Richard Fuller MP: speeches

Speeches

• 19 Mar 2026 · Banking Services: Accessibility · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I join everyone in congratulating the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on not only securing the debate but opening it so clearly. He laid out the particular issue in Penzance, but in doing so highlighted common concerns about bank closures. He raised some interesting questions in his excellent speech. I am sure the Minister will address them, but I will highlight a couple that I thought particularly interesting. The first was about the manner in which the closure was done—there was no consultation. He also talked about access to banking, not just to cash. The Minister will be aware that the Labour party had thoughts on that prior to the election; I do not want to prejudge the consultation, but I would be interested in her observations about that. The hon. Member for St Ives has been joined by several other Members. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams) made an important point, among many, about the communal role that banks have played historically, and the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) mentioned the impact on town centres. Those two points highlight how central bank branches were to our country’s culture. The hon. Member for St Ives also talked about the buildings that once housed the recently closed banks. The withdrawal of bank branches not only strikes at the way financial services operate in this country, but says a lot about the type of country we are. I will come on to that point later. In his intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) raised the issue of the criteria used in the selection of banking hubs. I would be interested to know whether the Minister is considering that. The hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) talked about face-to-face banking, which goes to the nub of the matter: future trends in banking, an issue that I will raise in my own comments. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick), made a wide-ranging speech and talked about how mobile banking must be dependable to be successful, as well as the availability of mobile networks. I had an exceptionally brief ministerial career, part of which included introducing to the House of Commons the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, which contained the provisions that provided for banking hubs. It might be helpful to share some of my own thinking, or the thinking of the Conservative Government at the time. Some comments have been made about the impact of closures. I share people’s concerns about that issue, but the Government of the day—the Labour Government, today—must take a view on whether they will work with trends in how financial services operate in this country. They must decide either to seek to mitigate the social consequences, which is the rightful role of Government, or to stand steadfast against such changes. Patently, the decision made by the then Conservative Government, which has been supported by this Labour Government, was to work with the grain of how financial services are moving. It is about facilitating that, as far as possible, while recognising the social disbenefits that can arise. It is fair to say that when consultations were done at the time, which was during covid, accessibility to cash was the primary focus of concerns about the decline of branches. It is also fair to say that the provisions in the 2023 Act on the future accessibility of banking were not set in stone. It was clear that we were in a period of trend and change that would require further consultation and review on how it was working, and what further trends were occurring. The Opposition welcome the Government’s taking the opportunity to look at these issues again. To give a sense of the pace of change—this has not been mentioned so far—in 2024, for the first time, cash accounted for less than 10% of payments in this country. We need to go back only eight years for it to be, by far, the No. 1 form of transaction in this country. For those Members who are old enough to remember them, cheques now account for only 0.2% of all payments, so there has been a significant change. On the pace of change of bank branches, since January 2015 there have been 6,700 bank branch closures, according to Which? magazine. To put that into context, there are approximately 12,000 towns in the country, and about another 100 cities. That shows the significant withdrawal of physical premises across the country. The number of ATMs has also fallen by 40% since 2015. On the plus side, we have largely seen an end to the long decline in post offices in this country. One of the benefits of our post office network was that post offices were present in many locations, although not all, and could provide aspects of the banking services that were important to people. The change to the trend for post offices is welcome. We want our post offices to continue to provide a broad range of services to local communities. Postmasters and postmistresses are often among the most trusted people in their community, and they can provide a range of services, but of course they do not necessarily have the same level of expertise in banking that one would find in a bank branch. That takes me on to another point. This debate was starting to look like a bit of a hit-job on Lloyds bank. I think that it was just by chance that the first three bank closures referred to were all of Lloyds branches, so let me say that this is not just a Lloyds thing; it affects all financial institutions. On the other hand, our financial institutions and banks do a very good job for people. They are effective in making sure that people have a safe place for their money and that money can be transferred from A to B. They are good at developing new products and at trying to adapt to technological change.

• 15 Jan 2026 · New Towns · Hansard source

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  I would like to make it clear that I am speaking in an individual capacity as the Member of Parliament for North Bedfordshire. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) on her speech and on the extraordinarily human way in which she described her life in a new town. For people in North Bedfordshire, the hon. Lady’s testimony may be a timely one. I would like to draw the focus of the debate to the proposals for new new towns that are recommended by the Government’s new towns taskforce. Tempsford is a historic village in North Bedfordshire. It was the site of a decisive battle in 917 AD when the forces of King Edward the Elder stormed a Danish stronghold, killing the Danish King and effectively breaking Danish power in the region. It includes the former RAF Tempsford airfield, from which multiple special operations were flown to send people to help resistance movements in Nazi-occupied countries. It is a village of 234 households, comprising fewer than 500 people, and one that has been in two parts since the dualling of the A1 in 1962. It is also a village that, according to the report by the new towns taskforce, presents “a unique opportunity with potential to provide over 40,000 homes in a standalone greenfield settlement”. Tempsford is the largest of the proposed new towns and would turn this village of 500 people into a new town of at least 40,000 homes—that is 100,000-plus people. I want to take a few minutes, speaking in this individual capacity, to raise points that have been voiced by my constituents in recent meetings with residents, the parish council and local councillor, Adam Zerny. One of the questions, of course, is, “Why Tempsford? It’s not what we want—we don’t want this change,” and so on. That is an important issue for consideration, and we await the final decision of the Government on it. If that decision is made, the No. 1 source of scepticism is that much of Tempsford is a floodplain. There is a legitimate question about how the flood risk will be managed in any new town. Tempsford is a floodplain for both the River Ouse and the River Ivel. Sticking on the theme, local residents have for years dealt with a range of sewage overflow issues; I myself have been witness to a number of these incidents and have helped residents with them. This is important because the water company will obviously wish to improve this issue if we have a new town, so adequate funding must be available both to provide the necessary waste water and sewage water infrastructure and to solve the existing problems. As the Minister will be aware, the pressure on water resources in Bedfordshire is extensive. We are also the site of Universal Studios’ new theme park, which will attract between 8 million and 10 million people a year—the equivalent of an additional population of 50,000 in terms of water usage. The site is being developed over the next five years. The River Ouse is the one source of water running through this area, which contains both the theme park and the new town, so we need to make sure there is a plan for this river. Bedford borough council has set up the North Bedfordshire water management group, run by Paul Leinster, formerly of the Environment Agency. I encourage the Minister to meet him to discuss the issues of both Universal Studios and Tempsford. The Minister should also recognise that the proposal for this new town fits into a context of very rapid housing growth. Hon. Members should be aware that the number of households in Bedfordshire has been growing at two and a half times the national average for the past decade or more, meaning that we have already had a build-up of additional pressures on local services over the past 15 to 20 years. At the meeting held last week with the parish council and residents, the main issue other than the floodplain was the provision of local services, as people already do not have sufficient access to GP and transport services. Just a few miles away is the village of Northstowe, which is sort of the poster child for getting it wrong with local service provision. All the things the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch said should already be there were not there in Northstowe—there were no shops and no GPs for a number of years while residents were moving in. Obviously residents do not want to see that happen with Tempsford new town, if it comes forward. Tempsford is a village that still runs on oil heating—there is no other power supply. A number of residents were keen to understand whether solar and ground source heat pumps would be a prerequisite for housing in the new town. A key point for a village with a proposal for a new town of up to 100,000 people is, of course, its village identity and heritage, in particular around RAF Tempsford, and there is a lot of concern about one of the most important buildings there, Gibraltar Barn. Any plans must take account of that. My residents are also connected to nature and wildlife. They chose to live in a rural area, and they are proud of their rural environment—the head office of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is just 5 miles away from Tempsford. It is crucial, if the Government move ahead with this proposal, that we do whatever we can to maintain the nature and wildlife of the area. There are also questions about the adequacy of road networks and the type of employment. I will briefly cover a couple more areas. Professor Doug Clelland and Dr Nigel Moor, two independent planning experts, have completed research on Tempsford in the past two years and provided evidence to the House of Lords Built Environment Committee for its report “New Towns: Laying the Foundations”, relating to the footprint, scale and timeline. In the evidence, Professor Clelland and Dr Moor present a “compact centre” of 25,000 homes over 4.5 square miles with a footprint connecting St Neots to Sandy in an area between the A1 and the Great Northern rail line—an extensive area. There is also a wider footprint that could accommodate the building of an additional 15,000 homes in satellite developments stretching south from Tempsford to the village of Blunham and on to Great Barford, Wilden and Little Staughton then across to Hail Weston, including the villages of Staploe, Honeydon, Roxton, Potton, Everton and others, with a similar impact on the Cambridgeshire side of Tempsford. I do not expect Members to know all those villages, beautiful though they are; they are well worth visiting, and Members should do so. I simply want to ensure that local residents are aware of the scale of what might take place if this proposal goes ahead in North Bedfordshire and in parts of Cambridgeshire. I am not sure that local residents have internalised that. If the Government decided to move forward with these plans, there is a lot of work they would have to do, in particular with regard to the use of farmland, as this is a primary agricultural area. If I may, I will leave some questions with the Minister. First, the Government have a housing target of 1.5 million —personally, I am not sure they have got off to a particularly good start on that. That target may have an impact on the type of housing being built, so I would be interested to hear the Minister comment on that with regard to Tempsford. Secondly, I have mentioned that the housing growth in North Bedfordshire is two and a half times the national average. It is the Government’s position that new towns should not count in that total, but come on—we are already struggling to keep up. There is no way we can plop this additional amount of housing on top of that pace of growth and expect things not to break. Thirdly, will the Government’s specific social housing target apply in the context of these very large new towns? Fourthly, can I alert the Minister to the fact that the new town is potentially just one of six nationally significant infrastructure projects in Bedfordshire, two of which are directly within this footprint? One is the Black Cat roundabout, which is under way and will be completed, so that is fine. There is also a proposal for a large-scale solar farm of over 1,900 acres—that is the size of Gatwick airport and a bit more—within that satellite boundary. What on earth will happen with that? Clearly, it is a choice: we can do one or the other, but we cannot possibly do both. Local residents are keen to make sure that their voice is heard. I had a meeting with the civil servant who is dealing with this issue, for which I prepared some documents, and she was 100% on board with that— I can see that the Minister is nodding. My residents are clear about that. Once the decision is made, if Tempsford is one of the new towns, I would strongly encourage the ministerial team to come and visit, have a conversation with the villagers and listen to them, because there is so much that can be done. As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch said, in the end this is about people. If the Government take people along with them at the start when they make that decision, they will set themselves up in a much better way.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  We have had an exciting and heartfelt debate. I commend for their speeches my right hon. Friends the Members for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell), for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke), for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden), for Salisbury (John Glen) and for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), my hon. Friends the Members for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas), for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey), for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford), for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) and for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths), the hon. Members for Angus and Perthshire Glens (Dave Doogan) and for Ynys Môn (Llinos Medi), and the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister). We have heard some excellent speeches from Members speaking with passion on behalf of the small businesses, farmers, workers and pensioners who have been hit by Labour changing its mind on taxes and doing things differently from what it said it would do at the election. We have also heard two new phrases today. Thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, we now realise we have to challenge the Chancellor based on her “flagship failures”, not her flagship policies. With great passion, the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim told us how Labour’s tax on family businesses means that small businesses are no longer planning for growth; they are planning for death. The public feel they were misled by Labour at the general election. They think those on the Labour Front Bench are incompetent. They think the Prime Minister is woefully out of touch and the Chancellor is out of her depth—and why shouldn’t they? A Prime Minister who needs multiple attempts to define a woman, and multiple attempts to define a working person, does not exactly inspire confidence; a Chancellor who says that she will not raise taxes on working people, and then hikes national insurance, costing working people their jobs and earnings, does not inspire trust. Our motion provides the Government with an opportunity to draw a line, recognise the overreach and errors in their taxation policies, and give some hope to the makers in our society and those who work hard in our warehouses, offices, factories, shops, restaurants, and public services. They could recognise the errors in the Treasury’s assessment of the impact of the family farm tax on those who grow our food, and the trauma caused by the jobs tax for those who build our businesses. Those are the people who know how to grow our economy, not the numpties on the Front Bench, so why are the Government intent on holding them back? Alas, the Chancellor thinks that she knows best, and despite taxes being at their highest rate on record, she is on the hunt for new taxes: wealth tax, capital gains tax, pensions tax, council tax, savings tax, tax, tax, tax, tax—it is always the same with a Labour Government. The Government’s strategy is to tax their way to growth, but I have to tell the Chancellor that that strategy will not work. No economy can tax its businesses out of existence and create growth. Tonight the Chancellor starts her new tax campaign with a visit to the City. For the first time it will not be so much a Mansion House speech as a mansion tax assessment. The Chancellor will claim that the Government’s actions have brought about financial stability—well perhaps, but not in this country. The Government’s Chagos deal has eliminated income tax in Mauritius but given British taxpayers a new £30 billion tax bill, and the Government’s abolition of non-dom status is boosting the tax revenues of Portugal and Italy but will mean taxpayers here having to cough up billions a year more to plug the gap as people leave the UK, taking their tax payments with them. The truth is that the Chancellor has done the complete opposite of her claims of stability. She is the eye of an instability storm of her own making, where nobody knows when her next tax raid will come, and who will get hit the hardest—a second summer of doubt and uncertainty caused by this Chancellor, and tolerated by this Prime Minister. Labour Back Benchers know it. They know all the times that the Chancellor has led them up the hill, only to lead them down again: the “once in a Parliament” tax hike, the removal of winter fuel payments, the blundered attempts at welfare cuts, and it has only been one year! Labour Members are limping towards recess—look at them, Mr Deputy Speaker. Napoleon’s troops were in better humour on their march back from Moscow than some Labour MPs are as they make their way back to their constituencies, and back to the people to whom they promised so much just one year ago, only to deliver oh so little. No wonder people feel so let down. But let us be fair: some Labour Back Benchers are going back with a warm feeling. A reshuffle is coming soon, to clear away all the dead wood on the Front Bench —oh, so much dead wood—and some Labour Back Benchers have already had the tap on the shoulder. They already know who they are, and they are going home with great expectations of high office— [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] No, no, spare a thought, please, for the many other Labour MPs who have missed out. They felt that they were given a promise that if they did the right thing they would be looked after. Now they know that the Government have reneged on their promise, and that the change they hoped for will not come. For them, I am truly sorry. But there is one consolation: at least now they know how the rest of the country feels.