Richard Tice MP: speeches

Speeches

• 21 May 2026 · Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill · Hansard source

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  It is exactly seven years since I started calling for British Steel at Scunthorpe to be taken into public ownership. The Conservatives rejected my splendid advice, and the chaos we have seen is a result of that. In opposing this Bill, they show that they do not care about the sovereign nature and importance of steelmaking, they do not care about the thousands of highly-skilled jobs, and they do not care about the communities and families around them—they have no understanding of its importance. I congratulate the Secretary of State and the Minister for Industry on bringing forward this Bill—the first from the King’s Speech to be debated on Second Reading. I told the Secretary of State’s predecessor that he should show some cojones and get on with it, and I think that is what we are now seeing. Alongside this support from the Secretary of State, we now need to see the vision and the plan for the long term. I am concerned that there is an attitude of, “We’ll quietly let the blast furnaces go cold and disappear, and then replace them with electric arc furnaces.” We need a big, bold vision to renew, reline and rebuild at least one blast furnace. Around the world, 50% of all new steelmaking capacity in the last five years has come from blast furnaces. It is the strongest, most robust primary steel. I know that the Minister of State is a great fan of direct reduced iron, and he has a point there; nevertheless, we should not expose ourselves by putting all our bets on electric arc furnaces, when we know that the price of electricity is at a crisis high. We need diversity in this, rather like when my late grandmother would look at the desserts available for Sunday lunch and say, “Grandson, have a little bit of each.” When it comes to steelmaking, let us have a little bit of each. Let us have a bit of primary steel and a little bit of electric arc furnace steel, to ensure that we always retain those skills and recognise the importance of our sovereign steelmaking capability. I hope that the Minister and the Secretary of State will produce that vision and plan over the coming weeks, so that we can have confidence in those jobs and so that the communities can have confidence that steelmaking will be retained and invested in for the long term.

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  What we want is smart and safe regulation; we do not want daftness, dither and delay, and this Prime Minister represents all those three things. In a desire to be constructive, I have scoured the King’s Speech and found some good news. The greatest news in this programme of government is that there is one Bill in which this Government have copied and learned from Reform. They have listened to what I said almost exactly a year ago: that we must nationalise British Steel, invest in it, and grow it, so that it becomes the heart of our sovereign steel-making capability. Although this is somewhat delayed, after a year, this Prime Minister has thankfully listened to me and Reform. There is another important area: the critical issue of special educational needs and the Government’s plans for a Bill to follow the White Paper. That is incredibly important to so many children and parents across all our constituencies. The White Paper was produced by the Secretary of State some weeks ago, and I have said in this House that there will hopefully be much that can reassure parents. As we look at the details of the Bill, I hope that we will find that some of the measures being brought forward will give better, faster outcomes for children, and reduce the conflict between parents and councils. I urge the Government to try to accelerate some of those measures for the benefit of so many children. That is absolutely vital. However, I regret to say that there is some very bad news in this King’s Speech. We all talk about the energy bills crisis, but the plans for an energy independence Bill will make things dramatically worse. Completely unbelievably, and ignoring all the evidence from the growth of the ’80s and ’90s in the last century, when we grew by 2.5% to 4% most years, because we used the great energy treasure of oil and gas in the North sea, this Government think it is a good idea to ban all new exploration of oil and gas fields. That is not a good idea; it is a terrible idea. That is unbelievable. We must be the only nation in the world with the joy, the pleasure and the treasure of oil and gas that says, “No, it’s a good idea to leave it down there.” That is unbelievably incompetent and negligent, and it is the reason why we have such high energy bills. That is an absolute tragedy, because that could drive up growth and prosperity, so we must absolutely ensure that that does not happen. Here is my deepest concern of all about this programme of government. In a sense, we in Reform are joyous; we completely smashed it last Thursday in the local elections. After May 2025, and the success of our brilliant 10 councils on which we have a majority, voters have said, “We want more Reform.” They have given us full control of 10 more councils, and there are another nine councils in which we are the largest party.

• 7 Jan 2026 · Student Finance (Review of Payment Schedules) · Hansard source

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  Rubbish!

• 15 Oct 2025 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey, as always. I congratulate my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), on securing this vital debate. Knife crime is the scourge of our society. Almost every day or every week, in the newspapers and in our constituencies, we hear horrific stories from people and we have our own experiences. Many good examples have been spoken of today, and there have been different suggestions of how to try to reduce it, whether that is through education in schools, amnesty bins, knife arches —we do not want them, but maybe they help—youth clubs and much more besides. We have to be prepared to try things to see what works, and different police forces will make different progress. Ultimately, however, there has to be a deterrent. Earlier this year, I had a slightly strange experience while campaigning in the glorious town of Boston in Lincolnshire, in my constituency. Some of my team were driving down a neighbouring street where a gentleman was walking along carrying a machete. They took a photograph of the machete and called the police, who were fantastic and responded immediately: I was taken off the street and the police found the gentleman. They arrested him and he was charged for carrying a machete. He went to court, but he was found not guilty of carrying a knife that could be a lethal instrument. We have to ask, where is the consistent application of sensible laws to act as a genuine deterrent? That is the point. Ultimately, with all the good measures that we hear about, which I just touched on and other Members know can work, when we educate people about the horrors of knife crime, there also has to be a sanction. There has to be a deterrent—that if someone does not listen to the wise words of mentors, fathers, teachers or youth clubs, there is a sanction. It seems to me that the data does not lie. There are short-term variances, but the medium and long-term data is crystal clear in England and Wales: in the past 12 years or so, stop and search has halved, while knife offences have doubled. We have to have automatic detention for carrying a knife and automatic longer sentences for using a knife. A zero tolerance policy is what our constituents want.