Roger Gale MP: speeches 2025

231 published records · newest first.

Speeches

25 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source
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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
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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
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Will the Minister give way?
19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source
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Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman should show some respect to a pensioner!
19 Mar 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source
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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
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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
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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
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Will the Minister give way on that point?
19 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source
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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
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rose—
18 Mar 2025 · Carbon Capture and Storage · Hansard source
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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
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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?
13 Mar 2025 · Farming · Hansard source
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I would like to take the right hon. Gentleman back to the point that he was making before he was interrupted. Earlier today, at Business and Trade questions, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) asked what the Government are doing to assist the rural economy, but answer came there none. Is it not the case that the rural economy is interlinked and that if we damage one part of that economy—farming—we damage all of it? On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the supply of goods and equipment to farmers, there will be so many other industries affected if this persecution is allowed to continue.
13 Mar 2025 · High Street Businesses · Hansard source
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The high street trader John Lewis Partnership is announcing its annual results today. It is a highly successful business but this year it will not be paying a dividend to its partners, the workforce, because it has to absorb national insurance costs. Does the Minister understand the real impact that NI contributions are having on what his party likes to describe as “ordinary working people”?
3 Mar 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source
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The Leader of the Opposition has quite rightly and properly shown her support for the Prime Minister’s position, and I hope he will take comfort from the fact that he has the support of at least these Back Benches as well. Those of us who have had dealings with the Russians—in my case that is through the Council of Europe—know only too well that Putin’s Administration cannot be trusted, and that security guarantees are therefore absolutely vital if we are to succeed in getting a peace agreement, not a surrender. A surrender would lead to inevitable further activities in Georgia and Moldova, and then possibly in the Baltic states as well. Is that not right?
27 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source
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I understand that the Home Secretary is visiting Calais today. I hope that she will not only see the beaches from which illegal immigrants depart for the United Kingdom, but visit the facility that I saw myself a week ago today, with Michael Keohan and Jack Valpy from BBC South East, where we discovered some 800 migrants from Sudan living in total squalor, with no sanitation of any kind. I hope that the Home Secretary will have raised this matter with the Mayor of Calais, with the député for Calais, and with her counterpart, the Interior Minister of France. I appreciate that Monday is likely to be a busy day, with the Prime Minister returning from Washington, but will the Leader of the House ask the Home Secretary to come to the House at the earliest opportunity to make a statement on what she has found?
24 Feb 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source
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Some of us are old enough to remember Hungary in 1956 and some of us are old enough to remember Czechoslovakia in 1968. None of us wants to see Ukraine sacrificed on the same altar of expediency. When the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister go to Washington, they will know that they will carry with them the good wishes of—almost—all of this House. Ukraine is not for sale, and it can never be for sale; this is not a transaction. The United Kingdom will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.
24 Feb 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source
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On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. First, I should declare a non-pecuniary interest as a freeman of the City of London. A constituent has raised with me the concern that the City of London is seeking by means of a private Bill—the City of London (Markets) Bill—the ability to sell and redevelop without replacement the historic meat market of Smithfield and the fish market of Billingsgate. A petition against this proposal with many hundreds of signatures has been denied an audience and blocked by the corporation on the grounds that the petitioners do not have a direct interest in the proposed legislation. Smithfield and Billingsgate have for centuries provided meat and fish that is consumed throughout the country, and it is therefore fair to argue that every citizen of the United Kingdom has a direct interest in these markets, for which the corporation has acquired and prepared alternative sites that it is now seeking to abandon. My question to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, is: is it correct, proper and orderly that the petition against this Bill should not be heard?

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