Robert Jenrick MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jul 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  On Tuesday, we learned that the only two major road projects in the east midlands—the A46 in Newark and the A38 in Derby—were to be scrapped. So many questions remain. How were these projects chosen? Why are the only projects being scrapped in the whole country those in the east midlands? Who, if anyone, was consulted? The Labour Mayor of the East Midlands was not. How much money has been wasted over the last 10 years getting to the point that we are at today? Does the Department for Transport even support this decision, given that the only communication we have had—by “we”, I mean the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer), the Labour Mayor of the East Midlands and I—came, weirdly, from a special adviser in No. 10, not from the Secretary of State for Transport? It really is a mess. Can the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Transport to get in touch with those of us who are interested in this matter, and to come to Parliament to answer questions on it?

• 1 Jul 2026 · Packaging Manufacturers: Extended Producer Responsibility · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is being very generous in giving way, and she is making an excellent speech. I think we would say that the cost of food right now is the No. 1 issue for all our constituents and that household budgets are very tight. Does she agree that this is a bad time to be implementing this tax, whatever its merits may or may not be? The Bank of England estimates that it will add 0.5% to food price inflation, and that food prices could rise by 7% over the next 12 months. Households on very tight incomes are going to be squeezed as a result. Would it not be better either to cancel this measure, or at the very least not to implement it at a tough time like this?

• 30 Jun 2026 · Business Without Debate · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your advice. Over the course of the day, following the announcement of the defence investment plan, it has become clear that the Government intend to cancel two major road schemes to fund their commitments. One of them, the Newark bypass, is in my constituency. This is a scheme on which tens of millions of pounds have already been spent. The development consent order has already been granted, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s permission was given for that. No stakeholders, including me, were informed in Newark, and the Mayor of the East Midlands did not know the faintest thing about this before the story was given to the trade press, which strikes me as a total slap in the face for local people in Nottinghamshire. The scheme would have a profoundly welcome effect on business, jobs and quality of life for my constituents, and for everyone in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. It seems that the scheme has now been cast aside, but it is clear what the money should have been spent on. We should cut waste in Government to fund important schemes like this. How can we get the Transport Secretary to come to the House of Commons to account for this terrible decision for my constituents and for all the people of the east midlands?

• 29 Jun 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Unemployment is soaring and nearly 1 million young people are not in education or training. It is a terrible waste of human potential and an economic catastrophe. Reform is proposing that we scrap the damaging jobs tax and pay for that with a new levy on migrant labour, which would make it much, much easier to employ British workers. Will the Secretary of State consider this and put British workers first?

• 29 Jun 2026 · Animal Abusers · Hansard source

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  I begin by thanking Bea Elton and the near-quarter of a million petitioners who have brought this issue to the attention of the House of Commons. We are a nation of animal lovers; it is an essential part of the British psyche. We were the first country in the world to have an animal cruelty charity, which became the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In fact, the RSPCA was created 60 years before a similar charity for children, which perhaps says something about the unique attachment we on these islands have to our animals. In 1822, we became the first state to create laws against animal cruelty, again before some prescient ones with respect to humans. Animal charities receive millions of pounds more every year than charities for children do. All of that tells us that the British love their animals; I certainly do. I am here on behalf of my constituents to strongly back the petition and all that Bea and her fellow campaigners have achieved so far. It cannot be right that in a country like ours, where we have such a deep sentimental attachment to our animals, we allow people who have been known to abuse animals to take charge of them again. It should be the law of the land that if somebody has been convicted of knowingly abusing an animal, they are never in charge of one again. I strongly support the purpose of the petition. Similarly, it is right that a register is created that is either in the public domain or, as a bare minimum, available to those who breed and sell animals—the ultimate guardians of animals, who entrust them to others—so that they can make sensible choices and not give animals to those who are known to have abused them. It is surprising that a register like that does not exist in our country already; it should do. If the petition spurs the Government to establish such a register, Bea and the quarter of a million people the length and breadth of the country who signed it will have done a good deed. We must take better care of our pets and animals. That is obviously good for animals, but it is good for us as well. The tenderness we show animals should be something that we celebrate and take pride in when we visit other parts of the world that do not have the traditions that we have. It is part of, as I think Peter Singer described, the “ever-expanding circle of empathy” where, if we treat animals well, it will encourage us to treat humans in a similar fashion. I will finish by again thanking Bea and all of the petitioners. I encourage the Government to take up the recommendations and to create a mandatory ban and a register that is available for all those who pass animals into the custody of their fellow citizens. That will ensure that we protect animals and increase and improve the world-class laws against animal cruelty that we have in this country.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Tax-free individual savings accounts are tax-free; it is a very simple principle. ISAs have existed for 30 years, and 22 million people in our country invest their savings in them; that is 40% of the adult population. As the Chancellor’s final act, she has decided to slap a 22% tax on cash in stocks-and-shares ISAs. Is there nothing that she does not want to tax? Does the Chancellor intend to come to Parliament and account for her actions? Can we have a debate on this decision, in the name of the 22 million savers in this country who are being let down?

• 24 Jun 2026 · Nottingham Maternity and Neonatal Services · Hansard source

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  May I put on record my admiration for the 2,500 families across our county of Nottinghamshire who gave evidence to Donna Ockenden and shared what were undoubtedly the most personal stories that one could ever imagine sharing as a parent? I will never forget a family coming to see me at my surgery, who said they had been told that their time was up when they were sitting together with their baby, and they were asked to leave. They went to the café, and then they sat on the floor, on the kerb in the car park, and cried together. They said that it was like being shooed out of a restaurant by a rude waiter, not literally the most heartbreaking moment in someone’s life. I was very disturbed to read for the first time revelations about the mortuary service at Nottingham, which is frankly astonishing. It seems as if the right steps are being taken, but we all hope that those responsible for that feel the full force of the law. Nationally, I hope that every hospital trust reading the report now treats the situation as the emergency it truly is. It is astonishing that the NHS is spending almost as much on negligence claims as on maternity services themselves, although of course the money is nothing compared with the misery and pain that has been inflicted on families. For our hospitals in Nottingham, improvements seem to have been driven by ensuring that there is now regular and high-quality training, which was sadly very absent for a long time. Can the Secretary of State assure me that mandatory and regular training is now ensured in all maternity hospitals across the country?

• 24 Jun 2026 · Media Green Paper · Hansard source

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  Let me get this straight: the Government—either a Minister or, worse, unaccountable civil servants—are planning to decide which news providers are deemed trustworthy and which are deemed untrustworthy; and then the Government, or unaccountable civil servants and quangos, are going to give priority to the services that they deem to be trustworthy, and reduce the prominence of those that they do not like and consider to be untrustworthy. That sounds quite dystopian to me. How can it be seen as anything other than a serious attack on freedom of the press and freedom of speech?

• 22 Jun 2026 · G7 Summit · Hansard source

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  The Deputy Prime Minister has just said that we are all in the Prime Minister’s debt. Well, that would be the £300 billion of debt that he has racked up. Of all the G7 countries, we now pay the highest borrowing costs. Given that Labour was elected on an express pledge not to raise taxes and not to borrow beyond our means, does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that if the right hon. Member for Makerfield wants to hike taxes even more and max out our national credit card, he should call a general election?

• 2 Jun 2026 · Murder of Henry Nowak · Hansard source

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  When Henry lay on the floor, he warned that he had been stabbed four times and he said that he could not breathe nine times, yet the officer chose to cuff him, rather than treat him. That officer should be in court, being prosecuted for a total dereliction of duty, but the bigger question is this: why do officers behave in this way? Is it because they have been taught repeatedly to elevate perceptions of ethnic minority communities over the safety of white British people? That sickness contributed to the killings by Rudakubana, by Calocane in Nottingham, and now by Digwa. It is a sickness rooted in the anti-racism agenda. Will the Home Secretary root it out? Will she return to equality before the law for all? Will she say that when it comes to public safety, white lives matter just as much as anyone else’s?

• 2 Jun 2026 · Clean Power · Hansard source

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  The Government say that less than 1% of the countryside will be covered in solar farms, but if the 7,000-acre Great North Road scheme, which is now before the Secretary of State, the 2,000-acre Steeple scheme, which is also now before the Secretary of State, and the 4,000-acre One Earth scheme, which will be before the Secretary of State shortly, are all approved, almost 10% of the land mass of my constituency—one of the most rural and largest in England—will be covered in solar farms, with good-quality agricultural land in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire lost. How on earth is that fair to local communities?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Cadet Forces · Hansard source

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  The establishment of a combined cadet force at the Newark academy was an incredible step forward for the town, bringing discipline, respect, training opportunities and a sense of pride. It was very unfortunate that the Department for Education chose to cut the funding, making it more difficult for other schools—particularly schools like this, in working-class communities—to establish new combined cadet forces in the future. What can the Minister do to ensure that funding is in place so that this is not just the preserve of communities with grammar schools or public schools, and that all communities, like the one that I represent, will be given the opportunity to have combined cadet forces?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Child Sexual Offender Data · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) and the lead petitioner, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), for helping to organise the debate. Thousands of young girls had their childhoods stolen from them in the most evil way imaginable. These are obscene crimes, and it is hard to think of more depraved acts than those committed by the men involved. I have struggled at times, as many have, to read the court transcripts that have been put into the public domain. Every time, my mind has turned to my own girls, as I have thought about them and what could have happened to any of the children we know and love. It is truly hard to comprehend. This is also not in the past tense; it is almost certainly still happening in communities across our country. I would like to praise, thank and honour those girls—those women—who have chosen to speak out as whistleblowers and to campaign, and who have done so to this very day. They will never get their childhoods back, and the scars will never fully heal, if at all, but their bravery is truly extraordinary. I would like to pay tribute to those Members of Parliament who have raised this issue. Many would say it is too few, and many would say it is too late, but there have been Members of Parliament on all sides of the House who have done so—including the hon. Members for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), as well as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman), who was here a few moments ago. In each of those cases, they were often attacked, insulted, denigrated and accused of being xenophobic or racist, when they were actually right. They were doing what is our duty as Members of Parliament: shining a light on the great social injustices facing our country. I would like to pay tribute to Adam Wren, who is the director of Open Justice. He is campaigning for transparency in our legal system, and his work to uncover and publish court transcripts propelled this issue back into the national conversation last year. It was only when many people read extracts from those court transcripts that they really understood what had actually happened, and that “grooming gangs” was a euphemism that did not come close to capturing what was really going on and the appalling crimes that were happening. Of course, I would like to thank all those who signed the petition, including those in my Newark constituency. That has led to this debate and, given the unanimous view expressed by Members in the House today, I hope it leads to action by the Government, which would be supported by everybody across this Chamber. In March 2024, I tabled new clause 39 to the Criminal Justice Bill, which would have mandated that an annual report be laid before Parliament on the nationality and visa or asylum status of every offender convicted in England and Wales in the previous 12 months. It attracted cross-party support, but the then Conservative Government opposed it. Last year, I tabled a similar provision, again with cross-party support, but it too failed, this time because of opposition from the present Government. I hope that this petition can be the catalyst to make it third time lucky, and that we ensure that this issue is settled once and for all. The statutory requirement suggested in this instance relates specifically to child sexual offenders and gang-based crime. Naturally, I support it, and I see no good reason why it should not be applied to all crimes. As the petition argues, once the Government routinely publish the data, it will show offender demographics, which will allow policies that target the right people. It should give people the confidence to talk about these appalling crimes without fearing the backlash from spurious accusations of racism or xenophobia—accusations that so many have faced.

• 1 Jun 2026 · Child Sexual Offender Data · Hansard source

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  Of course. I want equality before the law. No one, from the most exalted figure in this land to the lowest, should be free from scrutiny, accountability and, ultimately, the full force of the law. Above all, we should publish this data because it would give the Government of the day incontrovertible evidence and the rationale to make the necessary changes. That would include our immigration system, because, at its heart, our immigration system should have one abiding objective above all others, whether economic or social: it should put the safety of the British people first. If the data shows that men from certain countries are disproportionately likely to commit sexual crimes against young girls here in our country, any responsible Government would suspend visas immediately and design a different system that protects women and girls in this country. Right now, as we have heard throughout the debate, there is an unwillingness across councils, the police and prosecutions to report and act upon the truth. The facts about crime are covered up because of a toxic combination of bureaucratic inertia and weak leaders who pussyfoot around the truth. They refuse to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts their illusion of Britain as a harmonious, well-integrated country or that confounds their glib statements that diversity is our strength. It is not always the case, as we have seen. In 2012, an audit by the Children’s Commissioner on grooming found that ethnicity was recorded in 79% of cases. By 2025, Baroness Casey found that ethnicity data was recorded in only a third of cases. More broadly, Ministry of Justice data shows that the police and courts are collecting less data on the ethnicity of criminals, including those who commit child sex abuse, than at any time in the past 15 years, so the problem is getting worse—much worse. The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), ordered officials to publish the nationalities of foreign offenders awaiting deportation. That is obviously welcome, but it is a tiny proportion of the issue, and even that we are still awaiting. The only solution to guarantee transparency is to make public authorities duty-bound by the law of the land to report the truth. So of course we should all support the petition. But I want to go further. First, we must release the court transcripts—unredacted—and change the entire climate in our criminal justice system, so that court transcripts of any case are easily available to everyone, from journalists to Members of Parliament to campaigners. The current system is unsustainable and completely absurd in an age of AI, when these transcripts could be made available in an affordable way. Secondly, we need to release every email, memo and record held by central Government, local councils and police forces relating to grooming gangs as soon as possible. How ridiculous that everything being released today—the WhatsApp messages, text messages and so on, which are admittedly about serious errors of judgment and are related to appalling crimes in and of themselves— about the paedophile friend, Peter Mandelson, is attracting this extraordinary furore in the House of Commons Chamber and the media, yet these documents, relating to thousands and thousands of girls in each and every one of our constituencies, are being withheld. Let us get them into the public domain and use transparency to drive change. Thirdly, we should increase the funding of the National Crime Agency to go after the perpetrators and the public officials who are obviously complicit. Fourthly, we should lock up the perpetrators, with mandatory whole-life sentences. The current sentences handed down to some of these perpetrators are insults to the victims. This is not a new thing, and it is not the fault of this Government; it is a long-standing failure of our criminal justice system. I started, perhaps too late, to pay an interest in this a year or so ago and was stunned at the pathetic short sentences being handed down by judges. Let me give one example that I came across in Bradford Crown court. A judge handed out a six-and-a-half-year sentence to a man who drugged a 13-year-old girl and then raped her at least twice, queuing up with other men to rape her. The young girl obviously lives with the scars today; in fact, she later became addicted to drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism. Six and a half years for that! Imagine if that was your daughter—or anyone, frankly, in this country. He would probably have been out on licence in four years had the sentence not been increased after I and others referred it to the Attorney General and ultimately the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient. Let us change the law and make these individuals—these vile perpetrators—serve the rest of their lives in prison. That is the least the victims deserve. Lastly, we should strip citizenship from dual citizens and deport them—deport them far away from these shores. If countries will not take them back, as some do not wish to, why on earth are our constituents paying millions of pounds in foreign aid to those countries? Why on earth is the Home Office issuing thousands of visas to them so that their citizens can come here for business, as students or for pleasure? No! We should use every lever of the British state to get these vile individuals out of our country and protect our women and girls. None of those things will be enough for the victims, whose childhoods were stolen from them and for whom the scarring will never fade. What possibly could be? But this proposal will move us a step closer to correcting this injustice and, above all, to preventing future ones.

• 21 May 2026 · Middle East: Economic Response · Hansard source

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  The Chancellor’s approach to the cost of living crisis is to find small ways to subsidise people’s costs, but is not the best solution to build a strong, abundant economy by doing the hard yards of supply side reform? In that economy, there would be better jobs and higher wages, people would be richer and the state would have less bearing on their lives, yet under the Chancellor, the benefits bill is ballooning, unemployment is rising, particularly among the young, and taxes are at their highest ever level. In the spirit of giving people some relief today, will the Chancellor confirm—assuming that she intends to stay in office for the rest of this Parliament—that she will not be increasing taxes on working people at all for the rest of this Parliament?

• 21 May 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  A student on a night out is stabbed multiple times with a 21 cm knife. He is lying in a pool of his own blood, literally drowning in his blood. The police come to the scene, but instead of doing everything they can to save his life, they handcuff and arrest the lad because there is an accusation of racial abuse. This is a scandal. Will the Home Secretary come to House and say what she is doing to investigate the way that the police conducted this matter, and can we have a debate on two-tier policing, which is doing so much to undermine respect for the police and the rule of law in this country?

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  Let me give the hon. Gentleman some, then. We all know that this King’s Speech is not worth the paper it is written on—there is nothing in it. Speaking as a former Minister, it is made up of the very policies that officials pull out of the third drawer of a desk and hand to weak, inept Ministers who have no ideas of their own: “Here you go, Minister. Here’s a substitute for your own thoughts.” I will tell the House some things that we would do— that Reform would do, were there a Reform Government. No. 1, we would get a grip on the ballooning benefits bill. Let us get the millions of people in this country who are out of work back into the workplace to get the benefits bill down, as a moral imperative. Why write off millions of our fellow citizens, especially the young? How can people be off work with mild anxiety? How can we have people claiming PIP who have not even had a face-to-face appointment with a genuine clinician? This is madness. It has to change. Of course as a country we want a proper safety net, but that is not what we have today, and we all know it. At the moment, we have a farce where people are choosing not to work. That can change. It will not change under this Labour Government, but it can change, and we can save billions of pounds from it. I will give the hon. Gentleman a second thing we would do: scrap net zero, so that we end the deindustrialisation of our country. Steel, chemicals, fertilisers, glass, ceramics, car making: 2 million jobs depend on high-energy intensive industries. All will be gone within the next 10 years. I wager that many Labour Members represent the good, decent, patriotic Brits who work in those businesses. They are selling them down the river. We need to end net zero and adopt a pragmatic and intelligent way to decarbonise our economy that does not immiserate working people and ruin what remains of our heavy industry. Those are two things that we could do. I will give the hon. Gentleman a last thing we would do: end illegal migration. The way we do that is not merely to stop the boats, but to end the farce of people coming here on indefinite leave to remain, knowing that they will ultimately become citizens of this country on a short path, costing the Exchequer hundreds of billions of pounds. The Labour party has a policy, we are told, that takes us some way to that; but then we have the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) saying that the Home Secretary should be sacked for having the audacity to propose some pretty weak, but none the less sensible, changes to our legal and illegal migration systems. That gives us a clue about what is to come. Today is a pantomime. We know this King’s Speech does not exist. We know this King’s Speech will be chucked into the dustbin in a few months’ time. Maybe there will be another King’s Speech. What we know is that what follows will almost certainly be worse. The fate of our country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, does not rest on what is happening in this Chamber; it rests on the Labour party members who will choose the next Prime Minister, because this Prime Minister is finished. We all know that. What comes then will be more failed policies, no answers to the challenges that face our country and no response to the yearning in the country for real change. The only way to achieve that—and we all know it—is a general election.

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  We are here— [ Laughter. ] The hon. Member asks why I changed party. I will tell him why I changed party. It is because millions of people across the country look upon the performance of the last Government, and this one, and say that these are wasted years and that our country needs real change, yet we see nothing for it. This Government, let us be honest with ourselves, lie in ashes. They have failed. An air of unreality hangs over this debate. Members queue up to speak as if this were a normal King’s Speech. The Prime Minister summoned the King, the Crown, the golden carriages and the fanfares of the trumpets. For what? To paper over the cracks of his failing Government. This, as we all know, is a lame-duck Government presided over by a lame-duck Prime Minister. Where is the Prime Minister? He is in his bunker. Where are most of the Cabinet? They are plotting. I am surprised that so many Members are here—perhaps they are filling in time before the change of Government. These have been wasted years. That is what Winston Churchill said of the 1930s when he described them as “years that the locust hath eaten”— totally wasted time. At a moment when, in our hearts, each and every one of us knows that this country faces the most profound challenges at least since the 1970s, and perhaps more so, we have stagnating economic growth and the rapid deindustrialisation of our country. We have demographics that pose immense challenges, public finances that are on the rocks and getting worse with every passing day, and out of control illegal migration. We have social cohesion challenges of a type that we have never known as a country. Our streets feel increasingly lawless and our town centres are hollowed out. Those problems cannot all be placed at the door of this Labour Government. They are a result of 25 years of failed politics in this country by the two main political parties and all those who have gone along with them. Yes, I hold myself partly responsible for that, and that is why I chose to walk away from the party and do something new. But today things are getting worse on every one of those measures: 70,000 people have crossed on small boats.

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I will give way in a moment. Mass migration remains rampant. The public finances are getting worse. Look at what the markets are saying: the cost of borrowing is going up and the pound is falling. Unemployment is rising. Great, proud industries, such as one in my constituency, NSK, a business that makes steel ball bearings, are going bust because of uncompetitive energy prices and unfair competition from China—hundreds of people thrown on the scrapheap and now looking for new jobs in north Nottinghamshire. Youth unemployment is the worst that we have known it. We have record high taxes and borrowing. Our country is in a mess. Britain is broken. Yet so little is being done. Even where the Government have acted, they have made things worse. Look at our farmers: the attempt by the Chancellor to impose the family farm tax, only partially U-turned on, has caused immense pain and suffering to thousands of farmers across our country, including many in my rural Nottinghamshire constituency. I went last year to meet a farmer in West Yorkshire whose father had taken his own life, by hanging himself in a barn, the night before the Budget, because he had read the briefing that the Chancellor had put out; the briefing was correct, but he wrongly feared that the measure would come in the next day. He killed himself. He is not alone. Think of the pain and suffering that some of the members of our armed forces have felt as a result of the thus far failed attempt to deal with issues in Northern Ireland. The bravest of the brave—the men who served in Northern Ireland during the period of the troubles—now face a knock on the door or a letter through the letterbox. The previous Government, for all their failings, attempted to give a degree of immunity to those men, so that they would never have to live out the last days of their lives facing prosecution in the courts or wasting their life savings on legal fees. Think of what is happening to businesses the length and breadth of our country. The cost of employing people is going through the roof as a result of the Chancellor’s national insurance increases, making it more difficult to employ people at a moment when unemployment is rising and AI is transforming our economy. We are a 90% to 95% service-based economy, and one of the most exposed economies in the western world to AI—just the moment to increase the cost of employing people. Look at small businesses like pubs, being battered by increases in business rates and every single cost. On every measure where the Government have tried to do something, they have made things worse.

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  Well, what a complete shambles! Less than two years ago, this Government were elected with the largest majority of any Government, bar one, in 100 years. People across our country, including most in my home county of Nottinghamshire, put their trust in the Labour party. Why? Because it promised change. It said it would do things differently, it would be better and it would end the chaos. It would put country before party. And where are we, less than two years later?

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

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  The Bill is a betrayal of our veterans. It is a betrayal of the men who put on a British uniform and served their country, risking their lives to protect people of all communities in Northern Ireland during the period of the troubles—men like David Griffin, who I had the privilege to meet: an 84-year-old Royal Marine veteran who lives out his life at Royal Hospital Chelsea. He is a man who, half a lifetime ago in 1972, in a split-second decision when he was ambushed by terrorists, made a call. That call should not haunt him in the last years of his life. He should not have to wake up every morning worried that a letter will drop through his letterbox telling him that he is going to be prosecuted. Old men like David Griffin have been hounded for far too long. That is the reason why—belated, yes, but belatedly it did happen—the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 provided a degree of immunity to those brave men. This Bill rips that up. It will be open season for men like David Griffin. Men like David Griffin deserve better than this Bill. Men who are serving this country now do so as well, because this is not just about the past—it is about the present and future, too. What signal does the Bill send to those who sign up to serve our country? That half a lifetime from now, new laws may come in, and they will be hounded through the courts, living out the last days of their lives worried about a knock on the door or a letter through the post? No. That is wrong. That is not the country that I want to live in. When I hold this Bill up to the light, I see all over it the fingerprints of Lord Hermer—a man who frankly hates this country. Let us be honest with ourselves. I never thought I would see the day that Gerry Adams’s lawyer was sitting around the Cabinet table of the United Kingdom, in the very room that the IRA tried to blow up when I was a child. The men who serve our country deserve better than this Bill, better than Lord Hermer and better than this Government. I will be voting against the Bill. I hope it dies tonight.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

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  indicated dissent .

• 21 Apr 2026 · Middle East: Economic Update · Hansard source

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  Kevin Brewer is a domiciliary care worker from Northern Ireland. He says that he loves his job, but he drives 70 miles every day. He told the BBC this week that for the first time he considered phoning in and saying that he could not do his job. In the end, he decided to put the cost of the fuel on his credit card. Chancellor, people are suffering across the country. I invite her to meet people such as Kevin at the national fuel tax protest on Whitehall on Monday, where motorists, white van men and women, care workers and many others from across the United Kingdom will come together to ask her to take action now to cut VAT on fuel and to say that she will not increase fuel duty in September.

• 21 Apr 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Last month, the United Nations General Assembly voted to demand that countries including the United Kingdom pay reparations for slavery. Astonishingly, the Foreign Secretary instructed our ambassador to abstain and to issue a pathetic hand-wringing statement that failed to mention the United Kingdom’s unique role in the eradication of this great evil. Are we a punchbag or are we a great, proud country? Will the Foreign Secretary explain her decision and state to the House unequivocally that the United Kingdom will never pay a penny of British taxpayers’ money in reparations?

• 20 Apr 2026 · Security Vetting · Hansard source

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  The Prime Minister’s aides have briefed that “angry Starmer” is “furious”, but why is it that he only ever seems to get angry when trying to save his own skin? Is he not angry about the 600 men who crossed the English channel on small boats on Saturday? Is he not angry about the people who are queuing for fuel at the forecourts and cannot afford the Chancellor’s taxes? Is not the truth that his Government are now so paralysed that their only agenda is cleaning up the mess left by the paedophile pal Peter Mandelson?