Rupert Lowe MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 21 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T6. As someone actively involved in a number of businesses, unlike the majority of Front Benchers, I have spent far too much of my life trying to communicate with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and I am not alone. Taxpayers cumulatively spent 798 years on hold with HMRC in 2022-23, and letters often go unanswered for months. When the phone is picked up, decent British taxpayers and their advisers increasingly are treated like criminals by arrogant, petty, unaccountable bureaucrats. Will the Chancellor commit to a comprehensive review of HMRC, to make it as accountable to the taxpayer as the taxpayer is to them—

• 16 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I think we in this House can all agree that the premier league is the world’s most successful league. It has grown up under self-regulation, but there are now proposals to regulate it. The premier league transmits soft power across the world and raises huge amounts of revenue for the Government. Given the damage that the Financial Services and Markets Act has done to the London stock exchange and other markets, will the Government take responsibility if football declines after they introduce football regulation?

• 16 Jan 2025 · Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency · Hansard source

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  I should start by alerting people to my declared interests relating to the pharmaceutical industry. All of us familiar with the growth of the quango will be aware of how these unelected, unaccountable organisations have come to control and dominate British public life—not us, the democratically elected Members, but the quangos. Failure is rewarded and never punished. No organisation encapsulates that point as comprehensively as the MHRA. Its role is essentially to ensure that medicines and medical devices are safe and effective—where have we heard those words before? How can it possibly be trusted to regulate properly when it is funded largely by the companies it is tasked with regulating? It is simply human nature for a conflict like this to impact on the decision-making process. The biggest challenge in the MHRA’s history was the covid response, and it failed. It enabled the biggest assault on civil liberties and economic prosperity in my lifetime, which was lockdown—the greatest scandal of them all. It was, quite simply, the most disgraceful period of recent history. The MHRA’s insistence on vaccines for all enabled lockdown restrictions to continue for as long as they did. It must take part responsibility for the consequences: vast NHS backlogs, mental health issues rife, soaring alcohol-related deaths, obesity booming, children’s development wrecked, long-term illnesses mounting, increased substance abuse, domestic violence on the rise, unnoticed child neglect, fathers missing the birth of their children and elderly loved ones left to rot and die alone. We were not even allowed to mourn the dead properly. The wicked list is endless. None of it was based on any science, and certainly not the vaccination of almost the entire population—including, disgracefully, young children. This was a hideous dereliction of duty by the MHRA. It was not just children it forced the covid vaccination on, but tens of millions of people who had absolutely no need for it whatsoever. There was clear risk from taking the vaccine—not just the initial two doses, but the booster following them. The evidence for the vaccine was simply not there, particularly considering that by that stage, almost the entire population had actually caught the virus, which gave far more effective natural protection than any man-made intervention. The MHRA knew that, but it failed to act. Why? Was it under political pressure not to undermine the wretched covid response? Had it been honest about the real need—or lack thereof—for population-wide vaccinations, the whole case for lockdown would have collapsed. As of 4 November, there had been 489,991 adverse reaction reports from covid-19 vaccines in the UK. Those are just the reported issues. What is the true number? When individual after individual reports feeling far worse after taking the vaccine than they ever did after the virus, should we not question whether that vaccination was necessary? The MHRA failed. This was simply not a vaccine that was needed by the entire population. We were fed the lie that taking the jab would protect vulnerable loved ones, which was disgraceful dishonesty. The vaccine did not prevent transmission—we know that now, and we knew that then. It should always have been a fully free and informed choice. If an elderly man in his 90s believes that the virus poses more of a threat than the vaccine, then let him take it. For almost everyone under 70, that is a risk analysis that falls firmly in the camp of not having the vaccine. Don’t even get me started on the abhorrent vaccine passport policy—one of the most evil policies devised by Government in living memory. The MHRA should have provided full and transparent data so that educated adults could make their own decisions for themselves and for their families. It must act as an independent barrier against both political expedience and corporate profit, protecting public health above all else. The question is: who regulates the regulator? Who protects against regulatory capture? How did the MHRA allow politicians, celebrities and even its own agency to describe these vaccines as safe and effective, when yellow card data clearly showed it is not universally safe and certainly not universally effective? How could MHRA CEO June Raine say she had transformed the MHRA from a watchdog to an “enabler” of the pharmaceutical industry—an oxymoron for a watchdog that is meant to safeguard public health? It is Parliament’s duty now to exercise its sovereign power to ensure that we learn from the myriad of mistakes.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse · Hansard source

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  As well as withheld court transcripts, I have been pushing the Ministry of Justice for data on the following: how many Pakistani or other foreign rapists have been deported, are still in prison, did not serve a custodial sentence, are back in the same community as their victims, had previous convictions or have reoffended, with a full nationality breakdown of those involved in the gangs. The response was that the requested information “is not centrally identified in the data systems relevant to these questions.” If this were a state inquiry into the private sector, it would be accused of negligence. My view is that we need a full national inquiry. This is a rotting stain on our country, and it needs to be exorcised in full. It cannot continue to be kicked into the long grass. The British public want transparency, and they want to know why this has taken so long to be dealt with.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  Given the abject failure of devolution in both Scotland and Wales and the fact that the Americans fought a war of independence on the slogan “No taxation without representation”, my constituents of Great Yarmouth would like an answer to two questions. First, why should they continue to pay their council tax beyond May, when they will not be represented by elected people? And secondly, by what name do they call these unelected councillors after May?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Quantitative Easing (Prohibition) · Hansard source

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  Richard Tice, Jim Allister, myself and others, Mr Speaker.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Quantitative Easing (Prohibition) · Hansard source

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  James McMurdock— [Interruption.] Maybe Rachel Reeves, I don’t know. [Laughter.]

• 8 Jan 2025 · Quantitative Easing (Prohibition) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit quantitative easing; to prohibit the Government from indemnifying any losses that may result from quantitative easing; and for connected purposes. The purpose of this draft legislation is to ensure that the state is as economically accountable to the people as the people are to the state. That means terminating the state’s ability to debase the value of money through practices such as quantitative easing, which is not an option for the individual. Clipping, sweating, plugging and cutting are forms of coin debasement either by Government or individuals. The most famous modern UK example was the great debasement between 1544 and 1551, when Henry VIII reduced the gold and silver content of coinage by the use of base metals such as copper in order to fund his bacchanalian overspending and wars with France. It has been a common feature of Government behaviour over the 5,000 years of gold trading history, and it continues today in the form of quantitative easing. With no gold standard to constrain unproductive investment and direct capital to sound and profitable investment ventures, policymakers today have become obsessed with short-term stimuli centred on the performance of stock and bond markets. Central banks have become uncontrolled, unconstrained and reckless in their pursuit of delivering non-stop, unsustainable global growth driven by credit. QE is what third-world dictators used to indulge in shortly before their currencies descended into chaos, but it has now become a mainstream tool to avoid the Darwinian reality of capitalism. History is littered with examples of Governments, dictators and kings abusing their hard-working citizens. Coinage during Rome’s ascendant years was bolder, larger and widely accepted, but it reduced in size, weight and content as her empire waned. There was John Law’s Mississippi scheme in France in 1716 to 1720, when he and the Duke of Orléans, who was regent for Louis XV, presided over an establishment-backed scheme on the premise that paper money was preferrable to gold or a metal-backed currency, and that shares were a superior form of money as they paid dividends. It was, in essence, the first national central bank. It ended in chaotic collapse, and it badly damaged France and her economy. National debt was supported by printed money in the same way as today through QE via central banks globally. I fear that the ending will be the same in due course. In Weimar Germany, after the first world war, the Reichsbank had become accustomed to printing money to fund the wartime economy, increasing marks in circulation from two billion to 45 billion between 1914 and 1919. State debt rose by 30 times, from 5 billion marks to 153 billion marks. That continued with the value of the mark going into freefall in early 1923 and the issuance of notes of up to 100 trillion marks, before sense returned. It was a time of moral decline, short-termism and prostitution that benefited the opportunists, not the long-term wealth creators. With currency devaluation came a decline in all that had previously been cherished, including loyalty, faith, morals, innocence and honour. Over recent times, capitalism in the UK and globally has been undermined as states have grown in size and central banks have distorted logic. Systemic risk management via the clearing banks in the ’70s was gradually replaced by more overt interventions, including by Alan Greenspan in 1987, and in 1997 when Long-Term Capital Management, an offshore company, was bailed out by the US Government. The year 2008 was a watershed moment, when Gordon Brown bailed out financial institutions at an estimated cost to taxpayers of £137 billion, followed by quantitative easing between March 2009 and August 2016. That was dwarfed by the actions of Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke in the US in 2008. They used $700 billion of intervention to prop up the financial system generally, particularly AIG. During the covid crisis of 2020 and 2021, when many bad decisions were taken by an already bloated state, between £310 billion and £410 billion—equivalent to between £4,600 and £6,100 per person in the UK—was spent in a number of questionable centrally planned interventions. In rather the same way as early Weimar Germany, Britain finds itself heavily indebted and continuing to run multiple deficits, making matters progressively worse. Our moral decline is clearly evident, as true capitalism has been undermined by regular intervention, increasing state regulation and a growing, bloated and inefficient state. It is interesting that Weimar Germany’s revival started with the dismissal of many civil servants, and social welfare spending being massively cut. The French Government’s recent funding crisis makes it look even more like a national Ponzi scheme than in the UK. Both wings of French politics refused to sanction debt reduction despite the budget deficit being expected to rise to over 113% of GDP by this year. Market concerns are pushing the euro lower and France’s borrowing costs higher, with bond yields briefly surpassing Spain’s for the first time since 2008. Javier Milei, Argentina’s President since 2023, has brought significant economic reforms with his radical libertarian agenda, earning both praise and criticism. Milei’s focus has been on cutting public sector spending, reducing inflation and implementing drastic fiscal adjustments, which have led to improvements in Argentina’s economy. Inflation has fallen from nearly 300% to around 119%, public sector jobs have been reduced by 35,000, and the country has achieved a primary fiscal surplus. Argentina’s economy has also exited recession, with a growth rate of 3.9%, and borrowing costs have dropped, signalling reduced debt default risks. Elon Musk has been appointed to lead Donald Trump’s new Department of government efficiency, which he will co-run with Trump ally and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Musk said that the Department’s creation would address Government waste and inefficiency. Trump described DOGE as a transformative initiative aimed at slashing bureaucracy, cutting regulations and restructuring federal agencies, and likened it to the Manhattan project. Money is the foundation of all human exchange of enterprise and replaced barter in the earliest communities. It allows for the transfer of skills through a transferable medium such as a coin, a note or indeed a transfer. By a continuous process of inflation, no matter how it is perpetrated, Governments can confiscate—secretly and unobserved—an important part of the wealth of their citizens. As they do so, the size of the state inevitably grows, and it becomes a self-serving, greedy master of the people it should be serving. Common-sense logic and human relationships among working people are inevitably undermined, and there is a general moral decline in society. Taxes should be transparent, justifiable and simple. The cost of government should be covered by taxes alone, limiting the growth of excessive statism. Gold has historically been the standard store of value and protection against currency debasement for over 5,000 years. It is interesting that profligate Governments always denigrate gold-holding, and holding it is often banned by Governments in crisis who have deceived their electorate. The words of President Woodrow Wilson after he signed the Federal Reserve Act should serve as a warning to all of us: “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilised world—no longer a Government by free option, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” Friedrich von Hayek, an eminent Austrian-school economist, said: “I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.” Given the historical track record of states abusing their citizens by various forms of currency debasement, including QE, the default position should be to make it illegal, unless this democratically elected House has an informed vote supporting debasement. This Bill seeks to achieve that position, and I commend it to the House. Question put and agreed to.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Quantitative Easing (Prohibition) · Hansard source

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  Richard Tice, Jim Allister, James McMurdock, Lee Anderson and myself, Mr Speaker. Ordered, That Rupert Lowe, Richard Tice, Jim Allister, James McMurdock and Lee Anderson present the Bill. Rupert Lowe accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 January, and to be printed (Bill 155).

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  Given that the Opposition amendment has been selected, I will not stand here and outline my disgust at what has happened with regard to the historic grooming gang scandal. The British people want answers, so I will ask questions of the Labour party, and several of them. Will the Government commit to deporting all guilty foreign nationals involved urgently, including family members who were aware of the crimes and therefore complicit? Wives, sisters, mothers and cousins, if they knew and said nothing, are just as guilty as the rapists themselves. Will the Government commit to stripping citizenship from dual nationals implicated and deport them as well? Race or religion must protect nobody. Will the Government commit to pausing all Pakistani visas and foreign aid into the country until the Pakistani Government agree to accept any of their deported citizens who have perpetrated these crimes on British soil, and imprison these rapists and their accomplices in Pakistan however they see fit? Will the Government undertake a full investigation into officials who had knowledge of these crimes yet failed to act? A specified taskforce to root out this evil should be established. We should not just fire these vile individuals but prosecute them. How many girls are estimated to have been raped? Is there a tally for the overall number of rapes? Horrifyingly, it may well be in the millions. We just do not know. How many vulnerable young girls are estimated to still be involved in these gangs? If there is no estimated figure, why not? Will a regular update be published detailing ongoing prosecutions and sentencing? Will the Government publish a full nationality breakdown of those convicted for such offences, along with the location of their crimes? How many known foreign rapists are there per town, per region? Will the Government publish a breakdown of the immigration status of those involved? On what grounds were they in the UK? Do they have previous convictions? How many foreign nationals found guilty have been released but not deported?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I will carry on, if that is all right. How many re-offences have occurred since release? How many of these monsters are walking on the same streets as the girls they raped and abused? One report suggested that a victim came face to face with her rapist in the supermarket. Are the Government comfortable with that? How many of the foreign rapists were in receipt of any form of state benefit?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I have finished.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I will carry on, if that is all right. How many who were released receive any state benefits? How many children have been born following a rape by those men? How many have been given access to the child against the mother’s wishes, and how many have used the child as a route to remain in the UK? Will the Government commit to preventing that in future? How many deportations have been blocked due to the rapist’s right to a family life or due to other European Court of Human Rights influences? Will the Government set up a dedicated, confidential and accessible official process for whistleblowers to safely raise their concerns about foreign rape gangs, ensuring that it is safe, secure and easy to find? Will the Government release all court transcripts relating to those cases so that the British people can understand just part of the horror for themselves? How many of those documents have been hidden due to the cost of release? That should not be an obstacle to the transparency of those trials. Will lifelong sentences be considered for British citizens involved in the crimes, and for those in positions of power who acted to cover up the scale of the abuse? Which politicians, local and national, had knowledge of the events but failed to act—again, going as far as actively concealing what was truly happening? Those are the facts that the British people want and deserve to know. All those questions have also been submitted in written form, and I look forward to receiving open and transparent answers. The mass rape of young white working-class girls by gangs of Pakistani rapists is a rotting stain on our nation. This is not about Elon Musk. This is not a bandwagon of the far right. This is about the victims and ensuring that swift and brutal justice is delivered to those demons responsible. It is about distinguishing between right and wrong.