Richard Tice MP: speeches

Speeches

• 5 Feb 2025 · English Devolution and Local Government · Hansard source

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  Dictators, not democracies, cancel elections, and 5.5 million voters in southern England are being denied the right to pass judgment on the performance of their councillors over the past four years—interestingly, in areas where Reform UK is expected to do rather well. In cancelling these elections, the Secretary of State has admitted that she does not know what will replace them, and it seems there is a serious risk, as previously mentioned, of areas not being ready in 12 months’ time. Can the Secretary of State be crystal clear about what will happen in that case: will those elections be delayed by a further year, or will they go ahead in May 2026?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Southport Attack · Hansard source

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  The Prevent learning review of the Southport horror is shocking. It reveals a series of massive failures, to the point of gross negligence by people in Prevent. However, it also uses some crucial words: it refers to factors that “make him susceptible to being drawn into terrorism.” That appears to indicate that the review has found that the killer was a terrorist. I therefore think that the Government and the Crown Prosecution Service need to be crystal clear with the British people. Are they now accepting that the action of this monster was a terror incident?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q2. After she was kidnapped and shot, Emily Damari was held in captivity by Hamas in United Nations Relief and Works Agency facilities, confirming the fears of many of us that UNRWA is riddled with Hamas sympathisers. The British people do not want our aid stolen by Hamas. Does the Prime Minister agree that we should stop funding Hamas, follow the example of other nations and divert our aid to other, more trustworthy agencies?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Energy suppliers are now forecasting that the energy price cap will go up in April by another 5%, making for some 16% since last summer. Will the Secretary of State tell the House when bills will come down—or will net stupid zero mean that they will only ever go up?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Local Post Offices · Hansard source

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  Wherever we grew up in the United Kingdom, we all remember the post office and our parents imbuing us with the sense that it was one of the things that we could rely on and trust in a changing world. There are many reasons for that, one of which is the long-serving and always interested staff. In rural areas—Boston and Skegness has many rural areas—post office staff are important in helping people in villages, small towns and communities, particularly the elderly, the disabled and the vulnerable, to use certain services. When we were growing up, we did not have the digital devices we have now. In the many brilliant contributions today, we have heard that post office staff know their customers. They know who is healthy and who might be struggling. If someone does not appear on their regular day, at their usual time, they might say, “Where is Mrs Smith?”. That is massively important in our communities. This is not just about money; it is about the asset value of post offices in our communities. We and all the post offices on the frontline have been let down by decades of mismanagement. In Boston, WHSmith has a post office franchise, and yes, it is closing, which has caused great consternation. Sadly, WHSmith has not been well managed as a retailer. People are concerned that the replacement will be much smaller, and they cannot understand why services are being withdrawn. If we are trying to make post offices more viable, surely they should have more services, not fewer. The operators and owners of the post office in Swineshead cannot understand why services such as the sale of premium bonds and fishing licences, or the payment of tax and national insurance to HMRC, have all been withdrawn. That makes the post office less viable. All our communities, towns and tiny villages are different, so surely we need to be massively flexible, whether we have a stand-alone post office, or one in a franchise, a library or a village hall. I was delighted when there was a pub in the village hall; maybe we could have a post office in a pub. I digress, but Members can see my point. Post offices are the most important part of communities, and it is the elderly and the vulnerable who need them most. That is why I hope that the Government, given all their challenges, remember that this is not about the money. It is about the asset—the community hub of the post office.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  As we have heard in this Chamber, trust in politics is very important for a functioning democracy, but sadly the data shows that trust is collapsing. At the last general election, we faced the second lowest turnout in the last 100 years, with just six in 10 people voting. That tells us that far too many people do not think voting matters, whereas I hope we can all agree that every vote matters. That is why I pay tribute to the excellent lobbying group Make Votes Matter for proposing and promoting this issue. It is so important. How can we have a situation where only six in 10 people vote? We have the most unrepresentative Parliament in living memory. The governing party has about 34% of the votes cast, but 63% of the seats in this great House. What sort of system is that? It is completely unrepresentative. My good party had 14% of votes cast, yet we do not have even a mere 1% of seats in the Chamber. As for the other smaller parties, the Green party had just under 7% of votes cast, but has about 0.5% of the seats in the Chamber. That is so damaging to trust in democracy. We have 823,000 votes cast for every Reform seat; for the Labour party, it is a mere 23,000 votes for each seat. Voters still come up to me and say, “How does this work?”. People get confused, because as hon. Members have said, we have one system for the general election and another in the devolved nations. Why can we not have a single simple system that we know works, and that is used in so many democracies around the world—a variant of proportional representation? Not only does our system lead to misrepresentation when it comes to seats in the House, but its quirks mean that we have no representation on any Select Committee, despite having 4 million votes—14% of the votes cast. Trust in democracy collapses when something is as patently unfair as that. This issue is so important, and we know we can do better. It is marvellous that Members from the Labour party recognise that. Indeed, at the Labour conference a couple of years back, its members passed a motion to that effect. Fairness is vital. If we do not have it, we have complete misrepresentation of the views of the people on critical issues, such as immigration and net zero, because we end up with a uni-party approach. It cannot be good for democracy if people feel that all their views cannot be represented. They think, “What is the point of bothering? I will carry on with my life.” We all know that more engagement from many people of all ages—young, medium and old—is vital for a functioning and true democracy.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  I will make another intervention.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  That is most generous of him. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that almost all other major democratic nations across the world use PR? Does that not prove that far from being outdated, it is contemporary?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  On that point, will the shadow Minister give way?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  On that point, will the shadow Minister give way?

• 28 Jan 2025 · Extremism Review · Hansard source

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  So this report that has just been leaked was commissioned by the Home Secretary after the Southport horrors last July. The truth is that it has come out and all the recommendations have basically been immediately written off by the Home Secretary. Does that not confirm that the people in her Department are completely out of touch with her wishes and those of the British people?

• 28 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T3. Last September, the Secretary of State confirmed that foreign national offenders blocking up our jails were being removed and deported. Will she update the House on how many have been removed and deported, and does she agree that the fastest way to free up capacity in our prisons is to remove the vast majority of them?

• 23 Jan 2025 · Agricultural and Business Property Reliefs: OBR Costing · Hansard source

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  The Minister just mentioned balancing the public finances—those are the key words—through these measures. We have just had the debt figures for December, which are 20% higher than the OBR expected them to be just two months previously. At what point will the Minister and the Government recognise that they have got this badly wrong and change course?

• 21 Jan 2025 · Southport Attack · Hansard source

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  I think the vast majority of the British people agree with the Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, who has said repeatedly that when these horrific crimes take place, more information needs to be put out sooner to avoid an information vacuum. However, that is in conflict with the need to avoid prejudicing a fair trial. Does the Home Secretary agree that it is incumbent on this House to find a way to overcome or reduce that conflict, so that we get more information sooner?

• 20 Jan 2025 · UK-Ukraine 100-year Partnership · Hansard source

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  It is to be hoped that, as has been said, President Trump can indeed bring significant additional pressure to bear on the dictator Putin to end this horrific war. Will the Foreign Secretary give additional reassurance to the British people that, although we have invested billions and billions of pounds in supporting Ukraine, we are committed to recovering it from the frozen assets of the Russian state in due course?

• 16 Jan 2025 · Covid-19 Inquiry · Hansard source

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  I agree with other Members who have said that this inquiry is taking too long, costing too much and, in many cases, not asking the right questions. The results of the previous pandemic response exercise some nine years ago, Operation Cygnus, were so shocking that they were kept from this House and the British people. Will the Minister commit that the results of the pandemic exercise later this year will be transmitted totally openly, with full transparency, to this House and the British people?

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

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  There is much to welcome in the Home Secretary’s statement, but she has resisted six invitations from hon. Members to confirm that the Government-supported local inquiries will have statutory powers. Instead, she is relying on the duty of candour, responsibility and accountability, so let me try it a different way. Is the Home Secretary 100% certain that the duty of candour, responsibility and accountability is equivalent to statutory powers?

• 15 Jan 2025 · Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 15 Jan 2025 · Health and Social Care: Winter Update · Hansard source

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  I think we all share the Secretary of State’s aspiration to move healthcare out of hospitals and into the community. However, the two GP surgeries that I visited in Skegness just before Christmas are concerned that the impact of the national insurance increases on their staffing budgets will be around £100,000 per surgery, which will force them to reduce staffing capacity and, therefore, appointment capacity. What will the Secretary of State do to help those GP surgeries in that situation? There seems to be a conflict between the sensible aspiration and the practical reality.

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

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  The data in September and October shows that the economy is falling. It is going down and the currency markets and bond markets are selling off and expressing their clear concern that there is no growth and that the economy continues to fall. If the Chancellor is so confident, will she confirm to the House when the economy will start growing again?

• 13 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  What actions will the Home Secretary be taking following the news that eight UK companies and organisations have been deemed terror groups by the United Arab Emirates?

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

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  Is the Chief Secretary aware that the last two months’ GDP figures, for September and October, are both down? Is he aware that sterling is falling—in fact, almost collapsing? Confidence is falling and investors are fleeing. The only things going up are inflation, wasteful public spending and the cost of debt. Be under no illusion: we are heading towards a financial crisis. Will he ask the Chancellor to return from her ridiculous trip to China, to reverse course, and to cut daft spending and wasteful regulations, so that we can create some growth?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Social Housing Tenants: Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my excellent hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this debate. He has been most generous with some of his suggestions—almost unusually so, which I shall come to shortly. It seems to me that we must have the courage to look internationally at what works elsewhere. We look to New York city in the early 1990s, which had a simple slogan: broken windows. It starts right at the ground level. What was a lawless city was transformed by saying, “We want no broken windows, no graffiti and no antisocial behaviour”. It worked. They flooded the streets with a visible security presence. We know that having a proper deterrent also works. My hon. Friend was more than generous—unusually so—with his traffic light system of three strikes and out. I prefer a premier league football-style scenario: they get a yellow card and then they get a red card. The consequence would be that people would know that they, as a family, would lose their home if their youngsters misbehaved by, for example, revving their cars, smoking drugs or playing music from morning to dusk and throughout the night. These are the experiences that I hear about from my constituents in Boston and Skegness and in between. It is so unfair because, regardless of whether a person is a pensioner or they are going out to work to pay their taxes, mortgages or rent, it is unacceptable that those who live next door or nearby, who are not going to work, are causing absolute mayhem. We have to have the courage to say that with rights come responsibilities. With the right to have a social housing home or a council home comes the responsibility both to look after it on the inside and to be part of the community on the street, in the housing estate and beyond. In the same way, the right for sick people, or people who are looking for work, to receive a benefit comes with the responsibility to contribute to society by looking for work. We must instil that within our culture. A deterrent is really important, so if someone does not behave, it should be two strikes and they are out and they should lose their home, in the same way that if someone does not look for work or misbehaves, they lose their benefits. If people understand that, maybe all of a sudden things will change. We do not need more legislation—the legislation already exists. For example, public space protection orders can be used much more widely than they currently are, and councils need to be much braver in using them not just in town centres but in residential estates. Police forces are massively stretched. In my county of Lincolnshire, the police force has the worst funding formula in the whole country. That is the subject of a review, and the situation has to change, but there are other things one can do. For example, housing associations could use PSPOs and private prosecutions. I have seen that recently, and we know it can work. Private prosecutions, rapidly used—they are always used by housing associations on nuisance tenants—would send a message: “Unacceptable behaviour has consequences. You will be fined. You will be prosecuted. You will lose your home.” What is required is not more resources, but a proper focus on using the existing legislative framework and other aspects that are available. If we do that properly, we can make a significant difference, but it is a cultural thing. We have to make it clear to everybody that this selfish, horrific behaviour is unacceptable to communities, to decent, hard-working families and, frankly, to this country.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Social Housing Tenants: Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  Competition is a good thing. It may be that the Minister wants “no strikes and you’re out”.

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

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  The hon. Lady is quite right that the victims and survivors, where we know them, want answers, action and prosecution, but I regret to say that there are many towns where people do not know the perpetrators and the truth has not been exposed. The reality is that many councils have a vested interest in not digging into the truth, because it will expose the failings of their councillors and officers. That is why we must have a national inquiry dedicated to this horrific issue. We should be ambitious and say that it does not need to take three, five or seven years, for heaven’s sake. Let us do it in one year, and get it done. Let us have the appropriate number of people inquiring into town after town, examine the results, and get the answers. That is what will restore the confidence of the British people—action immediately, and answers within a year or so. Surely, as a nation, we can do this.