hon. Member for Exeter pointed out, there are 500,000 residents in the travel-to-work area. That includes a large number of people who live in the Honiton and Sidmouth area that I represent, and I know they are eager to see the full development of this so-called metro rail project. “Metro rail” makes it sound as though it is something like the Elizabeth line here in London, but we will not kid ourselves. It is about trying to ease the journeys into Exeter for those many people who are left waiting at cold stations on winter’s nights or early mornings like these in December, and trying to improve the reliability, punctuality and frequency of services. That is true for Axminster, Feniton and Honiton in the patch I represent on the south-west rail line, and it is also true for Cullompton, which desperately needs the restoration of a railway station that was closed under the Beeching cuts in the 1960s. I want to go over those two points in more detail. The hon. Gentleman is exactly right that we need the construction of a passing loop near Feniton, Honiton and Whimple. That loop would make all the difference to the reliability of services on the Exeter-London Waterloo line. Often people find themselves stuck at stations along that route because of the single track, which does not allow trains to pass one another. Anecdotally, when I talked to the guy who runs the Railway Kitchen, a station café at Axminster, a few weeks ago, he told me that business is booming; hon. Members might think that that is a positive thing, and for his café it is, but it is not for the passengers who find their train delayed and hence use that hostelry. I said that I would also talk about Cullompton station. Cullompton is part of a pair of stations that are very fit for development—Cullompton in Devon and Wellington in Somerset. The Wellington-Cullompton programme is very high on the list for Lord Hendy, the rail Minister, because of its brilliant benefit-cost ratio. That ratio of 3.67 is the highest in the country and it is reckoned that one reason for that is the economic activity that it will afford, specifically the proposed new town—Culm Garden Village, as it is called—at Cullompton. With so much new housing proposed, it is desperately important that there is a railway station to go with it and that we do not simply see housing without infrastructure. Other hon. Members made some very good points. The hon. Members for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed) and for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) talked about Old Oak Common. We will have a separate debate on that next week, so I will not expand on it now. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) for talking up the importance of the final step—the fifth phase—of the south-west rail resilience programme in creating resilience on the Exeter to Newton Abbot line. We saw an eight-week closure of that line in 2014, which sent to Cornwall and a chunk of Devon the message “You don’t matter.” The region was completely isolated. We just would not allow that in other parts of the country, and we should not allow it in the south-west. There was an appeal to put aside party politics, and on Old Oak Common I agree. I cannot help remembering, though, that the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) came to my constituency and talked about funding for Cullompton station. We know that funding did not exist, but now we need to see it.

• 9 Dec 2024 · Planning Committees: Reform · Hansard source

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  Some 57% of East Devon is made up of national landscapes, previously known as areas of outstanding natural beauty. I welcome the fact that these areas are protected from housing and industrial development, but for planning committees that have to meet the Minister’s targets, national landscapes compress the area that remains, which can be devastating for flood-prone villages such as Feniton. How are these reforms going to help people who are seeing housing targets concentrated on their village because they live near a national landscape?

• 9 Dec 2024 · Syria · Hansard source

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  In 2013, this House voted against UK military action following the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad’s Government. One effect of that vote was to deter the British Government from taking action, but another effect was to have influenced the US Government into taking no action at that time. Will the Foreign Secretary support Parliament debating and voting on any future UK military action, even if we have learned from 2013 that there may be times when such scrutiny should happen after military action takes place?

• 5 Dec 2024 · National Resilience · Hansard source

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  7. What steps he is taking to increase national resilience.

• 5 Dec 2024 · National Resilience · Hansard source

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  The module 1 report recommended resilience and preparedness, and particularly “Bringing in external expertise from outside government and the Civil Service to…guard against ‘groupthink’”. How is the Minister planning to bring in that external expertise? Would he consider issuing a brochure to British citizens on preparation for crises, as the Swedish Government have just done?

• 3 Dec 2024 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  One aspect of support that the UK could offer Ukraine is expired medical equipment and dressings. A charity based in Axminster in my constituency, called Medics4Ukraine, has just got back from Odesa. It has been training municipal workers, and it says that it needs dressings, haemostatic dressings and gauzes. Will she speak to her counterparts in the Department of Health and Social Care to see whether some of the expired items could be released for that purpose?

• 3 Dec 2024 · Family Farming in Devon · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Mark. I pay tribute to the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and Tavistock (Sir Geoffrey Cox) who, I feel, could probably have spoken on this subject for another half an hour, with plenty more to add. He is a landowner himself, so we note his experience. I will highlight the plight of people in mid and east Devon whom I represent and who are feeling a great deal of uncertainty about the future. I will do so by giving a couple of examples. The first example is of a family farm near Cullompton. I will read directly from the letter that family sent me, because their words are quite touching: “We have been farming within a 5-mile radius of here for over 400 years. Unfortunately the family had to sell the farm…in the 1860s at the start of the Great Agricultural Depression. It has taken us 150 years to regain ownership of a farm and now the inheritance tax issue threatens us with the risk of losing it again.” That illustrates that we are not talking here about some short-term business enterprise that starts up and fades, as if it were some sort of digital business. This is a farm that has provided a livelihood for generations of people. It is not about capital or assets; it is about the hard graft of the people who do it. The right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and Tavistock referred to the legacy of the previous Government and that legacy is worth examining. The cuts to the basic payment were one aspect of that. Another aspect was the Australia and New Zealand trade deal, which the Government’s own figures found had cost British farming £94 million. The proposed change to inheritance tax is but one more thing on top of all the other things that have given farmers a really torrid time in recent years. I appeal to the Minister when he responds to the debate to take a look at this. We are talking about a Treasury benefit of perhaps £500 million in a Budget of £40 billion of new taxes. The sum involved is a small sum for the Treasury in Whitehall, but it will have an enormous impact in the countryside. I will give another example: the Derryman family, including Peter, his brother, and now his son. In many ways, they are emblematic of the sort of people from mid and east Devon whom I represent. They represent thousands of farming families who work really hard, grafting day and night, contributing to the local society and local economy in Stockland. However, they are very concerned. They only own 120 acres, so people might suppose that they would not be subject to a tax that is proposed on only the first £1 million of combined farm and business assets. However, when we look at the value of the farmhouse, the machinery, the land and livestock, it all adds up to a potential inheritance tax liability. The Government claim that 73% of farms will not be affected, yet the NFU claims that seven in 10 farms will be; those figures cannot both be right. On 19 November, I was lobbied by people I represent, who asked me to say to the Minister that we should seek to discriminate between the genuine farmers and the hobby farmers. We know that there has been a tendency to use land as an inheritance tax dodge, but the genuine farmers who spent the day in London—it is very unusual for them to put down their tools and come here—said that there has to be a way to discriminate between those who have bought a few cows as a tax dodge and those who earn their living from the land. The reality is that these people are working unsociable hours, they are physically exhausted, and some have been plagued by mental health issues. Constituents have told me that this tax is cruel, because there are only 17 months until it is introduced in 2026; people are reflecting on what they might have to do to dodge or avoid that tax before it is introduced. We are not allowed to use props in this debate, but I have a photo that was given to me by Peter Derryman. It is of his young granddaughter with a prized lamb at a show in Devon. I would say to the Minister: whatever the technicalities, this is a matter of the heart.

• 2 Dec 2024 · Migration and Border Security · Hansard source

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  More than 210,000 Ukrainians have been hosted in the UK since Russia’s full-scale invasion, which is a testament to the generosity of British hosts, but the millions of Ukrainians who have left Ukraine for Europe are just a fraction of the number who might flee across Europe if Russia were successful in breaking through and occupying all of Ukraine. Does the Secretary of State consider it to be in the UK’s own national interest that we confiscate all Russia’s frozen assets, offer the proceeds to the defence of Ukraine and prevent further displacement?

• 2 Dec 2024 · Community Ownership of Local Assets · Hansard source

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  East Devon District Council has declared Seaton hospital an asset of community value and is awaiting news of round 4 of the community ownership fund to see whether we might get funding from that source. In the meantime, NHS Property Services might be seeking to remove part of that hospital. Can the Minister ask his colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care to prevent that?

• 2 Dec 2024 · North-West Syria · Hansard source

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  I would like to build on the question posed by the right hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison). Between 2014 and 2020, almost all Syrians who were given asylum in the UK applied from the region. The vulnerable persons resettlement scheme did not require Syrians to make it to the UK before applying; the small numbers who were successful had to apply through Syria’s neighbours, such as Jordan. Does the Minister recognise that this safe and legal route encouraged asylum seekers to apply from the region, and it also deterred them from making their way across Europe to the UK?

• 2 Dec 2024 · North-West Syria · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 28 Nov 2024 · UK Leadership on Sudan · Hansard source

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  The war in Sudan is plainly appalling. I heard that 14 million people had been displaced, but 11 million is also an appalling figure. As I understand it, this started out as a war between the general in charge of the armed forces and the general in charge of the Rapid Support Forces militia. That makes me think that we need to get upstream of such situations, to try to prevent them happening again. The UK used to be involved in defence engagement: we were delivering courses such as managing defence in a wider security context at the Kofi Annan international peacekeeping training centre, teaching things like democratic oversight and democratic control of the armed forces. Will the Government look again at that training, and see whether we might deliver more such training for military officers and officials in those developing countries that are receptive to it?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Sewage Discharges: South West · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He talks about storm overflows. The data recorded from storm overflows by South Water West is sometimes different to that which appears on the Water UK app. Does he agree that we need just one single reliable source for sewage outflow data?