Roger Gale MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Apr 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  I should properly declare an interest as a former member of the British Actors’ Equity Association. Mr Speaker, if I enter your house and steal the draft manuscript of your memoirs, I am guilty of a crime. Artists, writers, musicians and other creatives are all having their work stolen as we speak, and you and I have received letters about this issue. We do not have the time to wait; what are the Government going to do to protect creatives and their work?

• 1 Apr 2025 · Right of Self-Determination · Hansard source

  More

  In the interests of self-determination, will the Foreign Secretary take the earliest opportunity to remind his opposite number in the United States that Canada has chosen to be a member state of the Commonwealth, that the Head of the Commonwealth and the Head of State of Canada is His Majesty King Charles, and that there is no prospect whatsoever of Canada being annexed by the United States?

• 31 Mar 2025 · Rural Crime · Hansard source

  More

  One of the less widely recognised rural crimes is the use of catapults to maim and kill wildlife. Those weapons are also used in urban settings. I know that the Home Office takes the view that the wildlife protection legislation and the police powers ought to be adequate to deal with that, but at the moment they patently are not. Will the Minister consider reviewing that and possibly amending the Crime and Policing Bill to take account of it?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Aviation Sector: Support · Hansard source

  More

  I know that the Aviation Minister will understand the need for a major diversion field in the south-east of England. With that in mind and in the light of my question to the Prime Minister yesterday, will he welcome the potential reopening of Manston airport in Kent in October 2028, and the huge investment and growth potential that will create?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

  More

  The problems faced by Heathrow earlier in the week have highlighted again that since the closure of Manston airport in Kent, the south-east lacks a major diversion facility. Although such a facility would not, of course, have compensated for the closure of Heathrow, which is a major hub airport, does the Prime Minister agree that the reopening of Manston, planned for October 2028, will be a significant contribution to the resilience of aviation in the south-east?

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

  More

  We have rightly concentrated a great deal on children’s hospices, and I still hope that at the 11th hour the Government, as a socialist Government, may have some compassion and give some ground. But the other area, which we have not touched on enough, is the independent care providers who are providing services in people’s homes. They will not be able to employ the people that they need—they cannot do so now—even if they can get them. That inevitably means that those cared for will end up in hospital, at still greater cost to the health service.

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

  More

  The Commons’ disagreement to Lords amendment 1, debated last week, states that the amendment “interferes with the public revenue, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason.” Does the Minister not think that those we represent would—just perhaps—prefer to see their taxed income generously donated via spending on children’s hospices, rather than spent on an idiotic deal to spend millions of pounds on the Chagos islands?

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

  More

  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I naively assumed that, having already been called twice today, I had to take my place in the pecking order. I want to come back briefly to hospices. This is a very serious issue, and I do not think that the Minister or the Government understand the deleterious effect of the change on care for some of the sickest people in the land, both in adult hospices and children’s hospices. I have listened very carefully—twice now—to the Minister’s response about giving this and giving that, but they are giving with one hand and taking away more with the other. The net result will be a reduction in staff. This is a straightforward tax on jobs. Without dedicated, caring staff, who do jobs that frankly most of us would not begin to know how to do, the health service will not function. There are children living in and being serviced by Demelza House, Shooting Star and all the other children’s hospices. The Pilgrims Hospices in Thanet and Canterbury will not be able to afford to recruit and or pay the staff that they need. Hospice care is an integral part of the health service. The point was made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and others that hospice care is part of the health service and should be treated as part of the NHS. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend asks from a sedentary position, “Where are all the Labour Members?” The answer is that they will be in the Lobby, voting against these measures, but they are not here listening to the debate. It saddens me to have to say it, but in this instance, their absence speaks volumes. Quite simply, they do not care.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

  More

  Mr Speaker, you will know that most of the illegal cross-channel migrants who come to this country come through my constituency, at the processing centre in Manston. As such, I have taken a particular interest in this subject. What I have to say is certainly not going to be popular, either among Conservative Members or among Labour Members, but neither is it going to be populist. The Home Secretary and I—not together—both visited the Calais area recently. We saw there hundreds if not thousands of very determined, very desperate people who are going to risk their lives to cross the channel. The Conservatives’ Rwanda scheme and this Government’s much-vaunted smashing of the gangs will not solve that problem. There is no quick fix, and the only solution will be long term and international. In that context, does the Minister believe that cutting overseas aid is going to do anything other than worsen the problem?

• 25 Mar 2025 · Access to NHS Dental Services · Hansard source

  More

  The Minister is aware of my concern about the inability of some 200 fully qualified Ukrainian dentists to practise because of the restrictions placed on them by the General Dental Council. I know that the Minister has written to the GDC about this, but has he received a reply?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Somewhere knocking around in the system is a Government press release that says that the National Grid Sea Link project is being obstructed by too many objections. The reason that it is being objected to is that the National Grid wants to build a 90-foot-high converter station the size of five football pitches on the Minster marshes in Kent. We must have the right to object to that kind of project.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

  More

  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

  More

  I intervene simply to inform the hon. Lady that it was David Cameron who introduced the triple lock.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

  More

  I have always said that it is absolute nonsense that somebody like me, who is still working, and my wife, who is still working, should receive the winter fuel allowance. We were going to address that, which was right—so we should have done. If that is what is called means-testing, then I am perfectly happy with that. But what we were not going to do was to take money from the pockets of the poorest pensioners in the country, and that is what this Government have done.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

  More

  Will the Minister give way?

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

  More

  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman should show some respect to a pensioner!

• 19 Mar 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

  More

  Will the Minister discuss with the Home Secretary how best we can bring to account, albeit belatedly, those still surviving who aided and abetted Mohamed Fayed in the rape and sexual assault of young women and girls?

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

  More

  My right hon. Friend will recall that the hon. Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) referred in his speech to perverse incentives. Is it not perverse that the Government should, while exempting the health service, be taxing doctors, dentists, hospices and children’s hospices, which are, effectively, all part of that same health service?

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

  More

  It is an amazing point, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will get it, because it was clear that the Prime Minister did not get it at Prime Minister’s questions. Let’s tell the real truth: the money that is being given by the Government—taxpayers’ money—to children’s hospices such as Shooting Star and Demelza hospices, is for buildings. The national insurance increase is directly hitting the people who do the work on which very sick children depend. Why is that imposition being made?

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

  More

  Will the Minister give way on that point?

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

  More

  It is worse than that, is it not? The money that is being paid to bail out Demelza and Shooting Star children’s hospices is being generously donated by people who have already paid tax. Those working people are effectively being taxed twice on the money they are generously giving to support some of the most needy children in this country—needy in terms of health. Is that not absolutely appalling?

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

  More

  rose—

• 18 Mar 2025 · Carbon Capture and Storage · Hansard source

  More

  No one who cares about the future of our children and our grandchildren will gainsay the importance of carbon capture, but does the Secretary of State not understand that he is undermining that good work—notwithstanding his answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden)—by continuing to subsidise the Drax power station, which is cutting down forests in Canada, turning the wood into pellets, and shipping it thousands of miles across the Atlantic to burn here? That makes nonsense of what he is trying to achieve.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Sentencing Council Guidelines · Hansard source

  More

  Coming to this fresh, as one without a legal background, it seems to me that there are matters here of very great importance that ought to be properly debated by this House. Does the Minister agree that this is yet another classic example of where the much-vaunted separation of powers is likely to interfere with the process?