Richard Holden MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 29 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Eighty-two per cent of those who have seen Labour take away their winter fuel payment are either below the poverty line or within £55 a week of it. How can the Government justify this, when they are not even allowing a freedom of information request from the Financial Times to be responded to? They are hiding the figures from the people.

• 28 Oct 2024 · Remembrance and Veterans · Hansard source

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  This year marks 80 years since D-day and one of my constituents, Don Sheppard, who died aged 104 this year, was a veteran of both D-day and Arnhem. On the point my hon. Friend is making, Don’s quote was, “The lads that didn’t make it back, those are the other ones we need to remember.” Does my hon. and gallant Friend agree on that point?

• 24 Oct 2024 · Special Educational Needs and Disabilities · Hansard source

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  Within five months of entering office, this Government will introduce VAT on independent schools, with all the impact that may have on the state sector. How long will we have to wait for an actual plan for SEND children, rather than just political posturing around VAT?

• 22 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T5. Hezbollah continues to use Lebanese civilians as human shields. On Friday, the caretaker Prime Minister in Lebanon accused Iran of blatant interference in Lebanese affairs. What more will the Minister do to help ensure that both Israeli and Lebanese counterparts can face down the threat from Iran?

• 22 Oct 2024 · Pie and Mash: Traditional Speciality Guaranteed Status · Hansard source

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  I cannot possibly agree with the hon. Member any more. Many of his constituents wander across the road to get to the pie and mash shops in my constituency, and I encourage them to do so even more in the future. He raises an important point about us as a country not recognising some of the great food heritage that we have and what an asset it is to our country. I had an email from a constituent today—a chef working in a Michelin-starred restaurant in London—who had read about the debate being proposed in Parliament. He and his son agreed that we need to talk up what we have traditionally produced. He said that they love the original pie and mash and that he wishes us every success in the campaign. I thought that was a really good sign. Yes, there is obviously high-end cuisine that we want to celebrate at a national level, and I am sure that is exactly what the Government and DEFRA want to do too, but traditional speciality foods need to be looked at in the broader context and celebrated too.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Pie and Mash: Traditional Speciality Guaranteed Status · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend and neighbour for raising that. I cannot wait to come down to Rayleigh and Wickford. Maybe we could do an Essex pie and mash championship and get an awards scheme going—maybe that is the next step for this campaign. But my right hon. Friend also makes an important point. Everybody starts somewhere on their journey with pie and mash. Mine started as a 19-year-old when I moved to east London and came across pie and mash for the first time. If we gave pie and mash a little bit of a status boost with traditional speciality guaranteed status, it would perhaps be opened up to more people, and more people might want to think about it. It would also provide a boost to that sector, particularly as our broader hospitality sector, as hon. Members know, has suffered since the covid pandemic and we are hoping to get it back on its feet. So what are we after? We are after traditional speciality guaranteed status. We are not after a geographical designation, but we are after something that recognises the important traditional heritage of pie and mash. When do we want it to happen? Well, as soon as possible. I hope the Minister will look forward to working with the Modern Cockneys and pie and mash shops to bring it to fruition. This debate points to something wider about British culinary heritage, about how we view food in Britain, and perhaps a little bit about how we view our own food in this country. That is something we need to look at again. We need to look at how we can celebrate it more. I hope that, as hon. and right hon. Members have mentioned, other parts of the country will look at how we can champion their local food produce—yes, in order for it to be recognised locally, which is a nice thing, but also for the broader economic narrative, whether that is exports or tourism. I thank my pie and mash shops in Basildon and Billericay for putting up with me invading them over the last few weeks, particularly Robins, which has had the national media with it over the last couple of days. To everyone, I say: get out there—try that pie and mash. To the Minister, I say: I hope we will be able to get this status. I hope that at the end of this process, we can say to him, “Yes, Pie Minister.”

• 22 Oct 2024 · Pie and Mash: Traditional Speciality Guaranteed Status · Hansard source

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  I could not agree with my right hon. Friend more. We should be doing everything we can to talk up regional cuisine from all parts of our country. I cannot think of anything better to come out of this debate than to ensure that regional food products such as pie and mash or Staffordshire oatcakes find their way on to the House of Commons menu in one of our regular regional food events. I hope that the catering team are listening, so that we can get these products promoted further. Traditional speciality guarantee does not rely on a geographical connection but the way that a product is produced. I am sure that the Modern Cockney group I have been working on this with, and their founder Andy, and Ben who has been working with them from Loadstone, will be more than willing to get into the nitty-gritty details of what is required with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs over the coming months. This is just a small step in what we should be doing for more of our food products from across the country. Traditional speciality guarantee is needed because there is a well-trodden media narrative that pie and mash is in decline. We are in an age of global fast food brands, yet pie and mash has shown a stubborn refusal to die. It has been really good to see it thriving in the shops I have visited. I have been multiple times over the last few months, particularly to the ones in Basildon. I have seen families going there, with fathers taking their daughters out. It is important that that continues, because it is great to see it thriving on a local level. Right across the country, we have seen changes in demographics and taste. This has perhaps seen the movement of traditional pie and mash shops from their heartland in London out to places like Basildon and the new towns of the east of England. Cornish pasties and Bramley apple pies have traditional speciality guarantee, but we now want to see that for pie and mash. Pie and mash made by artisans is the next step in that direction. It is too often looked down on, and we need to start thinking about how we can celebrate it better.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Pie and Mash: Traditional Speciality Guaranteed Status · Hansard source

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  That is exactly what I am attempting to do and I commend the hon. Gentleman for his work in this space. Actually, there are not enough British products that we have talked up for their local credentials and their special place in our country’s heritage, national cuisine and national heart. France has over 800 products that have similar protected status and Italy has just under that number; the number for the UK is under a hundred. Given our culinary heritage, and particularly the culinary heritage of London as a global centre of cuisine, and given the great and diverse range of products and foodstuffs that we have across the country, we should be doing more in this area to talk up Britain and British food, to boost both food exports and our tourism. Having more of these marks of protected status, whether that is the protected designation of origin or the geographic indication, would be a good start, but I am also thinking today of the third category, which is the traditional status guaranteed. That is not specifically geographically limited but is about the way that a product is produced. Pie and mash would be another brilliant food to do that for.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Pie and Mash: Traditional Speciality Guaranteed Status · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the potential merits of providing traditional speciality guaranteed status to pie and mash. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark, in this debate. What is this debate all about? Well, there is a big picture and a little picture, and I will start off small. In my constituency of Basildon and Billericay, there are two fantastic pie and mash shops: Robins Pie & Mash in the town square; and Stacey’s pie and mash shop on Timberlog Lane. Both of them provide fantastic local produce and they are absolute hubs of the local community. And it has been really interesting to see the feedback that I have already received from local people about this campaign to give protected status to this traditional British product. What is pie and mash and why is it a traditional British product? It is a staple of cockney cuisine, moving out to places such as the east of England and Kent as the cockney diaspora moved post-war. That is why there are pie and mash shops in Basildon today. We seek recognition to safeguard the heritage of pie and mash, and to promote pie and mash, both here in the UK and internationally. Back in the 1840s, pie and mash became an iconic food, closely associated with cockney culture and the social identity of non-posh Londoners. Over the years, more than a hundred pie and mash shops, typically family-owned, spread out from the inner London heartlands of Southwark and Tower Hamlets right across the areas across the country where the cockney diaspora had spread to. Traditional pie and mash is an artisan food. The pie and mash and liquors are freshly made, using authentic family-owned recipes that have been passed down through generations like precious heirlooms. They are something that in Italy or France, let us say, would be instantly recognised as being worth celebrating and preserving, and I will say more on that broader point a little later.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Pub and Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech, covering all aspects of the hospitality sector. An extra benefit of draught beer relief is that 97% of the input into draught beer is made in the UK. That has a big knock-on effect across our agricultural sector. It is a win-win for UK farmers, the UK Exchequer and the hospitality sector. I urge him to continue to press the Government to push for greater relief in that space.

• 21 Oct 2024 · Policing of Protests · Hansard source

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  Recent footage of Metropolitan police officers saying that the description of Hezbollah as a terror group was a matter of “opinion” is alarming. The officers in question were deployed to a march in central London where support for Hezbollah was openly displayed, yet many offenders were only identified by photos on social media after the event. Will the Minister ensure that all officers are fully briefed on the proscribed status of Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist organisations, so that offenders are arrested on the spot, and not allowed to spew antisemitic hate on our streets?

• 21 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T7. The Home Secretary is benefiting from some of the measures on legal routes for migration brought in by my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Cleverly) when he was in government, which have caused the number of people able to come to the UK to halve. What further measures has she taken to ensure that legal migration is cut further?

• 17 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Women are those most often criminalised for non-payment of the licence fee. The BBC charter review offers an opportunity for the Government to look at this issue again. Will the Government consider decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to be called in this important debate. I have a little bit of experience of this issue, having served as a special adviser in the House of Lords, working with the now Leader of the House of Lords when she was on the Opposition Front Bench. I also worked with Baroness Stowell of Beeston and as special adviser to Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, as well as with some hereditary peers, including Freddie, Lord Howe and Patrick, the Earl of Courtown. It is important to acknowledge, as many Members have, the service that all Members of the House of Lords give to our country. Ministers perhaps did not understand exactly where I was coming from when I intervened earlier, but my point has been made by Members from across the Opposition Benches. Why go for piecemeal reform when the Government have the space to ask the country what it wants? Why not put something forward with the legislative time available, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) said? We could have a proper debate, as the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) said, on the future of the country.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I certainly did not find it in Basildon and Billericay—or in Romford when I visited it with my hon. Friend, or, indeed, in other seats across the country—and I think that our constituents will be slightly baffled. When it comes to a big piece of constitutional reform, why should this Government want to come forward with, potentially, a multiplicity of different Bills throughout the current Parliament, rather than putting something to the public to have a look at now, and then having a look at it right at the end? What constituents have been mentioning in recent weeks and months is their concern about the winter fuel payments or about what might be in the Government’s new Budget, particularly the jobs tax, which they fear will hit jobs throughout the country.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I think that the hon. Member is missing my point. We have to see this as part of a package. Lord Irvine spoke about it in 1999. The hereditary peers were being kept there as the stone in the shoe, and should not be removed until the wider reform was settled. The Government have a very large majority in this House. They can certainly get stuff through if they wish, and I urge Ministers to consider that comprehensive reform. I understand what the hon. Member is saying—why not do it slice by slice?—but I think that the entire point of the hereditaries being there shines a light on the greater issues we are facing in the House of Lords, as was mentioned earlier by, for instance, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) when he was talking about the religious Members of the Lords. If we are going to do a package, let us do a proper package. It also concerns me that, having proposed a retirement age in their manifesto, the Government are apparently not seeking to legislate on that now. Why not? The scope of the Bill in relation to membership of the House of Lords is clearly wide enough for the purpose. In the Canadian upper House, for instance, the retirement age is 75, and in this country there is a mandatory retirement age of 75 for judges. I should be interested to hear from Ministers how they can justify a mandatory retirement age of 75 for those who interpret the law, but cannot justify it for those who make the law—not democratically elected, as Members well over that age have been in this House, but appointed. That is where the similarity with judicial appointments comes in. If the Bill is passed, Members of the House of Lords will be purely appointed. Obviously, there is already a retirement age for Lords Spiritual.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his question. I do support their removal, but as part of a broader package of measures. I think that is the issue at stake today which Members on the Opposition Benches are concerned about. This piecemeal reform, which will remove people who are there by an accident of birth, will leave people in the House of Lords who are also there by accident or, in the case of bishops, by faith. It will leave the issue the public are perhaps most concerned about, which is pure patronage. Those two issues have been left totally to one side in the speeches made by Government Members. If we are to look at this issue properly, we need to look at it in the round. We have had piecemeal change over the last few years. I was working in the House of Lords when voluntary retirement was introduced. That was built on many measures over the years, including the Life Peerages Act 1958, which was passed by a Conservative Government. If we are going to consider changing the situation in the House of Lords and what it is going to be, other conventions will be called into question. Surely it would be better to deal with the whole issue and get it right, than to have to legislate two or three times, or make further changes down the line? Why not get something that the whole House and the country can have a proper debate on and reach proper agreement, and then legislate in one piece?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I do not want to take up too much of the House’s time, so I am trying to reduce the number of interventions that I take. My hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) hit the nail on the head when he said that this was a proper missed opportunity, but my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) made some important points. As he said, when we legislate we have to do so carefully, because we are fundamentally changing the nature of what we are looking at. Proper reform has been wanted by generations of politicians on both sides of the House, but particularly those in the Labour party. I do not understand why at this stage, with such a large majority and with time on their side, the Government are not seeking to put those changes through properly.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  How can the hon. Lady call it “more democratic” to have a purely nominated Chamber?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  Not again. Currently, Members of the House of Lords are there by birthright or appointed by God, as it were, or the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is going to pull out the hereditary peers, so it will just be him and God appointing people if this legislation goes through unchallenged. Putting even more power in the hands of the Executive—they have a majority of 174, as the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) said, although some of their Members come and go at the moment—is a really dangerous thing to do, and we are not looking at the comprehensive package of reform that was promised. Labour Members have talked about things that happened 25 years ago, when I—even though I might not look it—was still in short trousers. We need to reflect on the fact that this is a very different time from then. I hope that those on the Government Front Bench will consider what those on the Opposition Front Bench have mentioned today and look at the broader package, rather than looking at this issue in isolation, because they have the time and space to do so. I think the public would like to see a proper package brought forward, and the Government should concentrate on the people’s priorities, which are the cost of living and taxation.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will make a touch more progress before I take another intervention from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), but I am happy to give way to my hon. Friend.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend is making a fantastic point. He will know that it was in the Tudor era that reform of the House of Lords started, when the majority of bishops were removed, leaving these 26. The Paymaster General made a point about reforms not having been properly continued since 1999, but actually, when we are looking back to the 16th century, we can see that some of these reforms really need to catch up with modern times.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I totally agree with the hon. Member. It is interesting that the Bill has not been subject to the pre-legislative scrutiny that would normally come forward, because of the broader implications for the second Chamber. I want it done properly, as a full package. I do not think slice-by-slice reform is what the country wants. I have some sympathy with those on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench who see the Bill as a step in the right direction, but I fundamentally disagree with them. We need a full package of reforms to see where we wish to end up.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes an interesting point. I know there have been fractures in Downing Street recently, but I do not think that anybody would suggest that the Labour party, with a majority of over 170, is a coalition in the same way that the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition was between 2010 and 2015. The Government have the time and space to introduce change. The key point is that it has to be part of a package, which is what Lord Irvine said in 1999.