Richard Tice MP: speeches

Speeches

• 25 Jun 2025 · Criminal Cases Review (Public Petition) · Hansard source

  More

  I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the general public to petition the Criminal Cases Review Commission to review sentences that the petitioners believe to be either too harsh or too lenient; to make provision about the review of such sentences; to make provision about the referral of such cases to the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court; and for connected purposes. Before looking at the provisions, I ask you, Mr Speaker, to join me in a journey of the imagination to a distant, respected democracy, where there is an elected leader, an independent judiciary that is respected and a respected legal system, and where, historically, there has been confidence among the people of this democracy in that judicial and legal system. Then imagine that a bad event occurs, and the elected leader of that distant democracy effectively instructs the judiciary to impose the harshest possible sentences on potential transgressors. Imagine a scenario where someone in a fit of anger puts out a bad, offensive and inappropriate tweet for a few hours, then calms down, apologises and withdraws it, but because of that tweet is then charged and sentenced in a very serious way—potentially receiving a sentence of some 31 months, which might be significantly longer than the sentence given to a shoplifter, robber, mugger or drug dealer and the like. For people to have confidence in a legal system, sentences must be comparative. Imagine that while in prison that individual is the recipient of violent maltreatment, including being manhandled to the ground and handcuffed to the point of having significant bruises five days later. Imagine that they are then being dragged up not one, not two but three flights of stairs to the naughty girls wing, when they had been a model prisoner and had been promised to be taken to the good girls wing. Mr Speaker, you may think that that must be happening in some distant democracy and cannot be valid here, but it is with regret that I must bring you back to the reality: that scenario has occurred in the United Kingdom in the last few months. That is why I am bringing this criminal cases review Bill to the House under the ten-minute rule Bill process. It is known outside this House as Lucy’s Bill. Confidence in our judicial system and the sentences that are handed out is vital. I believe that the public want to trust our system, but justice works when it is natural, fair and decent and when the public believe that sentences are appropriate. If we lose that, potentially we lose everything. We are all human, and even noble, experienced and wise judges can get things wrong, and there is a system of appeal. But the provisions of the Bill are so important because maybe the public would have ever more confidence in a vibrant democracy and our justice system if there were some kind of treble check, with safeguards over sentences, but without being able to impinge on the original judgment following a case. Let us say that 500 members of the public sign a petition to ask the Criminal Cases Review Commission to reconsider a sentence, and the commission, within eight weeks, felt that the sentence was too lenient or too harsh, it could then be referred to an appropriate court. That would give people extra trust and confidence in the fairness of our system and the comparative appropriateness of sentences. I believe that people would then feel that this is a democracy and a justice system that works for all, with the appropriate safeguards. It is for that reason that I bring the Bill to the House. I believe that it is worthy of further debate and consideration. Question put and agreed to . Ordered , That Richard Tice, Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson, Sarah Pochin and James McMurdock present the Bill. Richard Tice accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 July, and to be printed (Bill 275).

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Lady may have forgotten that it was thanks to our intervention that British Steel and the blast furnaces have been saved. We stood there six years ago, and I said, “Don’t sell British Steel to the Chinese,” but the Conservative Government ignored our advice. British Steel has consistently said to me over the last six years that the cost of energy drives up the price of steel. That is why the quantity of steel that we have produced in this country in the last decade has plummeted—because of our high energy costs due to the ever increasing cost of renewable energy. The key problem is the cost of energy, which has driven down the production of steel by about half in the last decade. That is why British Steel is so cross about the cost of energy. We have an opportunity to manufacture and sell more steel internally, in the UK, but the tragedy is that the Ministry of Defence, for example, does not use either of our key steel producers—Tata Steel or British Steel—as a critical supplier, which it should do. Why does it not do that? Because those producers are uncompetitive. Why? Because of the cost of energy in our domestic market. The fifth surrender is the EU emissions trading scheme, which will be a serious handicap and handcuff over the next few years. The sixth surrender is on the use of passport e-gates. I know it caused some interest, but the reality is that, once again, nothing has been agreed. It is supposedly the great benefit, yet it turns out that it is not agreed. We have no idea when it might commence; it might be this year or next year. It also turns out that no country is obligated to sign up to our supposed access through the e-gates—no, it will be a voluntary process. Actually, we have not agreed the benefit that we have all been told is the deal’s greatest opportunity. In other words, once again, little has been agreed and everything has been conceded. Interestingly, even before the deal, nations such as Portugal already allowed us through e-gates. We already have the opportunity that is supposedly the great benefit of this deal, so why do the deal in the first place? The deal has been done, despite all of these great surrenders, because we have a Prime Minister who did not want us to leave the EU. More than that, he did not want to trust democracy; he wanted to do it again by having a second referendum. One week, he says that he wants freedom of movement and more immigration, and the next week, he says he wants less immigration. It is hard to keep up.

• 22 May 2025 · EU-UK Summit · Hansard source

  More

  I did not say anything about downplaying; I said that if the Government are going to agree a deal, they should agree the terms of the deal. They should not just say, “We’d like a bit of the action. Please tell us how much it’ll cost us later,” and have no idea how much of the action they will get. That is a terrible deal, and we all know that no deal is better than a bad deal. The third surrender is about becoming a rule-taker. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) referred to agrifoods and the SPS deal, which all sounds very good, except that we now have to take a load of extra rules from Brussels that we have no input into under a process called dynamic alignment, which might mean that we cannot do any further trade deals with great nations such as the United States. That is instead of arguing for mutual recognition, which can of course exist between nations that have excellent standards of food and products, as we do. We have gained nothing from those three great surrenders. Indeed, we will probably have to pay more if we want any more rules to be given to us, but why would we pay more when we have given ourselves the freedom not to have to pay? I thought we had done all of that. If we are not content with that, what about the fourth surrender—the big one? Earlier this year, the Minister said, “Don’t worry, chaps—no plans for any form of youth mobility scheme.” It turns out that he was right, because some clever person rebadged it: “I’ve got an idea. Let’s call it a youth experience scheme.” Well, I am sure it is a lovely experience, but when someone is 30 years old, are they still a youth? Is it a middle age experience scheme? During the negotiation—because it has not been concluded —I can see that it will then become an old age experience scheme. Then, someone will say, “Hang on, if it’s an old age experience scheme, we don’t have the workers to look after the old people from the EU who’ve come over to our glorious care homes.” So then we will have to have more freedom of movement.

• 22 May 2025 · Diego Garcia Military Base · Hansard source

  More

  The Mauritians have never ever owned the Chagos islands. When they gained independence from the United Kingdom in the 1960s, the UK paid them millions of pounds to cede any future claims over the sovereignty of the Chagos islands. The Defence Secretary has confirmed the strategic importance of the Chagos islands, and we all agree on that, but the truth is that this is the worst ever deal in history by this country. Over 100 years we are paying, with inflation, over £40 billion to give away a strategically important security asset. The truth is, and I confirm it now, that when Reform wins the next general election, we will rip up this deal—tear it up—and stop all future payments. It is a disgrace.

• 20 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

  More

  In Boston and Skegness, my fishermen are furious that the Prime Minister has surrendered the fishing industry. My constituents are furious that he has surrendered on freedom of movement and on rule taking under the ECJ. But there is good news: does Prime Minister accept that he has also surrendered the jobs of many of his Back-Bench MPs to Reform at the next general election?

• 19 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  The Minister speaks about facts. Is he aware of the fact that when the Labour party won the election, the economy was growing, and is he aware of the fact that it is now shrinking?

• 10 Mar 2025 · Legal and Illegal Migration: Suspension · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) on opening the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. We all want to do things well—I am sure that is an ambition shared by all hon. Members—and immigration done well can be a great thing. It is what I call smart immigration, where we welcome people from across the world, with the skills required, in numbers that can be absorbed into the existing population. We welcome people who want to integrate, work and grow within communities, and learn the language. That is a great thing, and we have a long history, until the last 25 years, of actually getting that right. When we are looking at strategy and planning our constituents expect us to do a good job, so when we look ahead to the next 20 years and see that population growth of some 10 million people is forecast—give or take; let us call it half a million a year—and the vast majority of that is through inward migration, we want to say, surely, “How will we plan for that? Where is the infrastructure? Where are the homes, doctors, hospitals and everything else?” In a sense, the challenge that the Government currently face—there are many, which we all recognise—is dealing with the existing challenges. I suspect that there is very little real planning. The Government are planning to build 1.5 million homes in this Parliament, but that will barely alleviate the existing population’s housing challenges, let alone half a million more people coming to join our population every year over the next five years and beyond. I fear that for the next 20 years we are going to make the same mistake as the huge one we made 20 years ago. If we had had this sort of debate in about 2005 and someone had said, “We’ve got a good idea, folks: let’s increase the population by 10 million people over the next 20 years”— give or take, about 17% of the then population—I am pretty sure that smart hon. Members would have said, “If so, we have to build the infrastructure, the houses and so on.” Someone would probably have asked, rightly, “Will that make us all better off?” The role of the Government in this great place is to make our constituents better off. If something is planned for and delivered well, great results can be achieved. But if there is no proper planning, as happened, regrettably, under the previous Conservative Administrations—various shades of Liberal Democrat—uncontrolled migration and the situation of the last couple of years are the result. In one year, there was almost 1 million net inward migration and in a second year almost three quarters of a million. That is completely uncontrollable, and it puts huge pressures on the population. The thing to focus on to bring people together in this sensitive debate is population. If we want population growth, we must plan for it, make sure that it is going to make everybody better off and then deliver it. The interesting point, of course, is that our population has never been bigger; according to official numbers, it is a whisker under 70 million people. We are not short of people in this country. There are, give or take, 7 million or 8 million people who are economically inactive and over 5 million people on out-of-work benefits. Surely, before we say, “We need another half a million people a year, every year, to provide the labour for the various services we need to fill”, we should be training and skilling up our own people.

• 27 Feb 2025 · War in Ukraine: Third Anniversary · Hansard source

  More

  I have not even warmed up! I will make a little more progress. Just over 13 months ago, I made a donation to acquire a 4x4 pick-up truck and to fill it with first aid supplies, and I drove it with other volunteers to Ukraine to give it to those brave soldiers on the frontline. I remember meeting the extraordinary technicians who were making the drones, including brilliant, bright children who were helping to develop new drone technology. Tragically, I stood in a cemetery and watched mums weep over the graves of their sons. That cemetery has almost doubled in size in just 12 months. The maxim of peace through strength has stood the test of time—in history, today and in future. That is why in our contract at the election we had 2.5% of GDP on defence spending within three years, and 3% within six years. That is why we supported the Prime Minister earlier this week when he made those same commitments. I hope that that 3% will be a firm commitment within five or six years. Peace through strength is vital. As others have said, we all want peace, not least the brave Ukrainians. It must be right to try for a peace deal, however difficult. Most wars and conflicts end up in some form of negotiation —however difficult, tough or tense.

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

  More

  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.

• 21 Nov 2024 · Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation · Hansard source

  More

  I congratulate the hon. Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) on securing this vital debate. I declare an interest, which I have raised with the Speaker’s Office and parliamentary authorities, as I am currently the defendant in a lawsuit. I will refer not to that but to general concepts. We pride ourselves in this country on free speech—the quality of our campaigners, our journalism, our broadcasters and our investigators—so how ironic, embarrassing and frankly humiliating that we should be the global epicentre of SLAPPs designed to prevent exactly that. As the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) said, there is a crisis in free speech now in this country, and a crisis of fear among journalists, authors, writers and broadcasters about what they can and cannot say. How have we got to this situation? Surely, if we are a beacon of free speech around the world, with the greatest Parliament and the greatest legal system, we should be able to preserve and protect free speech. We have heard lots of shocking examples and evidence, but there are examples elsewhere in the world—states in America, for example—where anti-SLAPP mechanisms have been introduced. As a new Member of this place, I was surprised to hear how long we have been talking about this—years and years. This Government have been elected on a mandate of change, so now seems to be the moment for them to grasp that mandate in this vital issue and say, “Yes. It’s now time to stop talking about this and do something about it with concerted action.” I just hope that the Minister and the Government will find time in this Session to bring forward anti-SLAPP mechanisms in legislation to preserve what we cherish so dearly: free speech.

• 21 Nov 2024 · G20 and COP29 Summits · Hansard source

  More

  I was struck that the Prime Minister’s statement contained not a single reference in to our most important security and trading partner, the United States, particularly at this time of change, with the good news of the election of President Trump. While the Prime Minister was at the COP summit, he may have missed the fact that growth is falling in this country, debt is rising, and the motor industry is panicking as jobs are being destroyed. Just yesterday, Nissan announced further job cuts, as has Ford, because of electric vehicle targets, which are causing irreversible damage to our motor industry.

• 29 Oct 2024 · Ministerial Code: Policy Announcements · Hansard source

  More

  We hear a lot about “14 years of failure”, but it seems to me that this Government have had 14 years to learn how the ministerial code works. In reality, the announcement made by the Chancellor last week moved the markets: bond yields went up, which means that mortgages and people’s bills have gone up. The right thing for the Government to do is to apologise.

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

  More

  I am a big fan of reform, and I detect, with the exception of one or two Members, appetite for reform of the House of Lords. But if the Government are going to do a job, they should do it properly. The Government, who often lament having waited 14 years to come back to power, have had plenty of time to get themselves organised and ready for the reform of the House of Lords. Some of us of a certain age remember the last reform 25 years ago. The Paymaster General said earlier that this was just phase 1; no, this is phase 2. I cannot wait 25 years for phase 3. We want to get on with it, and the country wants to get on with it. I think that the country will appreciate this phase of reform, but they will say, “Hang on, Prime Minister. The Labour party stood on a platform of removing cronyism.” As other Members have rightly said, the country is sick and tired of the cronyism of cloth of ermine. It feels like cash for cloth. We are done with it. We have had enough of it. We want this sorted. This is an opportunity for the Government: if they are not going to do it at this phase, they have a Parliament of four years ahead. Will they commit, as a Government, to go from phase 2 to phase 3? They can have the debate around the country about what the House of Lords should look like, but I urge them, on behalf of tens of millions of people who want proper reform of the House of Lords, to get on with it, please, and not to wait another 25 years.

• 5 Sept 2024 · Rail and Road Connectivity: Northern Lincolnshire · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Member is making an extraordinarily powerful and important point. Lincolnshire has a huge footprint from the north, which she represents, to the south— I would suggest that it is not a corner but a massive footprint. The Government want to create growth and to build 1.5 million new homes over this Parliament. The key to that is infrastructure, because if we do not have a good road network to enable people to get across Lincolnshire and if they cannot get to new homes, the house builders will not build them. In my constituency, we have been talking about a bypass in Boston for about 20 years—so long that no one can remember. I therefore support her and say to the Minister that actually the whole of Lincolnshire—north and south—needs extra investment in road and rail infrastructure to secure the growth that the Government are rightly so keen to ensure for the nation.

• 30 Jul 2024 · European Scrutiny Committee · Hansard source

  More

  It is important to have a debate on this motion. We have heard all afternoon splendid speeches and maiden speeches, have we not? But the thrust of this afternoon has been scrutiny, accountability and responsibility. It seems extraordinary to me that while the other House has a Committee to scrutinise our relations with the European Union—indeed, today it has proudly announced that it has been reformed—and the Government want to reform the House of Lords, we could have a situation in which there is only a Committee to scrutinise relations with the European Union in the other place. We have talked about scrutiny all afternoon. Of the 27 Committees referred to on the Order Paper, the European Scrutiny Committee is the only one that includes the word “scrutiny”, yet it is the one Committee that the Leader of the House wants to do away with. I find that extraordinary. We have heard from the Government before the election, during the election and since the election about the importance of our relations with our friends in the European Union and how negotiations may take place on a whole raft of important issues. Do hon. Members remember the slogan, “Take back control of our borders, our money and our laws”? Surely the whole point of our debate about our relationship with the European Union is that this is the place where we debate and legislate for laws on behalf of the people, so if we are to take back control of our laws, surely those laws and the negotiations proposed by the Government on behalf of the people should be scrutinised in detail and earnest, as has been proposed all afternoon with regard to other matters. I suggest to the Leader of the House, the Government and the Whips that we need to reflect on that. I urge the Leader of the House to withdraw the motion, reflect on it from the sedentary position of our sunbeds over the next month and bring it back to the House in September.

• 30 Jul 2024 · European Scrutiny Committee · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the hon. Lady for her constructive and positive contribution. The reality is that it is incumbent on us, on behalf of millions of people who believe in democracy in this country and wanted to take back control, to scrutinise the negotiations that the newly elected Government will have in multiple areas with the European Union in Brussels and the European nations. It seems extraordinary to take away the ability to look at that in detail—I am not sure how millions of people will understand it.

• 23 Jul 2024 · Immigration and Home Affairs · Hansard source

  More

  Good beer indeed. There is the extraordinary engineering feature of a lattice of ditches, dykes, drains, rivers and havens that ensure that the farmland is productive. At the eastern end of this great constituency is sunny Skegness, where millions go for their holidays every year—the home of the first Butlin’s, in 1936—and where the fourth longest pier in the country was built in the late 1880s. It is an extraordinary and remarkable town. It has the benefit of producing what I think is possibly the best value, most delicious and greatest portions of ice cream, to which I am very partial. If we head west from Skegness, over the farmland, we reach the historic market town of Boston. It has the tallest parish church tower in England—known as “the Stump”—built over 500 years ago. A couple of hundred years ago, Boston was the largest trading port outside London. Of course, it was Bostonians who, in 1630, left the Isle of Wight for north America, where they established Boston, Massachusetts. It is a remarkable constituency that I am proud to represent. I pay tribute to my predecessor, Mr Matt Warman, who was the MP for nine years. His legacy is in healthcare in particular. We are building at the moment a £40 million accident and emergency facility—he played a role in that. He saved a children’s unit from closing, and he had a significant role in securing the diagnostics care unit that is under construction. Those are great achievements. There is a reason I overturned the largest ever Conservative majority in the country. Despite the Jolly Fisherman being the symbol of Skegness, my constituents are not feeling very jolly at the moment. Seven out of 10 of them voted to leave the European Union. They trusted the previous Government—they took them at their word—but they now feel a sense of political betrayal in a number of areas. The first people who are not very jolly are the fishermen themselves, who feel that various bureaucrats including the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities are acting so as to try to suppress or destroy this great industry for our seafaring nation, one that produces food and generates great revenues. In addition, bureaucrats are making the issue of flooding a serious problem in my constituency. Thousands of homes have been flooded, and with a failure to properly maintain sea level defences, tens of thousands of homes are at risk, again because of bureaucracy and inertia. Another reason why my constituents are really quite grumpy is that the stupid net zero policies will result in hundreds of massive, ugly pylons blighting the environment and countryside of my constituency, as well as solar farms planned on incredibly productive agricultural farmland. It is absolute idiocy. Then, of course, there is another big issue that is making my constituents very grumpy indeed. One of the slogans for leaving the European Union was to take back control. The previous Government promised it; do you remember that slogan? It was about money, laws and borders—yes, borders. It was about controlling immigration and having smart immigration—working, integrating and speaking the language—which we should all agree is a great thing. Instead, the previous Government opened the doors to mass immigration, with significant consequences for towns such as Boston and other towns up and down the country. I will give Members an example. Every morning in the centre of Boston, dozens and dozens of east Europeans arrive in the marketplace with nothing to do. They have been hoofed out of the houses in multiple occupation where they are hot-bedding—two or three shifts a day on the same mattresses—because of mass, uncontrolled immigration. They have got nothing to do, and they have been aided and abetted in coming to the UK by false promises made by morally bankrupt businesses, which are helping them to get national insurance numbers for overseas persons under a scheme that we thought had closed. We thought the EU settlement scheme had closed, but it turns out that it has not. If someone fibs about how much time they have spent here before 2020, they can still apply, so many are still arriving, and they are not integrating. They are not learning the language, and regrettably, it creates an intimidating atmosphere in the centre of the town—I know this goes on elsewhere. The implication is most seriously felt by women who work in the town centre, who feel unsafe leaving their place of work, and by constituents who do not want to go into the centre of this great market town at night because they fear, frankly, that it is not safe. When they go there at night, there is no chance of seeing any police whatsoever—I have been there on a number of occasions. What those people will see is drug dealers in the centre of the marketplace, plying their hideous, vile trade night in and night out. That is completely unacceptable. During the election campaign, I went to numerous houses; for example, there was one where seven people were living in a house with two bedrooms. It was a Bulgarian family, and only one member of that family spoke any English at all. They said, “We’re here to claim benefits—your health benefits and housing benefits. We would prefer it in Bulgaria, but we want to take your benefits and then send the money home.” That is what is going on up and down the country, and it is completely unacceptable. [ Interruption. ] There is muttering—the truth hurts. The establishment do not want to talk about this, do they?

• 23 Jul 2024 · Immigration and Home Affairs · Hansard source

  More

  I repeat that smart immigration—working, integrating, speaking the language—is a great thing, but there are serious consequences of uncontrolled mass immigration. As Member of Parliament for this great constituency, my objectives are to attract more business and more investment. The great port of Boston needs to grow and expand, and we want more infrastructure—for example, a new bypass around Boston itself. With these things, my constituency of Boston and Skegness can be great once again.