Roger Gale MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 20 May 2025 · Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories · Hansard source

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  I doubt whether there is a single Member of this House who does not wish to see the 58 remaining hostages returned to their families, whether dead or alive. I think that the Foreign Secretary was right to say that genocide and war crimes—my words, not his—are not the way to get the hostages released. There are parents and grandparents in this House who will stand up for children anywhere in the world—I am prepared to nail my colours to that mast. We have to take action; we cannot stand by and do nothing. A number of Privy Counsellors—all of us, I think—wrote to the Prime Minister relatively recently, calling for the two-state solution to be imposed immediately. Sadly, that private letter did not receive a response, which is why it was published. Foreign Secretary, please take that message back to the Prime Minister and act.

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

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  I do not want to be a dog in the manger, but the Prime Minister’s statement appears to be very strong on self-congratulation and very short on detail. I know he does not like answering detailed questions, but the response he gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) was quite simply unacceptable. When will this deal be signed off in a form that this House will be able to debate properly and vote on?

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

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  Don’t be so patronising!

• 20 May 2025 · Pensions: Expatriates · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister consider that it is morally acceptable for Canada to uprate the pensions of its citizens in this country and to also bear the cost of this country not uprating its pensions for UK expats in Canada when Canada has formally offered to enter into a reciprocal arrangement? Why is that offer not being accepted?

• 20 May 2025 · Pensions: Expatriates · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) on raising an issue that, quite simply, is a matter of national shame. I had the privilege of chairing the all-party parliamentary group on frozen British pensions for more years than I care to remember, and in that task I had the staunch support of Sir Peter Bottomley, Lord German and many others. We all regarded this as a non-partisan issue. It was quite simply a cross-party matter that had to be resolved. In spite of the effort that we put into it over many years, successive Governments of all political persuasions have sheltered behind the myth that we uprate pensions only in countries with which we have a reciprocal arrangement. Historically, we have had a reciprocal arrangement with the United States but not with Canada. On one side of the Niagara Falls, people get their pension uprated; a couple of hundred yards across the river, people do not. That is arrant nonsense, and it is unjust for all the reasons we have heard this morning. These are British citizens who paid their dues over their whole working lives before emigrating. They are as entitled to the full state pension as any other British citizen. John Markham, of blessed memory, led the campaign in Canada for many years. The irony is that, every time he came back for two weeks to make the case to whoever was in power, he would claim his two weeks’ uprated pension, because the moment he set foot on British soil, he was allowed to have it. Where is the sense in that? The point has been made that pensioners in the majority of Commonwealth countries do not receive uprated pensions, but pensioners in the European Union do, because we reached a reciprocal arrangement when we left the European Union. I am delighted that expat UK citizens living throughout the European Union are getting their pension uprated. That is absolutely right—they have paid their way—but I fail to see why people living in what we proudly used to call the British Commonwealth do not get their money. What about those living in Australia? What about people like Norma Maloney in South Africa or the greatly revered Anne Puckridge, who I have been privileged to meet on many occasions, in Canada? Why do they not get their money? The answer is quite simple: it comes down to the Treasury solicitors, who have historically been absolutely terrified that, if we give an inch, somebody will try to bring a class action to get a backdated pension, and of course those sums would be astronomical. When Sir Oliver Letwin was in the Cabinet Office, he made the eminently workable proposal that we should uprate whatever pension the recipient was getting at the time of the uprating. Anne Puckridge would get the triple-locked increase on her fairly pitiful pension, not on anything retrospective. That is not what the expats ought to be receiving or what they are entitled to, morally, but it would work, because over time—by attrition, as people fall off the perch—we would reach the parity we ought to have today. I was as critical of the previous Government as I am of the current one. They are sheltering behind a Treasury lawyers’ position that is wholly untenable and, I believe, patently dishonest. These elderly people—and I speak as an elderly person—have paid their way. They are entitled to their money. They should have it, and the Government must do something about it now.

• 20 May 2025 · Pensions: Expatriates · Hansard source

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  It saddens me enormously that the hon. Lady is trying to make a partisan case, simply because—as I recall, and I think I do recall correctly—a member of her party was the Pensions Minister in the coalition, and one of many pensions Ministers who stood by the present policy of refusing to allow these pensions to be paid. The blame lies across the board, not with any one political party.

• 15 May 2025 · Solar Farms · Hansard source

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  The only less environmentally-friendly form of power generation than solar panels in the United Kingdom is the Drax power station, which is forest-fed. It is a complete myth to suggest that somehow there is no carbon price to be paid for solar farms. Neither are they efficient: given the lack of sunlight in most of the United Kingdom, the amount of power fed into the grid from solar panels is minimal. We are talking about sacrificing acres of agricultural land—some of it has already gone—to no useful purpose whatsoever. It is time that we grew up and recognised that. At business questions this morning, I asked the Leader of the House if she would go to the Prime Minister and bang a few heads together, because the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are not singing from the same song sheet. The argument is simply not joined up. We cannot go on sacrificing agricultural land—such as that surrounding the village of Hoath in my constituency, or the Minster marshes, or the land around Sandwich and in west Thanet—and still expect to have food sufficiency. We are talking about land that this summer is growing bread-making wheat but in two or three years will be growing houses and solar panels. That is simply not compatible in terms of policy. I urge the Minister to go away and think about this very carefully indeed, to take the message to the Secretary of State and to ensure that there is some joined-up thinking before it is too late. I am afraid that 2030 is dead in the water, and it is time we recognised that. The way forward will be North sea gas and oil to bridge the gap between where we are now and small nuclear reactors. It is time that we recognise that and stop messing around with pie-in-the-sky schemes.

• 15 May 2025 · Solar Farms · Hansard source

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  Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In the interests of accuracy—I understand that is what we are trying to pursue—the Minister said during the course of his final remarks that 30% of power is produced by solar panels. The figure for April, produced by NESO, was 10%.

• 15 May 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Later today, the House will debate the subject of solar farms. I do not wish to pre-empt that debate, but the fact of the matter is that building solar farms on agricultural land is completely incompatible with the Government’s proposed policy on sustainable agriculture. Could the Leader of the House have a quiet word with the Prime Minister in the privacy of the Cabinet Room and ask him to talk to the Energy and Agriculture Secretaries and bang some heads together?

• 15 May 2025 · Aviation Sector · Hansard source

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  As the Minister is well aware, the Government have supported and signed off on the development consent order for Manston airport in my constituency. It is hoped and expected that the final private funding for that package will be in place and that work will start in the very near future. Will the Minister now reaffirm his support for the contribution that Manston can and will make to freight and growth in the United Kingdom, and can he also seek to expedite the necessary licences at the appropriate time?

• 14 May 2025 · Artificial Intelligence: Environmental Impact · Hansard source

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  The astonishingly successful GrowUp vertical agriculture project in Sandwich, in my constituency, is highly dependent on data, which could be hugely assisted by artificial intelligence. I understand that agriculture is not represented on any of the working parties. Will the Minister seek to ensure that agriculture is included and possibly find time to visit the project?

• 12 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  The personal independence payment does what it says on the tin: it is designed to enable people to live an independent life. As someone who has represented constituents in tribunal appeals, I know only too well that, while there are many who should not be claiming PIP, there are also many whose disabilities may not be immediately apparent. Will the Minister assure me that she will use the utmost care and sensitivity before taking any further decisions?

• 30 Apr 2025 · Energy Grid Resilience · Hansard source

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  The Minister is fully aware of my total opposition to the construction of a 90-foot-high converter station on the Minster marshes in east Kent. National Grid’s sea link project is very vulnerable to physical attack and cyber-attack, and it is largely based on the provision of power from weather-related sources. Is it not time that we revisited all this and looked seriously at speeding up the process of acquiring small nuclear reactors?

• 30 Apr 2025 · Global Deforestation · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady makes an unassailable point. This should not be happening. Drax is felling trees in the southern states of the United States—in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana—and throughout Canada on an unimaginable scale. The people at Drax claim that they are using pulp wood from “thinnings that help to open up the forest canopy and get light onto the forest floor”. Oh no they are not! They are engaged in scorched-earth forestry. They are felling acres and acres of woodland in the southern United States and Canada, and that is not acceptable. And it is being subsidised by the British Government. Worse still, the health of the local populations in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi is being directly and adversely affected by Drax’s practices. Drax has lied—there is no other word for it—to secure its contracts and licences. I shall do my damnedest to ensure that the renewal of those licences is contested in every way. I urge the Minister to go back to her Government, particularly the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, to expose the myth that is Drax, and to insist that we must find viable alternatives—not tomorrow, but now.

• 30 Apr 2025 · Global Deforestation · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner)—in this case, he is a friend—on raising a matter of paramount importance that will affect the future of our children and grandchildren. I am fortunate enough to have five of the latter. I decided to participate in this debate having yesterday received a work of fiction, in the form of a briefing note from the Drax organisation. I also had the good fortune yesterday to meet two charming ladies, Dr Krystal Martin and Katherine Egland, both from the United State of Mississippi, where Drax has an operation that is hugely impacting their lives and their communities. I am a simple man and I find long equations hard to follow, but it strikes me that if someone fells carbon-sequestering trees, using power to do so, and if they turn the wood into pellets, using power, transport those pellets across the United States, by either water or land, and then transport those pellets across the Atlantic in diesel-powered boats, the chances are that they are using quite a lot of carbon. It strikes me that Drax’s claim that its operation is somehow carbon-friendly has to be a myth. One of my wiser colleagues reminded me that, for Drax, the clock starts ticking when the pellets arrive at the power station gates, and everything that goes before is written off. This is an absolute nonsense. It was subsidised by the British taxpayer to a considerable extent under the previous Government. To give credit where it is due, the current Government have secured a rather better deal than the previous one. Nevertheless, these practices are still being subsidised to a ridiculous extent.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  During the last Parliament, I made a submission, on behalf of the National Association of Retired Police Officers, for a medal to be issued in recognition of the service given by those injured on duty and invalided out of the service. That had the backing of the then Policing Minister, and I understand it also has the backing of the current Policing Minister, but it has now disappeared into a black hole in the Cabinet Office. Will the Minister please dig it out, dust it off and give it a fair wind?

• 24 Apr 2025 · Ukraine War: London Talks · Hansard source

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  The Minister’s confirmation that the coalition of the willing will not permit the concession of any Ukrainian sovereign territory to Russia is most welcome, but I am not sure that I understand how that squares with Mr Trump’s current negotiating position, which seems to be based entirely on that. Some 20,000 Ukrainian children have been stolen by the neo-Soviet Union and sovietised. That is a war crime. Did the meeting yesterday make it absolutely plain that no recognition of any concession based on war crimes will be admitted at any time?

• 24 Apr 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The Leader of the House will probably know that last night, elsewhere in this House, the campaign to return Ukraine’s stolen children was launched, with cross-party support and a very large number of people present. Some 20,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted and taken to the neo-Soviet Union. That is a war crime, as was the bombing of Kyiv and Kharkiv last night, and Putin is a war criminal. Will the Leader of the House consult the Leader of the House of Lords and try to ensure that no person who supports President Putin, however grand, is given a platform that would enable them to address these Houses of Parliament?

• 3 Apr 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Following the conversion from paper visas to e-visas, members of the Ukrainian community in the United Kingdom who are refugees are having considerable difficulty renewing their visas because of IT failures within the Home Office system, leaving them effectively without any proof of status. I know the Leader of the House is sympathetic to their plight. Would she be kind enough to ask the Home Secretary, given the shortage of time between now and the recess, if she would make a written statement to clarify the position for everybody?

• 3 Apr 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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.