Tim Farron MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  When this country is at its best, we rise together to face challenges and threats. We roll up our sleeves and deploy ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit to meet those threats and challenges head on. That is what we need now: a collective patriotic endeavour to tackle climate change, cut bills and ensure that our economy is based on cleaner and cheaper British energy sources that will not run out and that are immune from the whims of foreign dictators—what is not to like? Sadly, there are colleagues in this House who do not like that, who are against that patriotic endeavour to secure the future for our children and grandchildren. It is not for me to speculate on their motives, but for the security of our country and the good of our future, we certainly need to ensure that those people never get anywhere near power. Let’s start with the one part of this motion that we can all agree on: energy bills are far too high. The typical family has to pay £60 a month more than it did five years ago. British businesses still face some of the highest electricity prices in the OECD. That is bad for the cost of living, bad for business and bad for economic growth, so we must bring energy bills down. The simple question is, how?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  That is not the case. I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning two of the sources of the additional income that we would raise. It is all very well just to blandly say, “We will get the money from somewhere,” but not to say where. The Liberal Democrats have said where we will find the money. His party has done nothing of the sort. The people who support sound money and wise economics are leaving his party in droves, and many of them are coming to the Liberal Democrats.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  I will not because we need to let other people speak later. Given the Conservatives’ record in government and the complete lack of detail about which spending they would cut, it is very rich that they are asking us for details—we have given some. Once upon a time, the Conservatives did not believe in the magic money tree, but today their plans seem to rest entirely on its fictional bounty. The only other part of their plan that would supposedly bring down bills is the scrapping of the current auction of new renewable projects altogether. Let us remember what that would actually mean. It would cut between £11 billion and £15 billion of private investment in cheap, clean power.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  I will not. Just think about all the jobs that could be created in Cumbria if we did that, all the cheap energy that we could generate and all the bills that we could slash. We have the big scale answers in our community, as well as the small scale ones. The Coniston hydro scheme has been hugely successful, but its future could be secured and the energy bills of the local community drastically reduced if only the Government would deliver the P441 code modification to make local energy markets a reality for us in the lakes, and across the United Kingdom, in every community. Local energy markets would open the floodgates—pun intended—for local schemes in every community, in every constituency represented in this House and beyond, so that households and businesses benefit from cheaper, cleaner energy created by people they know. What would a real plan to cut energy bills, while continuing the UK’s leadership on climate change, look like? We have set it out in our amendment on the Order Paper: do not slash investment in cheap, clean renewables, but increase it, as we Liberal Democrats did when we were in government. We quadrupled the amount of renewable power generated between 2010 and 2015. We also say: make homes warmer and cheaper to heat with an emergency upgrade programme; and work with the European Union to trade energy more efficiently, cutting costs and reducing reliance on gas. In addition, we must end those expensive, old renewable obligation contracts from 20 years ago that impose levies on people’s bills and stop them seeing the benefits of cheap renewables, and move them on to cheaper contracts for difference, pioneered by the Liberal Democrats, to bring down prices and drive investment at the same time. Now, that is a real plan that treats the British people with respect, by presenting actual solutions, rather than vacuous soundbites. In closing, the crushing poverty that millions endure as a result of eye-watering energy bills is real, and it is an outrage. The threat to our world and to our children’s future from climate change is real, and it is an outrage. Loving our neighbour means having a real and practical plan to tackle both. The motion does not provide that, but I am determined that we will.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  I will not. That would be a disaster for our economy, our communities and our young people. Far from bringing down energy bills, it would make us even more reliant on imported fossil fuels, which are expensive. Energy bills skyrocketed in the past few years because of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. That shows what a truly terrible idea this is. What happened to the Conservative party being the party of national security? That idea is long gone, too, alongside its commitment to sound money. Putin would profit, while British families and pensioners struggle. The whole argument being put forward by the Conservative party, and by our habitually absent colleagues on the fourth row back, is that bills are too high because we are investing too much in renewable power. They say that we should stop investing, scrap our climate commitments, and bills will magically come down, but it is just not true. It is not the price of renewables that is pushing up bills; generating electricity from solar or wind is now significantly cheaper than gas, even when we factor in extra costs for back-up power when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. However, people are not seeing the benefit of cheap renewable power, because wholesale electricity prices are still tied to the price of gas, even though half of all our electricity now comes from renewables, compared with just 30% from gas. That is because the wholesale price is set by the most expensive fuel in the mix, which in the UK is almost always gas. That is not the case in some other countries in Europe such as Spain and France.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  That the right hon. Gentleman was the Energy Minister makes me question the selection standards of the previous Prime Minister. How far do we need to look? The channel is not that wide. Look at France and Spain. France has nuclear, and Spain has renewable energy— [ Interruption. ] If people stop chuntering, I will explain. In Spain and France there is no reliance on gas, partly because of nuclear in France, and in Spain it is down not to nuclear but entirely to renewables. If the right hon. Gentleman had looked not very far away at the other side of the Bay of Biscay down in Spain, he would see that it is entirely possible. How do we decouple ourselves from reliance on gas? It is blindingly obvious: do not make it so that we have to rely on gas, and invest in renewables—it is so obvious that it is almost beyond belief that people who held that brief not long ago do not get it. Investing in cheap renewables, and making sure that people see the benefit in their bills—that is the answer. The Conservative’s plan would rip up our crucial national commitment on climate change. I will not repeat quotations from previous Prime Ministers such as Baroness May of Maidenhead and Boris Johnson—Boris Johnson, now a moderate and a progressive by comparison, which is utterly stunning. It is distressing that the Conservative party has left behind traditional voters who do care about the environment and our economy. Communities such as mine bear the brunt of the impact of climate change, as well as farmers whose businesses are blighted by ever-lengthening droughts and ever more severe floods. Communities such as Kendal, Burneside, Staveley, Appleby, and Grasmere are experiencing appalling flood damage. In just three weeks, we will note the 10th anniversary of Storm Desmond, which did hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of damage to our communities, and devastated lives, homes and communities. An apparently once-in-200-years event happened only a few years after two once-in-100-years events. It is obvious that things are changing; do not dare to tell Cumbrians that climate change is not a clear and present danger. Fuel poverty is worse in our area too, and 27% of our housing stock was built before 1900. Those homes have solid walls, and are hard to insulate and expensive to heat. North Westmorland has the least energy-efficient housing in the whole of England, with 17% of homes classed as either F or G, but we are well placed to provide the solutions. Our coastal waters hold huge amounts of latent energy, yet like the rest of the UK they are largely untapped for tidal power. Britain has the second highest tidal range on the planet after Canada, and we are making use of nearly none of it—what an absolute waste.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  I will let the hon. Gentleman explain.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  Fuel poverty is a reality and a stain on our country. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise it on behalf of his community. Let us get to the heart of this debate. We must bring energy bills down, and the question is how. I am afraid that the plan put forward by the Conservatives is nothing more than a mirage. They say that we should cut bills by removing the renewable obligation levy—that is great. As always, we are ahead of them and have set out our plan to do just that, but the key difference is that our plan is properly funded through a windfall tax on the extra payments that the big banks are getting as a result of quantitative easing. The plan in this motion is funded by the Conservative hand wave—a classic these days—of saying, “We’ll just cut spending.” What happened to the Conservative party being the party of sound money?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Lady says that it is not cheap. Over the lifetime of the projects, yes, it is cheap. Does the Conservative party not understand that the up-front costs are one thing, but the input costs over time—over 20 years—are as cheap as chips? This is basic economics, and I struggle to comprehend how a party that was in government for so many years has lost touch with reality so very quickly.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman is being very persistent—go for it.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  I will limit the number of interventions that I take, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Conservative party had a record of being, or at least presented itself as, the party of sound money. This appears to be a decision to move away from that and instead to chase after our permanently absent colleagues.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s reference in her statement to adventure and nature. Will she go further and agree that it is essential that every child at primary school and secondary school has an outdoor education residential experience because of the wonderful advantages it gives them in building resilience throughout their lives and developing a love of learning once they are in the classroom? Will she commit to doing that and to meeting the all-party parliamentary group for outdoor learning so that we can talk about how this should be at the centre of the curriculum?

• 5 Nov 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In the early hours of Monday morning there was a serious derailment at Shap in my constituency, on the Glasgow to London line. It is now Wednesday, but the Secretary of State for Transport has chosen not to make a statement to the House on the matter. The derailment shines a worrying light on the failure to invest in the modernisation of the railway line north of Warrington up to Lockerbie, putting passengers at risk on the busiest line in the whole of western Europe. Can you give us some guidance on how we can make our representations on that failure, and also voice our respect and admiration for the emergency services, the Network Rail staff, the Avanti crew, including the train driver, and the people at the Shap Wells hotel who looked after the stricken passengers on that terrible Monday morning?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Will the Chancellor consider in her Budget closing the loophole in small business rates relief that allows wealthy second homeowners to have their homes on the rental market for 72 nights a year and therefore avoid paying any tax whatsoever? My constituents working the minimum wage are having to subsidise them. That is not fair, is it?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  I strongly empathise with the Minister’s articulate fury at the previous Government and the damage they did to our village and town centres. But will she acknowledge the fact that Cumbria Tourism, which represents the employers of 60,000 people in Cumbria, reports that the national insurance rise has seen 37% of those businesses cutting staff, 34% freezing pay and 33% halting recruitment? Is that not likely to reduce the tax take—as well as damaging businesses generally—and reduce our ability to support the public services that she says she is so passionate about?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  Just like IKEA, it may not fit together. [ Laughter . ]

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has listed a number of factors, but one that would not cost the Government very much money to put right is the lack of a workforce. In areas such as mine, 63% of all the hospitality and tourism businesses are operating below capacity, because they cannot find enough staff. There is surely room in town centres, helped by flexibility in planning law, to create more affordable housing in those town centres and create a workforce, as well as to create footfall to create demand for those businesses.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Family Farming in Northern Ireland · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister take a look at the University of Cumbria report that shows that upland farmers in all four corners of the United Kingdom will, at the end of the transition, will be earning only on average 55% of the national minimum wage—barely half the living wage? Those are the same farms, often worth £2 million or £3 million on paper, that may have to spend £20,000 a year to pay off the tax. How does he think that is fair and how does it raise money for the Government coffers in a sustainable way?

• 28 Oct 2025 · Family Farming in Northern Ireland · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is making an important point. To follow up on the previous intervention, I wonder whether she has noticed in Northern Ireland, as I have in Cumbria, that farmers are holding money back. If they need a drystone wall fixing, they are not paying for that. If they need a new tractor, they are not investing in it. If they need to upgrade a barn for animal welfare purposes, they are not doing it. The policy is damaging not only farms but the rural communities that service those farms, and, as the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) said, constricting growth.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Gaza Peace Plan · Hansard source

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  How will the United Kingdom help to ensure that the Gaza peace plan includes measures to restore access to clean and plentiful water? The main source of fresh water in Gaza is the coastal aquifer, which is contaminated by sea water, sewage and chemicals. Up to 97% of Gaza’s tap water is unfit for human consumption. Surely the Foreign Secretary agrees that there can be no just peace amidst thirst and squalor.

• 27 Oct 2025 · Young People: Employment, Education and Training · Hansard source

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  Skills bootcamps in Cumbria have provided a great opportunity: 60 hours of training for young people in disciplines as varied as coding, scaffolding and project management. The cost to deliver those bootcamps across the whole of Cumbria is £2.7 million—chicken feed compared with the benefit that those young people and their future employers get out of them. What conversations has the Secretary of State had with his friends in the Treasury to ensure that that scheme is maintained and continued?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Health Service Spending · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister agree that it is completely wasteful to make cancer patients who need to go for chemotherapy in Carlisle on a Wednesday but who live in, say, Kirkby Stephen to have to travel to Carlisle on the day or on the day before to get their bloods taken? Why is that? Because the local hospital will no longer fund the local GP surgery in Kirkby Stephen or Appleby to take their bloods there. Is it not wrong that those GP surgeries can no longer provide secondary healthcare blood services in their own settings in people’s own communities?

• 20 Oct 2025 · Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy · Hansard source

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  Perhaps the biggest single barrier that prevents young people from rural communities such as mine accessing vocational studies through FE colleges is that they live so far away and travel costs a fortune. For a student living in Appleby, Kirkby Stephen, Coniston or Windermere, it can cost them £1,000 a year to get to Kendal, Barrow, Lancaster or Penrith. What will the Secretary of State do to put an end to that barrier to young people staying in further education?

• 20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source

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  I commend the hon. Member for taking the time to visit to see for himself and to hear people’s voices, and I mean that sincerely. More colleagues should do that before forming opinions. What he is talking about is the use of a private asset for public purposes and at the cost of public money. At the same time, those in that hotel are on £9.95 a week, so they are not living the life of Riley, as I am sure the hon. Member agrees. There is a cost to the taxpayer, and misery and hardship for the asylum seekers. Does he think that one answer is to give asylum seekers the right to work, so that they can pay their own way and integrate better? It would be better for them and their families, and better for the taxpayer.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the hon. and learned Member’s opening remarks. I too would like to put on record the support I get from the Refugee, Asylum, Migration and Policy Project. The Government have managed to get the number of people waiting for initial decision down by 18% in the last year, which is good, but the number waiting for an appeal is up by 88%. One in two asylum seekers has no access to legal representation through the process, and that is what is slowing it down. Would the hon. Gentleman agree that ensuring that asylum seekers get that representation is just, and also will oil the wheels so we get people moved quicker?