Richard Fuller MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker, for permitting me to raise this important constituency matter from the Back Benches. On 2 July this year, during the installation of a ground source heat pump in a constituent’s back garden, a gas field was struck and gas was released. On 19 October there was an explosion, which resulted in the deaths of two of my constituents and the continuing evacuation of 50 households. Matters related to the period between 2 July and 19 October are subject to investigation. I am advised that this is the first such instance of gas being encountered, but given that ground source heat pumps are expected to play a significant role in decarbonising home heating, will the Minister undertake to review the regulations covering the installation of ground source heat pumps, and will she arrange a meeting for me with the relevant Minister to discuss these matters further?

• 6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I thank the 67 Back-Bench Members who have spoken in this debate, and I commiserate with the two Labour Members who did not get in. I am sure that they will have their opportunity in future. I congratulate the four Members who gave their maiden speech: the hon. Members for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell), for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams), for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) and for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh). Many in this House will remember their maiden speech and will know how anxious those four Members were before they stood up to speak, and how relieved they were when they reached the end and could sit down. That feeling does not go away. We end this Budget debate where we began: with the deceit that the Labour party showed to the British public about its intention to launch one of the biggest tax grabs in our history. At the election, Labour Front Benchers toured the country, staging photo ops, snapping cheeky selfies and soliciting reassuring quotes from businesses, farmers and senior citizens, saying to each in turn that they could trust Labour and that a Labour Government would have their back. This Budget of broken promises shows that they have all been conned. My Conservative colleagues have laid bare, always clearly and frequently with strong feeling, the consequences of the political choices this Labour Government have made with this Budget. Colleagues have spoken on behalf of Britain’s farming families, on behalf of our country’s small businesses, on behalf of parents with children in education, on behalf of GP surgeries and hospices, and, above all, on behalf of the working people they represent, who have been targeted by this Budget. This is a Budget of choices, and the choices are Labour’s, and theirs alone—their choice to increase taxes, their choice to increase debt, their choice to change the fiscal rules, and their choice to rip up election promise after election promise. Just as the Labour Government have made their choices, today we must start to make our own choices. Our choices are to help the small business owner, to help the aspiring entrepreneur, to help those thinking of using their talents to help build Britain, to help the farmers whose parents and grandparents have toiled in our fields, to help the children who will be turfed out of their schools in the middle of the year—some having no school place to go to—and to protect the workers of Britain who believed what Labour said at the election and who now know they were conned. That is why we will vote against Budget resolutions this evening. Two groups of people have been clobbered drastically by this Budget, groups who are the cornerstone of our economy. As we have heard throughout these debates, the Labour Government’s decision to increase employers’ national insurance contributions is not only a manifesto breach but a barrier to growth. Sadly, this Labour Government do not understand that there will never be a sustainable public sector without a thriving private sector. The private sector in this country is a delicate fabric of small and medium-sized businesses. Many have been just scraping by for years, but each is spurred on by the endeavour that is the spirit of free enterprise. Running a small business—Labour Members may want to take a note—is not easy. Our constituents run some 5.4 million small and medium-sized enterprises across the UK, so when the Minister responds, will she explain to those people, in my constituency and across the country, what they are to do in the face of Labour’s jobs tax—the massive increase in employer national insurance contributions? The Office for Budget Responsibility said that the jobs tax would be passed on by “most” firms to their employees through reduced wages; the Resolution Foundation said it will have the biggest proportional impact on low-paid workers; and the Federation of Small Businesses said it will cause “many SMEs” to “struggle”. That is the truth, and a far cry from the warm words the Labour Chancellor offered businesses during the election campaign. When the Prime Minister, in February this year, looked farmers in the eye and said that they “deserved better”, was he already hatching Labour’s family farm tax? The NFU has said: “The shameless breaking of those promises on Agricultural Property Relief will snatch away much of the next generation’s ability to carry on producing British food”. The truth is that the Labour Party does not understand even the basics of farming. Reducing the relief and imposing inheritance tax on farmland will devastate family farms and pose a serious risk to domestic food security and food prices. Throughout the debate, Labour MPs have sneeringly referred to those farmers as “millionaires”, but many family farmers are not rich. They eke out a modest and— [ Interruption. ] Labour Members should have been here for the debate. Many family farms eke out a modest and highly uncertain income, year after year. That is why we ask taxpayers each year to subsidise British farmers so they can continue growing food for Britain. The family farm tax is not just taxing farmers; it is taxing Britain’s farmland, the very land we need to grow the food we eat. This Budget of broken promises sends a series of clear messages: don’t start your own business, because Labour will tax you; don’t have a plan to hire new employees because Labour will tax you; don’t take a risk and expect to keep a reward, because Labour will tax you; don’t invest in the education of your children, because Labour will tax you; and don’t, whatever you do, farm your land to grow British food, because Labour will grind you into that very same ground, and tax you too. Finally, I say to the Minister that the trust that has been broken in this Budget will not be recovered. People will never forget what happens when Labour is given its chance. They will never forget the harm done when Labour makes its choices, and they will never forget that Labour’s first Budget was a Budget of broken promises.

• 16 Oct 2024 · Flooding: Bedfordshire · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, which is important for residents of Bedfordshire. He talks about not having rivers in his constituency, but in North Bedfordshire we are blessed with two. Although this flooding was an extreme event, flooding issues have been persistent in places such as Harrold, Clapham and Great Barford, and, most recently and quite devastatingly, in Tempsford and Wyboston in my constituency. Does he welcome the initiative taken up by the Mayor of Bedford, Tom Wootton, to get a comprehensive approach from all the different agencies that can help residents with their flood response, and does he agree that that is a model for assessing flood risk in Bedfordshire?

• 8 Oct 2024 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Exemptions · Hansard source

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  And the DUP.

• 8 Oct 2024 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Exemptions · Hansard source

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  It is not always about the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). The Labour party has marshalled all but two of their MPs, one of whom hates the policy—I do not know what the other thinks. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) think that it is shocking that not a single member of the Education ministerial team of the Labour Government has bothered to show up today, yet they continue to use the airwaves to spew out spiteful and divisive messages about this Labour policy? The Minister present, the hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray), does not care about education; he cares about money—he is a Treasury Minister. He knows that the policy will not raise any money, but it is going to cost taxpayers.

• 8 Oct 2024 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Exemptions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is speaking eloquently about the impact on children’s education, on children with special educational needs and on children being ripped out of their schools, perhaps in the year of their GCSEs or A-levels. This is obviously a debate about education. There are Members of Parliament in the Chamber from the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats, as well as independent MPs and Members from Reform—