Richard Tice MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 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.

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

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  I shall come to the hon. Lady’s point, but the reality is that Professor Jay’s inquiry was an overarching one, and its references to grooming gangs were minuscule. It mentioned only Rotherham, but we know that there are dozens of towns—primarily Labour-led towns—where horrific things have taken place. Victims and survivors want not only action but answers. This is an opportunity for both. The hon. Lady referred to the need for action, but surely, in this great nation of ours, we can ensure both, in parallel. We can say, “Yes, these actions are required, following the recommendations of the Jay inquiry, but alongside that, for continuing public confidence and to get the answers that victims and survivors want, we need to keep exploring in specific towns.”

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

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  I will vote for the reasoned amendment and against the Bill, not only because of the catastrophic damage that the Bill will do to the academy movement, as so amply explained by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh), but because it fails to take the opportunity for a national public inquiry dedicated to the child rape and grooming scandal. Yes, victims and survivors want action now, but they also want answers. I fear that there is a great misunderstanding and misinformation about the previous national inquiry led by Professor Jay. That was an all-encompassing umbrella inquiry on child sex exploitation.

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

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  I was chair of governors of the 15th academy, and in 2008 I welcomed Sir Tony Blair to that academy in Northampton to show him the benefits of the freedoms for governors to act with regard to the national curriculum, with regard to pay and conditions, and with regard to innovation. I think that Sir Tony Blair and Lord Adonis will be horrified by these changes, which will restrict the freedoms to innovate and to improve. It is a great shame.

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

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  Will the Secretary of State give way?

• 6 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T3. I was astonished to be told by the Department for Business and Trade before Christmas that neither Tata Steel nor British Steel was a critical supplier of the Ministry of Defence. Will the Secretary of State give a commitment that, unlike the previous Conservative Government, this Labour Government will buy British, including British Steel?