PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Economy, Welfare and Public Services - 22 July 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

I inform the House that Mr Speaker has selected amendment (h), tabled by the Leader of the Opposition.

I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:

“but humbly regret that there is no mention in the Gracious Speech of the improved economic conditions the Government is inheriting, with the fastest recorded growth in the G7, inflation at the Bank of England’s target for the second month in a row, and unemployment at half the rate that it was in 2010; further regret that there is no mention of how to make necessary savings on welfare; urge the Government to meet the commitment set out in the Labour Party’s manifesto not to raise taxes on working people; regret that the Gracious Speech fails to make a commitment not to use changes to reliefs to raise taxes; and call on the Government to increase income tax thresholds to prevent income tax from being charged on the State Pension.”

It is an important and rather painful part of our democracy that today I am a shadow Chancellor, responding to the King’s Speech in exactly the same way that the new Chancellor responded to me just a few months ago, so I start by congratulating her, as well as Mr and Mrs Reeves. As the father of two girls, one of whom has her 10th birthday today, I warmly welcome the smashing of a glass ceiling by Britain’s first female Chancellor. As I said on election night, she has led the Labour party on a difficult journey, which has changed it for the better. Her stated commitment to fiscal responsibility, stability and economic growth has been consistent and, I am sure, not always easy. Unfortunately for us, her success in holding the line means that we face rather a lot of Labour MPs on the Government Benches, but I wish her well in her new role.

I also commend to the right hon. Lady the superb Treasury officials she now inherits, and put on record my gratitude to them the excellent work they did for me, staying up in the middle of the night ahead of fiscal events, engaging in tense negotiations with spending Departments—and occasionally, it has to be said, with No. 10—bringing me endless flat whites and Pret lunches to keep me going and, most of all, making my family feel welcome in the goldfish bowl that is Downing Street. It is part of the magic of democracy that those same officials have seamlessly transferred their allegiance from me to her, and I know that they will serve her extremely well.

In opposition, we will not oppose for its own sake, and there are a number of Bills in the King’s Speech that we welcome. The right hon. Lady is right to focus on growth, and the improvements on planning will build on many reforms introduced by the last Government, including the 110 growth measures I introduced in last year’s autumn statement. Any boost to house building is also welcome. We delivered 1 million homes in the last Parliament, and she will soon find out that if she is to deliver 1.5 million, she will not be able to duck reforming environmental regulations—a change that Labour blocked in the last Parliament but will deliver an extra 100,000 homes. I caution her not to over-rely on bringing back top-down targets. In the end, we will build more houses only if we change attitudes to new housing, and that is unlikely to happen if unpopular targets are steamrollered through local communities.

We will also look carefully at the right hon. Lady’s Budget Responsibility Bill. We are proud that a Conservative Government set up the Office for Budget Responsibility, and I commend the work of Richard Hughes and his team. We did not always agree, but in the end, that is the point of an independent watchdog. We all understand the politics of a Bill that allows the Government to make endless references to the mini Budget, but if the right hon. Lady is really committed to fiscal responsibility alongside growth, I hope that she will today confirm that she will not fiddle with the five-year debt rule to allow increased debt through the back door. We—and, it has to be said, markets—will be monitoring the overall level of debt very carefully to make sure that that does not happen. I also hope that she will commission the OBR to do 10-year forecasts of our long-term growth rate rather than five-year forecasts, as at present, in order to bake long-term decision making into Treasury thinking.

The shadow Chancellor was talking just now about fiscal responsibility. During the election campaign, he committed to a series of tax cuts, but I noticed that yesterday on Laura Kuenssberg’s show he said that it would not have been possible for him to proceed with those tax cuts. What has changed, and why did he make that commitment during the election campaign, knowing full well that he could not afford to carry it out?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because it allows me to explain why he is completely mistaken in what he is saying. We offered a set of carefully and fully funded tax cuts—unlike the £38.5 billion of unfunded spending commitments that came from the Labour party—but we always said that they would be brought in over time over the next Parliament. We did not make a commitment that they would come in immediately, and indeed they would not have. We would have done it in a responsible way.

When it comes to dubious claims, the new Chancellor herself has been making some that do not withstand scrutiny. She said, for example, that the economy would have been £140 billion bigger if we had matched the average OECD growth rate, but she knows that the OECD is a diverse group of 38 countries, including many with economies very different from our own, such as Turkey, Mexico or Luxembourg. A much more meaningful comparison is with other similar G7 economies, which shows that since 2010 we have grown faster than France, Italy, Germany and Japan. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund says that thanks to difficult measures taken by the last Conservative Government, we will grow faster than any of those four countries, not just in the short term but over the next six years. One reason for that is our record on attracting investment.

Since 2010, greenfield foreign direct investment has been higher in the UK than anywhere in the world except the United States and China. In the last year alone, Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover, Tata, BMW Mini, Google and Microsoft have all voted for the UK with their dollars, not least because of cuts in business taxation, such as full expensing, introduced by the last Government. If the Chancellor now looks for back-door ways to increase business taxation, as many fear, she will risk the UK’s attractiveness to foreign investors, of which she is now the beneficiary.

That investment is very important to my constituents in Stockton North, where many companies are poised to make billions of pounds of industrial investment. They tell me that they prize economic stability above all else, so will the right hon. Gentleman now commit to supporting the Budget Responsibility Bill to give those investors the security they need?

Yes, we are minded to support the Bill, subject to having had a close look at it, because we think it is perfectly sensible. Whether it is completely necessary is a different question, but it is perfectly sensible.

We have grave concerns about some elements of the King’s Speech, with a Times editorial this week describing some of its Bills as

“a dose of traditional socialist dogma”.

Tony Blair came to office having removed the old clause IV of the Labour party constitution, because he knew that state-run businesses are rarely successful and usually end up being bailed out by the taxpayer. Last week, with their railway and energy plans, the Government brought forward more nationalisation than Blair ever did—indeed, more than any Government in modern times.

If the Chancellor really cares about fiscal responsibility, she should beware. The reason why unions like publicly owned utilities is that they give them more leverage on pay and more ability to demand bail-outs. Unlearning the lessons of history will mean more strikes and bigger bills for the taxpayer.

An even bigger concern for business is the impact on jobs of Labour’s new deal for workers. We have seen the creation of almost 4 million jobs since 2010, which is nearly 800 jobs for every single day that Conservative Governments were in office. The president of the Confederation of British Industry described the UK as a “job-creation factory” but, like many others, he expressed concern that the Deputy Prime Minister’s new labour laws could put that at risk.

Day one rights sound attractive, but employers fear they will mean a flood of tribunal claims, meaning it is safer not to offer a job at all. That is why the Federation of Small Businesses responded to the King’s Speech by saying that companies are worried about increased costs and risks. In the end, French-style labour laws will lead to French levels of unemployment, which are nearly double our own—indeed, they are close to what they were when the last Labour Government were in office. By contrast, the Conservatives nearly halved unemployment over the last 14 years, and it would be a tragedy for working families up and down the country if the new Government turned the clock back.

Finally, the most dubious claim of all is this nonsense about the Government having the worst economic inheritance since the second world war, which everybody knows is just a pretext for long-planned tax rises. People can see what nonsense this is by simply comparing it with the last time we had a change of Government in 2010. Inflation was 3.4%, compared with 2% today. Unemployment was 8%, compared with 4.4% today. Growth was forecast then to be among the slowest in the G7, compared with the fastest today. Instead of an economy in which markets and the pound were facing meltdown, the Chancellor has inherited an economy in which the Office for National Statistics has said that growth is “going gangbusters.”

That has been backed up by even more data since the election. May’s GDP figures show that Britain’s growth was double the rate predicted by economists, and the fastest in more than two years. New figures from S&P show that, in February, British businesses were among the most optimistic in the world—top of the league again, according to the ONS. Inflation has remained at its 2% target level.

In her BBC interview yesterday, the Chancellor glossed over those figures, putting on the most shocked expression she could muster, to pretend that public finances are worse than she expected. But the root cause of the pressure on public finances—£400 billion in pandemic support and £94 billion in cost of living support—was never a secret. Indeed, the Labour party supported those measures and, in some cases, called for us to go further. Nor were the difficult decisions we had to take to pay for them a secret either. When we had to increase borrowing, increase tax and reduce spending plans in the autumn statement of 2022, Labour did not oppose us.

Like all Chancellors, she faces fiscal challenges: welcome to the job. But that job is a whole lot easier because, faced with an economic crisis two years ago, Conservatives took decisions that her predecessor Labour Government ducked completely after the financial crisis. That is why she has a deficit of 4.4% this year compared with 10.3% left behind for the Conservatives in 2010. She did not just compare her inheritance to 2010; she claimed to have the worst inheritance since the second world war. Is she really saying that she faces conditions worse than Geoffrey Howe in 1979, with a winter of discontent, stagflation, an 83% top rate of tax and a Labour Government who went with a begging bowl to be bailed out by the IMF? The Chancellor knows perfectly well that that claim is nonsense, otherwise why, in her first week, would she announce £7.3 billion of spending on her national wealth fund, without a spending review, a budget or any external validation from the OBR? As Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies says, thanks to the OBR the nation’s books are “wide open” and “fully transparent”, so pretending things are worse than expected “really won’t wash.” As she establishes her reputation, it is surely unwise to base her big central argument on a claim so patently ridiculous.

But we all know exactly why the Chancellor is doing it. She wants to lay the ground for tax rises she has been planning all along, which leads to two major concerns. First, she says her No. 1 mission is growth, but all around the world, evidence suggests countries with higher taxes tend to grow more slowly. Lower taxes, when funded properly, boost growth, as we saw with full expensing and the national insurance cuts last year, both of which the OBR confirmed add to our GDP. However, keeping taxes down is hard work.

I saw the numbers the Chancellor has seen just a few weeks ago, and the official advice was clear: with public sector pay restraint, productivity plans such as those we announced in the Budget, and welfare reform, it is perfectly possible to balance the books without tax rises. It is not easy—government never is—but not impossible. Yet all those three things—pay restraint, productivity improvements and welfare reform—were glaringly omitted from the King’s Speech. Instead, she has chosen an easier path: what Labour party sources told The Guardian was a “doctor’s mandate” to raise taxes.

The Chancellor has ruled out raising income tax, national insurance and VAT, but she should not think for one second that other tax rises will not impact working people. Capital gains tax destroys the pensions people build up over their lifetimes; business tax rises are passed on to customers, leading to higher bills; and taxes on banks and energy companies lead to fewer companies operating in the UK, a lower tax take and less money for public services such as the NHS.

That is the biggest contradiction in the new programme —a Government who say they want the fastest growth in the G7 but, in the very same breath, plan tax rises that will make that growth harder, if not impossible, to achieve. Even if such an approach were misconceived, it is none the less a legitimate choice for a governing party. What is not acceptable is, just 18 days after the election, to be laying the ground for tax rises after the Chancellor promised us 50 times in the election campaign that she had no plans to raise them. Every Labour Government in history have raised taxes and raised spending. If she wanted to do the same, she should have had the courage to make the case for that before the election. Instead, she is softening us up for a colossal U-turn that will lead to lower growth, less money for public services and massive public anger, which is why I commend to the House the amendment in the Opposition’s name.

It is a pleasure to open today’s King’s Speech debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Government. I always enjoy debating with the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt), though I must say I rather prefer doing so from this side of the Chamber. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

I appreciate the shadow Chancellor’s generous words on my appointment and also his tribute to officials, who I can confirm are indeed first rate. It has been more than 14 years since a Labour Government were in office for a state opening of Parliament—14 years of chaos, 14 years of economic irresponsibility, 14 years of wasted opportunities and 14 years since there has been a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer standing at this Dispatch Box. Today, I pay tribute to my most recent Labour predecessor, the late Lord Darling. He was an outstanding Chancellor, a kind man and a good friend.

Mr Speaker, it is also the very first time that there has been a female Chancellor of the Exchequer. On my arrival at the Treasury, I learned that there is some debate about when the first Chancellor was appointed. It could have been 800 years ago, when one Ralph de Leicester was given the title of “Chancellor of the Exchequer” for the first time, or, 900 years ago, when “Henry the Treasurer” was referenced in the Domesday Book. It could even have been 1,000 years ago, when Alfred the Great was in effect the first Master of the Mint. Whichever it is, I am sure the whole House would agree on one thing—that we have waited far too long for a woman to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer. [HON. MEMBERS: “Hear, hear.”]

I stand here today proud, but also deeply conscious of the responsibility that I now have: a responsibility to women across the country whose work is too often undervalued; and a responsibility to every young woman and girl, who should know that there is no ceiling on their ambitions and no limit on their potential.

Seven Tory men have stood at that Dispatch Box over the past 14 years and the result has been an economic crisis, crumbling public services and a cost of living crisis. Can we expect a change of approach from the new female Chancellor of the Exchequer?

One thing is that I hope to be in post for a bit longer than some of my predecessors.

As tempting as it is, I do not intend to conduct a full sweep of the past 1,000 years of economic history from the Dispatch Box today—[Hon. Members: “Ah”!] I am sorry. However, we must talk about the past 14 years. I warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the second world war, and I have seen nothing to change my mind since I arrived at the Treasury. I will update the House on our public spending inheritance before Parliament rises for recess.

I heard what the shadow Chancellor said from the Dispatch Box now and on the television yesterday, which was to claim that I should be grateful for what he has left us. That is unbelievable, because he knows the truth and is now trying to rewrite history. In doing so, he has reminded the British people why the Conservatives lost the election. They are out of touch, deluded and unable to defend the indefensible. In the weeks ahead, it will become clear what those in his party did. They stored up problems, failed to take the tough decisions and then they ran away, leaving it to us—the Labour Government—to pick up the pieces and clear up their mess.

Today, I want to focus on one thing above all else: economic growth. Since 2010, Conservative Chancellor after Conservative Chancellor, including the now shadow Chancellor, stressed the importance of growth. We have had more growth plans than we have had Prime Ministers or Chancellors, and that is quite a lot, but growth requires more than talk; it requires action. Like so much else with the previous Administration, when we scratch beneath the surface the façade crumbles, and all that is left is the evidence of 14 years of failure.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her appointment; she is making an excellent speech. Friday’s ONS report showed that public sector borrowing was 25% higher than forecast. Does she agree that that underlines why it was so important to have a fully costed and fully funded manifesto to restore confidence in the public finances, and that it was a surprise that certain other parties did not follow the same route?

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He speaks powerfully, and I pay tribute to his work in the last Parliament, particularly around education and skills. This is a really important point. For me, the most important pages of the manifesto that we stood on were the three grey pages at the back of it, which set out all our spending commitments and how they would be paid for. That was important, because to earn the trust of the electorate parties must be really clear about where the money will come from and what they will use it for. That is what we did in our manifesto, and it is what we will do in Government.

The shadow Chancellor made some points about GDP, comparing ours with that of other countries, but since 2010 UK GDP per capita—that is the most important measure, because it reflects how people feel and the money that they have—has grown slower than the G7 average, slower than the EU average, and slower than the OECD average. Treasury analysis that I requested when I became Chancellor shows that, had the UK economy grown at the average OECD rate these last 14 years, our economy would be over £140 billion bigger today. That could have brought in an additional £58 billion of tax revenues in the last year alone—money that could have been used for our schools, hospitals and other vital public services. Growth is about more than just lines on a chart; it is about the money in people’s pockets, and Treasury analysis shows that achieving the rate of growth of similar economies would have been worth more than £5,000 for every household in Britain.

The shadow Chancellor stood up and once again claimed that he bequeathed a great legacy. Seriously? The last Parliament was the first on record where living standards were lower at the end than at the start. The highest level of debt since the 1960s, the highest tax burden in 70 years, mortgages through the roof, the economy only just recovering after last year’s recession, economic inactivity numbers last week showing a further rise, and borrowing numbers last week showing over £3 billion more borrowing than the OBR expected—that is the Conservatives’ legacy. If that is a good inheritance, I would hate to see what a bad one looks like. I think deep down the shadow Chancellor knows that. In fact, he does know it.

Yesterday, the shadow Chancellor admitted what we all know: that the manifesto that he campaigned on was undeliverable, and the money for the tax cuts that he promised simply was not there. If he wanted to show the country that his party has listened, and learned from its mistakes, he would have used his speech this afternoon to apologise, but he did not, and that tells us everything that we need to know about this Conservative party: party first, country second; political self-interest ahead of the national interest; irresponsibility before the public good. Let me say this to the Conservative party, “We will not stop holding you responsible for the damage that you have done to our economy and to our country.” Never again will we allow the Conservatives to crash our economy. They failed this country. They shied away from tough choices, and we will not repeat their mistakes. It falls on us, this new Labour Government, to fix the foundations so that we can rebuild Britain and make every part of our country better off. We will govern through actions, not words, and we have already begun to do just that, because there is no time to waste.

Less than 72 hours after I was appointed as Chancellor, I put growth at the very heart of our work. Working alongside my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, I set out reforms to our planning system—reforms that the Conservative party did not deliver in 14 years. Our reforms restore mandatory targets to build the homes that we desperately need, end the absurd ban on onshore wind to deliver home-grown cheap energy and recover planning appeals for projects that sat on the desks of Ministers in the last Parliament for far too long. Those are tough decisions that the Conservative party already opposes.

Why was that my first act as Chancellor? Because getting our economy growing is urgent, and this King’s Speech shows that we are getting to work.

On the matter of mandatory housing targets, having been a constituency MP for 23 years and seen them tried in a number of different ways, may I humbly offer the Chancellor this, with all sincerity? There is such a thing as good development, but it only works if it is something that we do with people and not to people. This Stalinist approach will not work.

I have been compared to a lot of things, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I have never been compared to Joseph Stalin.

Our approach is a brownfield-first approach. We will reintroduce those mandatory targets; of course it is up to local authorities and local communities to decide where the housing should be built, but the answer cannot always be no. If the answer is always no, we will continue as we are, with home ownership declining and mortgages and rents going through the roof. On the Government side of the House, we are not willing to tolerate that.

This King’s Speech shows that we are getting to work. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out, our programme for government is founded on principles of security, fairness and opportunity. Our No. 1 mission is to secure sustained economic growth in our great country through a new partnership between Government, business and working people that prioritises wealth creation for all of our communities.

We will fix the foundations of our economy so we can rebuild Britain and make every part of our country better off. There are a number of important pieces of legislation in the King’s Speech that will help us to grow the economy. In this speech, I will focus on three in particular: the Budget Responsibility Bill to restore economic stability, the national wealth fund Bill to drive investments and the pension schemes Bill to reform our economy. Those Bills speak not just to our programme for government, but also to trust in politics. They show that we will govern as we campaigned and that we will meet our promises to the British people.

In the election campaign, I said the first step we would take would be to restore economic stability, because stability is the precondition to a healthy, growing economy. It is how we keep taxes, inflation and mortgages as low as possible. After years of irresponsibility, we are putting our economy on firm ground once again. We introduced the new Budget Responsibility Bill on Thursday to deliver on our manifesto commitment to introduce a fiscal lock so that I can keep an iron grip on our country’s finances.

The Chancellor and I sat on the Treasury Committee together many years ago, and she will know from our time together that economics is as much art as it is science. Given that she is effectively giving a veto over economic policy to the OBR through this Bill, she must recognise that we need to understand what the people in the OBR believe, what their theories of economics are and what principles they attach themselves to. What further scrutiny of the chair of the OBR and the people doing the forecast will be available to this House, given that effectively they will be co-Chancellor with her during the next few years?

The Treasury Committee, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, can call in the chair and other members of the Office for Budget Responsibility, but his comments show exactly why we need this Bill: so that never again can we have a repeat of the mini Budget. The Bill will require every announcement that makes significant permanent changes to tax and spending to be subject to an independent assessment by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Why? Because unfunded, reckless commitments do not just threaten our public finances; they threaten people’s incomes and they threaten people’s mortgages. We saw that in the wake of the mini-Budget presided over by the former Member for South West Norfolk. I understand that she has taken umbrage in recent days at the idea that that episode was disastrous. Well, if any Conservative Member would like to dispute that fact today, I would be more than happy to give way. [Hon. Members: “Come on then!”] They cheered it at the time, but they are not cheering it now, and I do not imagine that they would put it on their leaflets.

The Conservatives should be ashamed of what they did because people up and down the country are still paying the price for the chaos that they caused. We say: never again. The Budget Responsibility Bill will enshrine that commitment in law.

During the pandemic, the friends and family of Conservatives were awarded contracts for work that were never fulfilled. My constituents would love to know how we can get their money back, perhaps through the covid corruption commissioner.

I enjoyed campaigning for my hon. Friend in York Outer, and it is great to see him in his place today. Stability means a tough set of fiscal rules, but it also means spending public money wisely, as he says. The last Government hiked taxes while allowing waste and inefficiency to spiral out of control. At no time was that more evident than during the pandemic, especially when it came to personal protective equipment. The former Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor, signed cheque after cheque after cheque for billions of pounds-worth of contracts that did not deliver for the NHS when it needed it—that is simply unacceptable.

Today, I can announce that I am beginning the process of appointing a covid corruption commissioner to get back what is owed to the British people. That money, which is today in the hands of fraudsters, belongs in our public services, and we want it back. The commissioner will report to me, working with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and their report will be presented to Parliament for all Members to see. I will not tolerate waste. I will treat taxpayers’ money with respect and return stability to our public finances.

The second Bill I will speak to is the national wealth fund Bill. We know that economic stability is vital for investors and for business—the small business looking to grow; the global business looking to expand in the UK; the entrepreneur looking to take their first steps. To support them, stability must sit alongside investment.

On the effective use of public funds, is the Chancellor aware not only of the alleged corruption in the way that covid aid was distributed, but of the large number of tax loopholes in this economy? For example, in Cornwall, over £500 million of taxpayers’ money was handed out to holiday home owners not only through covid aid but through the small business rate relief scheme and other tax loopholes. At the same time, only a third of that amount has gone into social housing for first-time users. Will she look at the whole issue of parity in the way public funds are used, to support people who need housing?

I welcome the hon. Member back to this place. I enjoyed sparring with him in my early days in Parliament, and it is great to see him back in the House. He is absolutely right that we need to get value for money for all tax incentives. I will ensure that the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government look at the changes that he suggests.

The last Government’s record on investment was dismal. We now sit behind every single member of the G7 when it comes to business investment as a share of GDP. That is not an abstract economic problem. Weak investment holds back productivity and hurts living standards; it leaves households poorer and wages lower.

The King’s Speech deals directly with the need to unlock private investment through a new national wealth fund Bill. That will be supported by an injection of capital, part funded by an increase to the windfall tax on oil and gas giants. It will make transformative investments in industries of the future, such as carbon capture and storage, and green hydrogen. It will mobilise billions of pounds-worth of additional private sector investment in our industrial heartlands and coastal communities while generating a return for taxpayers. The national wealth fund will work with local partners including mayors, as well as the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to develop an investment offer that meets the needs of all our nations and regions. It will simplify a complex landscape of support for businesses today, aligning key institutions such as the UK Infrastructure Bank and the British Business Bank under the one banner of the national wealth fund.

I heartily applaud what my right hon. Friend is saying about the renewed windfall tax. Will she also look at the fact that, in this country, we have the lowest basic rate of tax on oil and gas companies anywhere in the world? The average is 74%; in this country, it is 38%.

As my hon. Friend knows, we committed in our manifesto to a three percentage point uplift to the current energy profits levy, which we will use to fund the national wealth fund. That fund will power jobs and prosperity in all parts of our country, and that work is already well under way. In my first week in office, I welcomed the report of the national wealth fund taskforce, and I thank the former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, and the whole taskforce for their outstanding work. This Bill will put the national wealth fund on a statutory footing with clear objectives, crowding in private investment to create wealth across Britain.

Under the Conservatives, businesses and working people were held back by a complete and abject failure to build the new homes that my constituents in Ealing Southall were crying out for, the laboratory spaces that will provide the jobs of the future, or the national infrastructure needed for businesses and working people to prosper. Will my right hon. Friend assure this House that, under her chancellorship, we will finally get Britain building again?

I welcome the election of my hon. Friend in Ealing Southall—I think her constituents and the whole House can see what a strong advocate she will be for her local community. She is absolutely right: we have to get Britain building again. We have to build the homes and the transport, energy and digital infrastructure that our country desperately needs.

I thank the Chancellor for giving me the chance to intervene. When it comes to rebuilding and the house building programme that she has suggested should happen, in the papers today, it is suggested that people on a wage of £70,000 cannot get a mortgage. In Northern Ireland, those on a smaller wage cannot get a mortgage either, so can I ask the Chancellor this direct and hopefully positive question, which will hopefully receive a positive answer: what can she do to improve access to mortgages for those who want to own their accommodation, rather than rent it? What can she do to make sure that everyone in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland can benefit, as she has clearly said they will?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. One of the biggest challenges people face with getting a mortgage is building up the deposit. That is why we have committed to a mortgage guarantee scheme, to help those people who cannot rely on the bank of mum and dad to get on the housing ladder. That is a really important commitment, as is our commitment to build the homes: unless we build more homes, home ownership will continue to go backwards, as it did over the past few years.

Alongside stability and investment in our economy must come reform, because delivering economic growth requires tough choices. It means taking on vested interests and confronting issues that politicians have too often avoided. The last Government refused to engage with those choices, and refused to level with the British people about what was required. This Government will be different. We have already demonstrated that through a series of reforms to our planning system, and are bringing forward further legislation in the King’s Speech to get Britain building.

Today, I want to focus on another area of our economy where reform is vital: our pension schemes. People across our country work hard to save for the future; they want a better, more secure retirement with the most generous pension possible. At the same time, British businesses with high growth potential need capital to support their expansion. Pension funds are at the heart of this. There will soon be over £800 billion of assets in defined contribution pension schemes, but for too long, those assets have not been targeted towards UK markets. That has impacted British savers, and it has impacted British business.

The last Government also said that this was a problem, and I welcome that acknowledgement, but they never introduced the legislation needed to make the change. We believe in deeds, not words, so we will strengthen investment from private pension providers by bringing forward the pension schemes Bill in the King’s Speech. It will boost pension pots by over £11,000 through a new and improved value for money framework. Through an investment shift in DC schemes, just a 1% shift in asset allocation could deliver £8 billion of new productive investment into the UK economy.

To ensure that the Bill is as strong as possible, I am today launching a pensions investment review, led by the first ever joint Commons Minister appointed between the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions—my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Emma Reynolds), the Pensions Minister. This will include a review of the local government pension scheme, the seventh largest pension fund in the world, to ensure it is getting the best value from the savings of nearly 7 million public sector workers, the majority of whom are women and the majority of whom are low-paid. They deserve a pension that is working for them. Together, these reforms will kick-start economic growth by unlocking investment that has been tied up for too long.

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

I have already given way to the right hon. Gentleman.

Order. Could I just urge the House to think about interventions? There is a very long list of Members who want to speak and lots of people who want to make their maiden speech, and it would be great if they could all get in.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be pleased to know that I will not apprise the House of every Bill that supports economic growth in the King’s Speech. Needless to say, there are many more—from the English devolution Bill to transfer power back into the hands of local communities to the employment rights Bill to make work pay, and the Great British Energy Bill to take back control of our country’s energy and create new jobs across the United Kingdom. Growing our economy flows through almost every word of this Address.

The British people put their trust in us on 4 July to fix the foundations of our economy, to rebuild Britain and to make every part of our great country better off. I do not take that trust for granted. We will not let people down, and I am ready to deliver the change that we need. I know it will take time and I know it will require hard work, but we are already getting on with the job by ending a reckless, chaotic approach to economic management, by putting politics back in the service of working people and by making economic growth our fundamental mission. I commend the Address to the House.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair.

It is a real pleasure to contribute to the debate on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, not just because I am speaking on behalf of so many more of them than I used to, but because it gives me an opportunity to welcome the Chancellor of the Exchequer to her place and express my personal congratulations on becoming the first woman in the UK’s history to hold the position. I am personally delighted. I spent many years working in banking and finance, and I know how male-dominated those industries still are. I wish her well in her new role and look forward to working with her over the coming Parliament. The Liberal Democrats will be vigorous in scrutinising her plans, but we will always work in the national interest, and I can assure her of the support of the Liberal Democrats on all those matters on which we can agree.

I am sure that one of the things on which we can certainly agree is that the right hon. Lady and her colleagues have received a dismal inheritance from the departing Conservative Administration. The numbers reveal a dispiriting picture of low growth, high interest rates and a record fall in living standards delivered by an out-of-touch and incompetent Conservative party that took people for granted for years. Our constituents see this situation reflected in the increases in their mortgage payments, the hike in their energy bills and the prices they pay at the tills for their weekly shop. They see it in public services that are in a state of crisis and an NHS that is failing to deliver the care they need. The Liberal Democrats welcome the seriousness with which this King’s Speech focuses on stability, reinvesting in our crippled public services and growing the economy.

We welcome measures such as the introduction of an industrial strategy council to co-ordinate policy on economic growth, but the immediate and pressing problems that our constituents are facing in their everyday lives cannot just be addressed by centralised, top-down institutions run from Whitehall. Our economy needs to grow from the bottom up, bringing prosperity to every community, taking away the barriers to entry for small businesses and enabling individuals across the country to make the most of their skills and talents. The Liberal Democrats want urgent measures introduced to give immediate support to families and small businesses.

While out on the doorsteps during the general election campaign, I and my 71 colleagues heard a clear message from our constituents that their biggest priority was fixing the NHS. We are here because we promised to fight hard for a better NHS for our constituents and for communities across the country. That is why we are calling for the Chancellor to immediately draw up a Budget for health and social care. We cannot deliver economic growth without fixing the crisis in our NHS and in social care. NHS waiting lists are at an all-time high; it can take weeks to see a GP and it is now almost impossible to see an NHS dentist. Everyone deserves access to the care they need when they need it and where they need it. A successful health and social care system is fundamental to a fair society and our country’s prosperity.

The failures of the Conservative Administration led to a dramatic increase in the number of people experiencing long-term sickness conditions and the Liberal Democrats will continue to push for public service investment to help reduce NHS waiting lists to get people back to work.

Does my hon. Friend agree that reforming social care should be one of the most urgent priorities of this Government? The Royal Cornwall hospitals NHS trust recently announced that £26 million a year is spent on patients who are medically well but unable to be discharged due to a lack of social care packages.

My hon. Friend is right, and it is wonderful to see him in his place; the people of North Cornwall will be well served by his championing of social care, which was front and centre of the Liberal Democrats manifesto in the general election.

The most direct way to alleviate poverty is to increase the money paid to the poorest households. We know that our fellow citizens who are living in the severest poverty are likely to be families with small children. Growing up in poverty affects children’s educational chances and is likely to impact their physical and mental health, holding them back from achieving their true potential. Taking immediate steps to tackle child poverty should therefore be a priority. We believe that removing the two-child cap is the most cost-effective way of immediately lifting 500,000 children out of poverty, while helping to make costs more manageable for parents. That would have a direct benefit to families struggling with the cost of living crisis. Not only do we have a moral obligation to change this unnecessary policy but it is the most cost-effective way of alleviating poverty with a broad range of economic advantages, including supporting more parents back into the workforce. So I urge the Chancellor of the Exchequer to remove the two-child limit on social security payments in her Budget to ensure that all families who need it receive immediate reassurance and support.

But families of all sizes are suffering under the cost of living crisis and desperately need help. Our schools are increasingly having to battle the effects of poverty to ensure children are able to attend school and have the best chance of reaching their potential, and too many children are distracted from their lessons because they have not had enough to eat. The Liberal Democrats set out plans in our manifesto for free school meals for all children living in poverty, with an ambition to extend them to all children once public finances allow. The Liberal Democrats are calling on the Government to consider funding free school meals as a priority to alleviate the pressure on the finances of the families who are struggling the most. This will also contribute to positive educational outcomes that will benefit us all in the future.

The Liberal Democrats welcome many of the measures in the King’s Speech that aim to boost economic growth, and we support the Government’s objective to make that a priority. We welcome moves to boost stability and provide strategic leadership via an industrial strategy council and to increase investment through pension reform. However, our small businesses and local high streets need immediate support, and the Government need to do more to ensure economic growth can reach every part of the United Kingdom and that small businesses and entrepreneurs can quickly rediscover the confidence that they need to invest after years of Conservative chaos and mismanagement. Liberal Democrats want to see more direct support which will impact local community businesses. We believe we need swift action specifically to tackle high energy costs and we continue to call for business rate reform.

A new Parliament presents a real opportunity to begin to properly rebuild our trading relationships with Europe. From speaking with many small business owners I understand the pressures and limitations that current trade deals with Europe pose to businesses. We must tackle the arduous legislation around importing and exporting goods, which significantly limits the opportunities for small businesses to grow. The Liberal Democrats have a comprehensive plan to rebuild trust and co-operation with Europe, and we understand that to be a crucial aspect of the support that businesses urgently need. We welcome the Government’s acknowledgment of the need to reform the apprenticeship levy. However, we would like to see them go further and replace the current scheme with a broader and more flexible skills and training levy. We hope that the Government will join us in encouraging the take-up of apprenticeships, particularly for young people, and support our calls to guarantee that they are paid at least the national minimum wage by scrapping the lower apprentice rate. We understand the broad economic benefits of supporting the development of skilled workers and are optimistic about the advantages that can bring to business.

The recent years of chaos and irresponsible Conservative administration have left a substantial challenge for the new Government to tackle. We do not underestimate the work lying ahead to get the economy back up and running, to nurture an environment that will allow businesses to thrive and to restore the public services that provide care for people when they need it. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I will hold the new Government to account to ensure that they deliver on the promises outlined by His Majesty on Wednesday as we work to rectify the damage done by the Conservatives: rebuilding our economy, supporting individual communities and small businesses, and urgently investing in health and social care.

The dilemma we face is self-evident: many hon. and right hon. Members want to speak, and we will do all we can to get in as many people as possible. Unfortunately, there will now be a five-minute limit on speeches. The clock will not be used for maiden speeches, but we ask Members to keep an eye on the time.

It is an honour to speak in this King’s Speech debate, and a privilege to have heard the first female Chancellor in our history deliver such a remarkable opening salvo. I will say a word not just about the King’s Speech itself, but the strategy behind it. When the Chancellor and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister launched our manifesto, there was a clear ambition at its heart to ignite a revolution in wealth creation in this country not just for some, but for all. That strategy was absolutely right, because among the worst of our inheritance is the scandal—the moral emergency —of the inequality of wealth that now scars our country.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you and I could take a walk this afternoon down to a coffee bar called Shot in Mayfair, which would serve us coffee for £265 a shot. We could go next door to a restaurant Aragawa, where they serve steak for £900 apiece. Some, if they were lucky enough, could book a night at the Raffles hotel for £25,000. These are extraordinary prices, but not unremarkable in a country that now has the highest sales of Rolls-Royces, superyachts and private jets. This absurdity of affluence sits alongside a country where, on the last figures, more than 1,000 people died homeless, tens of thousands of people are dying from the diseases of poverty, and 2.1 million people can put food on the table only because of the tender mercies of food banks. That is the inequality of wealth bequeathed to this Government. It is best illustrated perhaps by one figure: the wealth of the top 1% has grown by 31 times the wealth of everybody else over the past 14 years. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was right to say that there has to be a revolution in wealth creation in this country—not just for some but for all.

The measures that my right hon. Friend has set out are the right ones: a plan for growth and a plan to devolve economic power out of the paralysis of Westminster and Whitehall and down to mayors and local councils. Alongside that is a revolution in planning law, infrastructure law and skills finance. I urge my friends on the Government Front Bench to maximise the amount of power held locally, because it is local people and local leaders who know best how to grow our economy. If we have a growing economy, the key is then to ensure that growth is fairly shared. That is why the employment rights Bill is so important. As my right hon. Friend said, there has not been growth in living standards for more than 14 years. That is why we need to ensure that there is a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

Alongside that, the draft equality Bill is extremely important, and I urge my right hon. Friend to go further and to use the consolidation of pension funds to inaugurate an era of civic capitalism in this country, where we use the combined £2 trillion-worth of pension savings to encourage businesses that are good, not businesses that are bad, such as those that she revealed when she was a brilliant Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, or the scandals that we exposed in the last Parliament with McDonald’s, Asda and other firms behaving in a way reminiscent, frankly, of Victorian capitalism.

Once we have begun raising incomes, we must help people build well. That is why the changes to the housing market that my right hon. Friend proposed are so important. We can underpin that and maximise investment into the infrastructure of this country by ensuring that there is a national wealth fund, but I would go further, and I ask her to look at how we can put together not just the national wealth fund but the Crown estate fund, which is set for reform under a Bill in the King’s Speech.

We could go a step further and review the whole portfolio of investments held by the Government and by UK Government Investments. The last Government made some pretty strange investments during covid, including, I understand, buying shares in Bolton Wanderers, shares in a bespoke boutique whisky company, and even, it is said in some newspapers, shares in a strange firm that organises international sex parties called Killing Kittens. I say to my friends on the Government Front Bench that it is time we had a Domesday Book that consolidated assets in this country. Let us look at what we need and what we do not. Crucially, let us look at how we maximise dividends going to ordinary working people in this country to help them build wealth for themselves.

I conclude with this: on the Government Benches, we have long known that we only deliver and maximise freedom and opportunity for people in this country, and make those freedoms and opportunities real, if there is security. There is no security without wealth, which is why the ambition that my right hon. Friend set out not simply to build a wealthy democracy but a democracy of wealth, is the right one.

May I start by adding my congratulations to the Chancellor on being the first woman to hold that office in the history of our country? At this rate, the Labour party might even have a female Prime Minister some time this century. I also thank the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt) for everything he did while in office. In particular, I thank the voters of West Worcestershire for returning me here for the fifth time.

I was one of those who was here in 2010. It is ironic that I should be following the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), because he was the one who left that famous note, “I’m sorry: there is no money left.” If people want to know what a bad economic legacy looks like, I was here in 2010 when we received one from the Labour party. The deficit was over 10% and rising and unemployment was over 8%. Inflation was nearly twice its target, and the banking system had just collapsed and had to be bailed out by taxpayers. We can contrast that with the economic legacy of 2024 that the new Government inherit.

Despite the economic costs of the pandemic and the energy crisis, the UK is enjoying the fastest growth in the G7. Unemployment is now half the rate it was in 2010. Inflation is back on target. We have a well-capitalised banking system, almost completely out of taxpayers’ hands. Wages are now rising faster than inflation. We are the fourth-largest exporter in the world. Members do not have to take my word for it; they can take the words of the International Monetary Fund, which in a recently published report said that

“the UK economy is approaching a soft landing”,

with

“growth recovering faster than expected…inflation has fallen faster than was envisaged…The banking system remains healthy”.

So I approach the economic measures in the King’s Speech with a degree of trepidation, because they come at a time when the economy was back on track. While I agree that “securing economic growth” is a fundamental mission of government, I would add the word “non-inflationary”. I have looked and looked through this King’s Speech, and I cannot see any measures that magic up economic growth. Growth does not just happen because it is written into the King’s Speech.

In my time as Chair of the Treasury Committee, we had the opportunity to have a private session with the IMF. It is interesting to observe that many of the measures put forward by the Government in the King’s Speech were in the IMF’s prescription for the UK economy. Reforming planning and building on our beloved green belt were from the IMF, as was strengthening the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility and crowding in private capital on net zero projects via a national wealth fund.

What else does the IMF want? Well, colleagues may not be surprised to learn that it also wants to see more taxes. It does not quite say it like that—it calls it “closing tax loopholes” or “mobilising additional revenues”. Some of the measures we heard about in our private session with the IMF were as follows. The first was setting capital gains tax rates in line with income tax rates. I hope that Ministers will rule that one out. The second was subjecting the sale of primary residences to capital gains tax. I hope that Ministers will rule that one out. The third was ending inheritance tax loopholes for pensions, family businesses and farms. I hope that Ministers will rule that one out. The fourth was revaluing all of England’s homes for council tax, and especially those over £320,000 in value. I hope that Ministers will rule that one out. The IMF also liked the idea of road pricing; I hope that Ministers will rule that one out. It also wants to bring forward considerably the date at which the state pension age increases.

Given that those are all tax measures that the IMF recommends, I am sure that the Chancellor is beginning to contemplate them. When the Government respond to today’s debate, I hope that they will specifically rule those things out, because the tax rises that the Government admit to already—the pensioner tax, the tax on education, and regulatory costs galore—are bad enough. Let us hear some specific denials on those other taxes.

I call Georgia Gould for her maiden speech.

I am pleased to speak in a debate with so many strong female representatives, including the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin), and I am really honoured to speak in a debate led by the first female Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has shown today what a force for change she is. I have found it incredibly moving to hear MPs across the House talk with such love and dedication about the places they represent. It has given this Parliament a deep grounding in the stories of people from every part of the UK.

I feel deeply the trust put in me by the people of Queen’s Park and Maida Vale. In speaking here, I stand on the shoulders of some extraordinary women who have represented the different parts of Queen’s Park and Maida Vale. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) is someone who breaks through glass ceilings and lifts others up behind her. Nothing ever dims her spirit and her passion for tackling injustice. You need only walk down Harlesden High Street with her to see how she inspires people by her example—and sometimes her music.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq) is a formidable campaigner who was in the Chamber the day she was due to give birth because she needed to give her constituents a voice. She did not stop campaigning until her constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was safely home with her family. Those who know her will quickly learn that she never, ever gives up. She is always a voice for the people she cares about.

Karen Buck gave an extraordinary 27 years of service to the residents of Westminster North. I was at a school in my constituency last week where the head said that Karen was the fourth emergency service, always at the end of a phone ready to help. I remember going to an elderly people’s lunch where the residents said, “You can be our MP—you are very nice. Just make sure that Karen comes to our residents’ meeting in July.”

The wonderful team at the House Library sent me Karen’s maiden speech. It was no surprise to me that it was a passionate call to action on the housing conditions of her constituents. That passion has not dimmed for a second; it could be heard in every line of her 37 interventions on the Renters (Reform) Bill over 25 years later. She has shown that somebody with community running through their veins can move mountains. I will work every day to live up to the women who came before me—that includes you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and your sister Baroness McDonagh, who have both showed such amazing, dedicated service and have never given up fighting for constituents and the people of this country.

Queen’s Park and Maida Vale is a place that means a huge amount to me. My great-grandfather came over to the UK when he was a teenager, fleeing the poverty and pogroms of Lithuania, and worked his way up to open a shop on Kilburn High Road. My family have lived and worked in the area ever since. Growing up in the heart of London, I attended Hallfield primary school and saw how many children were cut out of the opportunities on their doorstep; that has driven me ever since. The need that we see now is greater than ever. My inbox and my surgeries are full of people facing the homelessness crisis and skipping meals to feed their family—all in walking distance of the Chamber.

Queen’s Park and Maida Vale is a place with huge need, but also with huge heart. It has welcomed not just my family but families from so many different backgrounds. We are home to the Bangladesh Caterers Association; the Lauderdale Road synagogue; the UK Albanian Muslim Community and Cultural Centre; Harlesden, which is the unofficial capital of reggae and the starting point for so many iconic artists and producers; Kilburn, a centre of creativity with a claim to be the birthplace of cinema; and the amazing, diverse community of Church Street.

We are a community that is rich in spirit and dynamism. In 1879, Queen’s Park was chosen to host the royal agricultural show, the Victorian equivalent of the Olympics. It was a very British affair—it rained most of the time—but ordinary people campaigned to preserve the open space, and it is still a thriving park today. Down the road, Walterton and Elgin Community Homes is a shining example of community leadership. We also have the country’s only urban parish council.

Queen’s Park is the birthplace of the pride of west London, Queens Park Rangers football club. I can tell the House that being a QPR fan is almost as good as this Chamber for getting to know the communities of the UK; it means spending rainy days in Cardiff, Preston, Southend and Tranmere, embracing again and again the triumph of hope over experience.

I have always been an optimist. Despite 14 tough years in local government, including seven as Camden council leader, I have never lost hope, because every day I can see the power of communities. I was elected as a councillor in 2010, and at events, when people used to say to me, “What do you do?”, I would proudly say to them, “I am a councillor.” They would say, “That is so wonderful; you do such wonderful work as a therapist.” I would have to say, “No, not that kind of counsellor. I am a Labour party councillor.” They would either swiftly go and get a drink or talk to me about dog mess.

Street cleaning and rubbish collection are essential services that councils deliver—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Mrs Hamilton) once introduced me as the person who makes sure that Keir Starmer’s bins are collected—but we often forget how much more local government is. I see that every day, watching the work of Brent and Westminster, two brilliant Labour councils in my constituency.

Councils are lifelines for communities. They provide care for the children and adults who most need support. They are leaders of place, bringing services and people together to make change. I have seen local government staff go above and beyond time and again, fuelled by love and dedication, because there was no one else there, whether they were working with communities to deliver food during covid or supporting Afghan evacuees. When things have been hard, they have held together our communities, finding unity in difference.

The Gracious Speech sets out bold new proposals in the English devolution Bill to unlock the energy and creativity of communities. It sets out Bills to fulfil Karen Buck’s long-held campaign to end no-fault evictions and reform the leasehold system. The proposals will support the people of Queen’s Park and Maida Vale who come out every day to build their community—the youth workers, the community gardeners and those running the North Paddington food bank, who wish it did not have to exist. These are people putting hope into action because they believe that things can change. I know that as I sit in the Chamber, I will have their voices and stories with me, but I will also have the stories that I have heard from hon. Members from across the UK. We all have that in common: the privilege and the responsibility of bringing the voices of our community to this place. We may debate and disagree, but I hope to always listen and learn, and remember that we are being entrusted to weave those stories, hopes and ambitions together into a national vision for this country—one that governs for all and leaves no one behind.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale (Georgia Gould) on a simply superb speech that follows the best traditions of the House. She has done her constituents proud, and I know that she brings huge expertise and commitment to this House. I wish her all the best.

I put on record my thanks to the good people of Fareham and Waterlooville for sending me back to Parliament. We had a fantastically energetic—let me put it that way—and hard-fought campaign. I am honoured and humbled to have the privilege to speak on their behalf in this Chamber.

One thing struck me in the King’s Speech—not the long list of policies that will no doubt damage our economy, or the vague promises that will not survive contact with reality. For me, the thing that was conspicuous by its absence was the total failure of the Labour Government to deal with child poverty and scrap the two-child benefit cap on welfare. [Interruption.] Yes, hon. Members heard that right. [Interruption.]

Order. Could we show respect and listen to the Member’s speech?

I detect a bit of surprise on the Government Benches. I have risen to speak on scrapping the cap. In the grand tapestry of British politics, where the warp and weft of policy and principle interlace, it is not often that a Conservative MP will find threads of agreement with friends across the aisle, but here we are, discussing a proposal backed by Labour MPs, led by the hon. Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson) and backed by the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National party and many Opposition parties. It is one with which I agree, because it speaks to my profound sense of justice and, dare I say, compassion. I will say why Conservatives can and should back scrapping the cap.

Let us not rewrite history, because there has been a lot of nonsense from Labour Front Benchers about the situation that we inherited in 2010. To put it simply, we inherited no less than an economic catastrophe, and we worked hard to recover from that situation. The deficit stood at 10% in 2010; we got that down to 1.9%. Public sector net borrowing was at 10%; we got that down to 3%. We were in a deep recession, and we now have the fastest growing economy in the G7.

We had to make incredibly difficult decisions back in 2010 to reduce our welfare bill, but it is clear to me that through those welfare reforms, spearheaded by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), we overhauled an overly complex, bureaucratic system, and helped millions of people get back into work. Four million more people are in work now than in 2010. The unemployment rate is down to 4.4%—almost half what it was in 2010. We can make changes to some of the decisions that we made back then.

It is clear to me from my work with vulnerable families in Fareham that the cap is not working. It is pushing more children and families into relative poverty, causing them to use more food banks. There are three good reasons for scrapping the cap.

Will the right hon. and learned Lady tell the House who introduced the cap, why, and which way she voted when the measure went through this House?

I just set out that the parlous economic situation forced us to make impossible choices, but thanks to the improved economics and the improvements brought about by universal credit, I believe that it is time to put child poverty first and scrap the cap. There are three big reasons for Conservatives to support that. First, it is affordable. For about £1.7 billion—0.14% of total Government spending—we could quickly bring around 300,000 children out of poverty. In this improved situation, that is the fair and right thing to do. Secondly, the reason why it was introduced in the first place was to disincentivise poorer families from having more children, but that has not necessarily worked. The number of children born has remained relatively stable. As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found, heartbreakingly, 43% of children in larger families are in poverty. The children hardest hit are those under four. It predominantly affects younger children, and those in large families. I believe that the cap is aggravating child poverty, and it is time for it to go.

I know that there is the argument, “Don’t have children if you can’t afford them.” To me, that is not compassionate, fair or the right thing to say. As Conservatives, we should be proudly and loudly the party of family. We should encourage families on lower incomes to have more children. For those families on middle and higher incomes, we should change our tax regime so that they are incentivised to have children. We have better parental leave policies, better childcare provision policies and better maternity care. I am a Conservative because I believe in the strength and the sovereignty of the family unit. We should support it, not suppress it. This is not about right or left. This is about right or wrong. Let us come together, in a spirit of compassion and common sense, to scrap the cap and end child poverty for good.

I call Sarah Sackman to make her maiden speech.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman). Like other Members, I am somewhat surprised by her rewriting of recent economic history. She had 14 years to fix the problems of child poverty, and did precious little to do that. I listened today to the Chancellor of the Exchequer lay out this Government’s plans to restore economic stability and growth to this country—that is what will lift millions of children out of poverty in the long term.

It is a privilege to stand here today representing the place where I was born and raised, Finchley and Golders Green. I would like to start by paying tribute to my predecessor, Mike Freer. Although we disagreed on many things, Mike was dedicated to our area, both as a Member of Parliament and as leader of Barnet council. I admire his commitment to public service and, in particular, his role in securing equal marriage legislation for same sex couples—a legacy that he can take enormous pride in. But the circumstances under which Mike decided not to stand for re-election are appalling. We should have been able to face each other on the basis of our ideas, but Mike’s life and office were threatened by those who believe in the bullet, not the ballot box. It is a stark reminder of the fragility of our democracy both at home and abroad.

I want to use my time in this place to stand up for the democratic values and processes that I believe in. Witnessing the dignified and smooth transition of power last week in all parts of this House is something we can take pride in. We must ensure that we work together to defend the safety of public servants. I wish Mike and his husband Angelo all the best in their future.

I also pay tribute to the much missed Dr Rudi Vis, who holds a special place in the heart of my local community, not least as the first Labour Member to represent this special patch of north London. In over a century, I am only the second person from my party to be sent to this place by the people of Finchley and Golders Green. I am also only the second woman. Some Members may remember the first. When Mrs Thatcher entered this place, she was made to wait two whole years to make her maiden speech, but in our era of breakneck news cycles, and with so much work that I want to do, having to wait just two weeks has felt like a very long time. Having delayed long enough, Mrs Thatcher did not waste a second when she rose to her feet, breaking convention by making her maiden speech on a private Member’s Bill that she introduced.

“This is a maiden speech”,

she said, her sonorous tones echoing through this hallowed place,

“but I know that the constituency of Finchley…would not wish me to do other than come straight to the point”.—[Official Report, 5 February 1960; Vol. 616, c. 1350.]

The people of Finchley and Golders Green rightly remain as demanding of their elected officials today, so I, too, will come straight to the point. Like Mrs Thatcher, I am a patriot and I want our communities and our country to prosper and be an influence on the global stage. But unlike her, I fundamentally believe that there is such a thing as society. Society is not an abstract idea to be buried in sociological essays. We can see it in the rich tapestry of communities that come together across Finchley and Golders Green. I may be the first female, Jewish, Gibraltarian MP from this constituency, but I would not be here without the support of my neighbours and my community: the Cypriot community, the Somali Bravanese, the Kosovan, the Japanese, the Irish and Hindu communities, the lawyers and the Uber drivers, the charity workers and the campaigners, the Spurs fans and the fans of some other north London team. Whereas in recent times some politicians have chosen to use “north Londoner” as an insult, my constituents and I wear it as a badge of pride. It symbolises a place that celebrates diversity, hard work and looking out for your neighbour.

Our diversity comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the history of our area. Where else can boast the parish where Archbishop Desmond Tutu honed his ministry in the terrible years of exile during apartheid in South Africa, and the childhood home of the late and great Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a man who taught us that a good society is one that offers all its members equal access to hope? It was in East Finchley that George Michael first tinkled the ivories and Amy Winehouse first took the stage.

Finchley and Golders Green has a quiet radicalism baked into its history. Take Hampstead Garden Suburb, where I grew up, a project driven by the extraordinary Henrietta Barnett in the early 20th century. One of the first garden cities, it was a groundbreaking development. She also set up Toynbee Hall in London’s east end, where I began my legal career as a volunteer at the Free Legal Advice Centre. I saw there just how important the law could be for tenants facing eviction and women suffering unequal pay. Now I want to take those values of access to justice and a commitment to the rule of law into my new role as Solicitor General.

When, in 1907, we witnessed the opening of Golders Green underground station, adverts at the time dubbed our area a “place of delightful prospects”. I can vouch for the fact that never a truer word has been spoken, but this place of delightful prospects has suffered in recent years. My community has witnessed rising levels of antisemitism and Islamophobia. These are a scourge on our society and as long as I am in office I will tirelessly call them out and work to eradicate them.

Our community today is increasingly becoming a place of busy food banks and empty mansions. Inequality is writ large, stunting people’s health and potential. Many across Finchley and Golders Green are struggling with the spiralling cost of living. This has to change not just in my constituency, but across the whole country. Our NHS is broken, the prisons are full, the police cannot respond when they are called out and our teachers are not supported to deliver. We need to get Britain back on track, and the Bills set out in the King’s Speech are exactly what we need to take the brakes off the economy and restore and rebuild our public services.

My constituents are raring to go. Whether it is the Brent Cross Town development, one of the largest regeneration developments in Europe, or our brilliant high street businesses and local entrepreneurs, all we need to get growing is a Government who are on our side. Well, we have that Government now. So, to quote my famous predecessor, let’s get straight to the point and let’s get on with the change that Britain truly needs.

The shift to a green economy represents the most significant transformation for centuries. We must reverse the damaging rhetoric by the failed Conservative Government that the economy will suffer if we are uncompromising in our ambition to get to net zero. This is not an either/or of economic growth or investing in the green economy—the green economy is at the heart of economic growth.

We must end our reliance on oil and gas. Renewables would mean cheaper energy bills across the country, and we would no longer be reliant on dictators such as Vladimir Putin who use natural gas as a weapon. As well as being more affordable, renewables are the best route to energy security. Under the Tory party, renewable projects faced long delays and costs skyrocketed. The new Government’s reversal of the de facto ban on new onshore wind is welcome. We are also glad restrictions on new solar have been reversed.

The Liberal Democrats share the ambitions of the Government’s climate agenda, but we will also ensure that these projects have local buy-in. Local authorities must play a leading role in delivering climate action, and the communities that host the new infrastructure must directly benefit from it. For example, there is huge growth potential in community energy. The Liberal Democrats are calling for small-scale renewable energy generators to receive a guaranteed fair price for the electricity they sell back to the grid. Community benefit and individual economic incentives are crucial to securing support and active participation in our energy transition.

In both the Labour and the Liberal Democrat manifestos there was a clear commitment to tightening energy efficiency standards for private landlords. National Energy Action has warned that the statutory fuel poverty target cannot be met without doing so. The King’s Speech provided an opportunity for the new Government to set that as a priority in their new renters’ rights Bill, but it was missed out. I hope the Government will hear this and ensure that improvements to energy efficiency for renters materialise before the situation worsens.

Under the previous Conservative Government, the cost of living crisis was exacerbated by rises in travel costs, particularly for commuters. It is not clear how Labour’s plans for nationalisation will do anything to alleviate the high cost of travelling by rail. We urge the new Government to freeze rail fares and simplify ticketing to ensure that regular users are paying a fair and affordable price. For too long, decisions over local transport have been centralised. Liberal Democrats have long argued for lifting the ban on local authorities franchising buses. It is reassuring to see that the Government recognise the importance of local decision making. However, councils will need adequate resourcing to expand services. We are yet to see a strategy for that. We would also like to see a long-term plan from the Government for further electrification of the rail network. Not providing one would be a dereliction of duty to reduce emissions and improve air quality.

I look forward to working together constructively with the new Government to turbocharge our energy to get to net zero, and to make sure we really improve our green public transport and grow the huge opportunities of a green economy.

I call Andrew Lewin to make his maiden speech.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech in this debate. It is a privilege to follow the first female Chancellor in history, and to follow two inspiring maiden speeches from the Labour Benches by my hon. Friends the Members for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale (Georgia Gould) and for Finchley and Golders Green (Sarah Sackman). It is an honour to sit alongside them on the Government Benches, and their communities are both very lucky to have them.

As hon. Members can imagine, I have given careful thought to my remarks today, but it is safe to say that this is not the most anticipated maiden speech ever associated with Welwyn Hatfield. The reason for that is that, on 20 November 1558, Elizabeth I gave her inaugural address as Queen from Hatfield House in my constituency. Irrespective of how the next few minutes go, I think her place in history is safe.

I am especially grateful to be called in this debate on the economy. My constituency is anchored by two new towns that flourished under a previous Labour Government. Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City were incorporated as new towns together under a single development corporation on 20 May 1948. The growth of Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City played an important role in the rebuilding and reimagining of life in our part of the country after the horrors of the second world war. I believe that if we are to succeed in growing our economy, we have to rediscover the ambition and the vision that was embodied by those who designed and carefully planned our two great towns.

My predecessor as the MP for Welwyn Hatfield was the right hon. Grant Shapps, who served our community for 19 years and will be well known to all Members of this House. In fact, he will probably be familiar to anyone who was watching a morning television news programme at any point over the last five years. Before I talk about Grant’s legacy, however, I want to start with a message of reassurance to the Labour Whips and my colleagues: I have no desire to hold quite so many Cabinet positions as he did, and certainly not in such a short period of time.

I want to reflect solemnly on the personal and professional commitment that Grant Shapps made to the people of Ukraine. After the Russian invasion in 2022, he opened his family home to provide sanctuary to three generations of a Ukrainian family, innocent people whose lives were turned upside down by Putin’s unprovoked act of aggression. In the last Parliament, more than 200,000 Ukrainians were welcomed to our country under the Ukraine family scheme and the Ukraine sponsorship scheme, an initiative that I believe showed our country at its best, open and welcoming in an hour of grave need.

We serve in this House of Commons at a time when our wider political discourse can often be angry and divisive. Of course we will disagree in the House, and passionately so—our constituents rightly expect us always to stand up for our community and our values, and I will certainly try to do just that—but I think we can too easily forget what unites us. Where we agree, let us have the confidence to say so. My predecessor was right to champion the people of Ukraine, and the cause of freedom and democracy. I commend him for it, and wish him well in whatever comes next.

Welwyn Hatfield is a constituency rich in history. Welwyn village and Woolmer Green were both Roman settlements, and Welwyn is one of the few places in the country believed to have been occupied continuously for 2,000 years. Nearly 400 years after Hatfield was home to Queen Elizabeth I, local people made an important contribution to the defeat of Nazi tyranny. The Royal Air Force’s Mosquito fighter-bomber was developed at the de Havilland airfield and aircraft factory in Hatfield. Welwyn Garden City also has a unique place in history as the creation of Ebenezer Howard, the father of the garden city movement. His immaculately planned and tree-lined streets, such as Parkway in Welwyn Garden City, are still true to his vision from nearly 100 years ago.

Despite our wonderful history, what has struck me when I have walked around our towns and villages is the impression of too many projects on hold, and potential going unfulfilled. Take the iconic Shredded Wheat silos, designed by Louis de Soissons in 1926 and a defining feature of Welwyn Garden City for decades. The site has lain virtually dormant since the factory closed in 2008. In central Hatfield, it is a similar story. Queensway House consists of 66 units that were once all social housing. In November 2019, after a ballot of residents, a majority decided that it was time to demolish and rebuild, but nearly five years later Queensway House is still standing, and it looms over the centre of Hatfield as a symbol of the inertia that has captured our politics for too long. I am determined that that must change. The centre of Hatfield is one part of our community that most urgently needs investment in good-quality housing and social infrastructure, and I will be a champion for it in this House.

Welwyn Hatfield is a growing and increasingly diverse community. In just the last few months I have attended the world street food festival in Welwyn Garden City, the first ever Diwali celebration in White Lion Square in Hatfield, and the ever popular Welwyn festival on Singlers Marsh. We are home to prominent national businesses, including Tesco and Ocado in Hatfield, and to the thriving University of Hertfordshire. The university will soon be opening its state-of-the-art Spectra building for the study of physics, engineering and computer science—and yes, Mr Vice-Chancellor, as this will appear in Hansard, please consider that to be my formal bid for an invitation to its opening!

I believe that a new Parliament is a time for ambition and optimism. Welwyn Hatfield blossomed when Attlee’s Labour Government put housing and carefully planned communities at the centre of their agenda for change. Nearly 80 years later, we have another majority Labour Government with a mandate for national renewal. This is a moment of opportunity, and each of us on these Benches has a responsibility to play our part in realising it. For as long as I serve in this House of Commons, I will always do my utmost to champion Welwyn Hatfield, to respect our history, and to be an agent for change.

Order. Let me just give the House a reminder—not that the next Member I will call needs this reminder—that for those of us who could be described as veteran Members, it is the custom to praise maiden speeches.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I say what a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin)? He spoke with great eloquence, and also with passion about his constituency. I know what a wonderful moment it is when we give a maiden speech. We all have that honour when we enter the House. I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place, and look forward to working with him in the years to come. Of course, Hertfordshire is next to the county where my own constituency is located—Essex and Hertfordshire are twin counties, so we are neighbours in some senses—and I also look forward greatly to hearing more from him in the months and years ahead.

I think that one of our colleagues who spoke earlier forgot to welcome the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Sarah Sackman). I know that constituency well. I campaigned for Mrs Thatcher in 1983 as a young Conservative, at the age of 17; I know Ballards Lane very well, and I have often been to Margaret Thatcher House. I must commend the hon. Lady on her kindness and the generous words that she spoke about not only Margaret Thatcher but my friend Mike Freer, whom we were sad to lose in the election. I know that she will be a fine champion of Finchley and Golders Green, which is a proud constituency with a great identity, and I look forward to visiting Finchley again while the hon. Lady is in place as the Member of Parliament.

I do apologise to the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green, and to the whole House, for not recognising my duty to thank the hon. Lady for her wonderful speech. This means that even after seven years in the House one sometimes forgets to do certain things. It is very good to see the hon. Lady in the House, and I particularly enjoyed what she said about the rule of law.

I am deeply proud to have been elected for the seventh time as the Member of Parliament for Romford. I am now the longest-serving MP for Romford since 1885, when the constituency was created. I am here because I believe in things. I am here not because I seek titles and positions, but because I believe in this country, and I am also passionate about my constituency, because it is where I am from. I think that those of us who come from our constituencies know how important it is to represent a place where we have lived all our lives, and I will always be proud of being the MP for my home town.

As I have said, I believe in things, and I believe first in this country. Let me say to Ministers, whom I congratulate on their election to power, that things change and Governments come and go, but the one thing that we must never give away is the freedom and liberties of the British people. I say to them, “Whatever you do, please do not reverse the biggest democratic decision that the British people made.” We want to have sovereignty; we want to have the right of self-governance; but we also want prosperity, and that means free enterprise, low taxes and smaller government. It does not mean creating a larger centralisation of power. Margaret Thatcher taught us that if we have lower taxes and free enterprise, if we give people the freedom to prosper and make their own decisions in life, in the end we create more prosperity and more opportunities for all. That, I am sure, is what all of us, in all parts of the House, want to see, so let us learn from past mistakes.

I respect the fact that we have different opinions on many issues, and I also understand that all of us here want the best for our country and our constituencies. However, I believe that if we want economic prosperity, we need Governments to stay out of people’s lives. We need to allow business to flourish. We need less regulation, and we need to cut unnecessary public expenditure, so that people are not paying high taxes which disincentivise work and put people off from investing in our country. I hope that the Government, having taken office, will pay heed to that. I also say to them that, yes, we want to protect our environment, but we have to think very carefully about the evangelism of net zero. We do not want to make our country cold and poor, and to give competitive advantage to other countries that do very little about climate change and have not met their targets. I am afraid the policy that the Government have adopted will deliver more power to China, so I warn them about going too far in that direction.

I believe that we should be a Parliament that makes decisions, so I disagree with more and more quangos, committees of experts and bodies that are not democratically accountable having so much say. Why are we effectively giving the Office for Budget Responsibility a veto over the rights of this Parliament to decide economic policy? Surely that is something that the Government should think again about.

Before I have to end, I would like to say that if we are serious about devolution, we should give all parts of the country greater control over their local communities. Boroughs such as Havering would rather be independent. We do not want to be under Greater London; we want power devolved back to our local communities. Historically, we are part of Essex, and we do not like being controlled by City Hall—and certainly not by the current Mayor of London. I represent the people of Romford, and they would agree with what I have said. Let us have free enterprise, true devolution and, above all, prosperity for the British people, but let us also stand up for our country abroad and at home.

I call Miatta Fahnbulleh to make her maiden speech.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I start by commending my hon. Friends for their impassioned maiden speeches? I am so proud to be sitting on these Benches with them.

I am incredibly honoured to be speaking for the first time in this House as the Member of Parliament for Peckham, a new constituency that spans from the oak trees of Nunhead cemetery to the spires of St Giles’ church, the African food shops of Peckham, the bustle of Rye Lane, the market stalls of Faraday’s East Street, the vibrant mosques of Old Kent Road and the Latin quarter of North Walworth. Ours is a community of communities that represents the very best of multicultural Britain—people of different colours, cultures, faiths and backgrounds united in our openness and acceptance of each other. We take pride in our diversity and the magic it brings to Peckham, and in our warmth and generosity of spirit.

Whoever you are and wherever you have come from, you will find your place in Peckham. For me, this is what makes representing the constituency so special, because it was among friends and the Sierra Leonean community in Peckham that my family found refuge when we fled from west Africa when I was a child. It was in this community that I learned the values of compassion and solidarity that have shaped my politics, and it was in this community that I first understood just how much the economy is failing people. I learned that you can work hard every day and still live in poverty, that our kids can be talented but still be deprived a shot, and that you can have billionaires living in the same borough as families that cannot feed their kids. It is in Peckham that I found my resolve that this must change. That is why I became an economist, why I have spent the last 15 years developing and campaigning for ideas to bring this change about, and why I am standing here today.

As I begin my journey in this House, I take inspiration from my formidable predecessor Harriet Harman, our inaugural Mother of the House. Harriet set the highest bar possible for what it means to be a great MP, having given 42 incredible years of service in working for the people of Camberwell and Peckham. In knocking on doors across Peckham, I heard story after story about how Harriet helped her constituents and touched countless lives. At a time when trust in our politicians is so frayed, the warmth, love and trust that she commands in our community speaks volumes. But more than that, she combined tireless work in her constituency with making a huge impact on our politics nationally—whether through enduring policies like the minimum wage, the winter fuel payment and the Equality Act 2010, which went to the heart of the inequality she saw in our community, or through the trail she blazed for women in politics by breaking ceilings and carving a path for others to follow. Today, the 190 Labour women MPs in this House are standing on her shoulders. On a personal note, I will always be grateful for her kindness, wisdom and grace, and for showing me what it means to be fearless in defence of your constituents, loyal but independent of mind, and tenacious about the change that is needed.

The need for change has never been so great. Today, as we debate the economy and all the uncertainties it brings, there is one thing I know for certain: people in Peckham are struggling. Their pay packets have flatlined for too long, with their safety net cut to shreds. Over a third of them cannot afford day-to-day essentials, and too many of our children now live in poverty. But it is not just about the money in your pocket; it is the fact that something as basic as a decent and affordable roof over your head is now out of reach for so many. Our schools, youth services, hospitals and care system are at breaking point, and children in my schools tell me that they only feel safe at home or at school—nowhere in between.

People in Peckham need change—not words or the promise of change that never comes, but real, tangible change that they can feel in their communities and see in their lives. They need change that will end the sense of being ground down, end the constant survival mode that so many people find themselves in, and rekindle the hope that has been beaten out. The weight of responsibility to deliver this now sits with me and all my hon. Friends on this side of the House. While the task feels insurmountable, what gives me hope is that those on our side have always grasped for big ideas to change the country when we have needed to do so. The NHS, social housing from the rubble of war, and the minimum wage—we have always been the party of big ideas. We have done it before at moments of crisis, and now we must do it again. As we find solutions to the challenges in front of us, I, as a proud Labour and Co-operative MP, hope that we will draw inspiration from the deep traditions of our movement—the enduring force of co-operation, putting power back in local hands, creating businesses run by local people for local people, trusting communities like Peckham to decide their own future, and giving them ownership and a stake in their economy—so that we can deliver the change for which my constituents and constituents across the country have given us a mandate.

If you will allow me, Madam Deputy Speaker, my final words are to my constituents. To the people lying awake at night and worrying about bills, the traders fighting for the survival of the businesses they have built, the families that cannot afford a home to lay down their roots, the people who cannot get the care they need and the kids who do not feel safe in our community, I want you to know this. I have listened to every conversation we have had. I have heard your worries, your anger, your frustration and your hopes, and I make one promise to you: in everything I do in this House, I will keep you in my mind’s eye. I will be your loudest voice, your fiercest defender and your proudest champion. I will fight every day to deliver the change that you deserve. I will serve you.

I call Bradley Thomas to make his maiden speech.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech here in the mother of Parliaments, a global beacon of representative democracy. I congratulate the hon. Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh) on her election and on making her inaugural contribution in this House.

I am humbled to serve the people of Bromsgrove and the villages in my home county. I have some esteemed and worthy predecessors, most recently Sir Sajid Javid. He was the first ethnic minority Member of Parliament to become a Secretary of State, and went on to hold not one but two of the great offices of state, serving as Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir Sajid is a man whose north star is his integrity, and he has devoted much of his time to supporting and championing good and noble causes, including, as many in this House know, suicide prevention.

Bromsgrove constituency is, for the unfamiliar, in Worcestershire. Bromsgrove town, its namesake, is proud of its history and traditions, which include a historic court leet centred around the parade on fair day, held on the closest Saturday to midsummer and in celebration of the 1199 charter granted to the town by King John. This heritage goes further, and Bromsgrove’s proud sons and daughters include the poet and scholar A. E. Housman and his sister Clemence, who I could not fail to mention here in this House, given the role that she played in the suffrage movement.

My constituency, however, is much broader than just one town. There are many more villages and hamlets and, being 79% rural, Bromsgrove epitomises the very best of Worcestershire. There are rolling hills and thriving villages where the community spirit is strong, including Clent, Dodford, Stoke Prior, Belbroughton, Romsley, Finstall, Barnt Green, Cofton Hackett, Tardebigge and Alvechurch. There are other communities on the fringe of the constituency whose identities are rooted proudly in Worcestershire, including Hagley, Rubery, Wythall, Major’s Green—and there is even a touch of glamour in Hollywood. I commit myself to representing them all. Our villages are home to rural enterprises, and to farmers who we all rely on three times a day and who are guardians of our countryside, often working in isolated or harsh conditions, both physically and in a competitive marketplace.

It would be easy to be lulled into thinking that Bromsgrove is somewhere quiet and without ambition, but hon. Members must not be fooled. The Sunday Times recently highlighted how South Bromsgrove high school is a powerhouse of aspiration and entrepreneurship, producing young high achievers who have gone on to found leading companies in their sectors, including Gymshark and AYBL. It is in no small part down to the attractiveness of rural Worcestershire that Bromsgrove is a fertile place for aspiration and ambition to bloom. As a Conservative, I believe in respecting the tradition and heritage that anchor our institutions and values, as society evolves to meet the needs of the present day and into the future.

Prior to my election to Parliament, I spent many years as a councillor in Worcestershire, including as leader of Wychavon district council, where I championed the importance of design codes and the role of beautiful design in delivering quality communities that inspire a sense of pride, nod to our past and catalyse the economic and social investment that allow our towns and villages to flourish. We must do this by shifting our collective focus away from beautiful design being seen as a cost, and towards seeing it as an investment that pays dividends in the form of thriving communities and vibrant places where aspiration can bloom. This is critical across Bromsgrove, a place that is 89% green belt and is the rural buffer between Worcestershire and the urban sprawl of Birmingham, to ensure that we protect our green open spaces and do not build identikit monotony all over the countryside, instead focusing on delivering quality homes, with appropriate landscaping and a mix of textures and colours, with genuine local support first.

Over the coming years, we must never forget that the single biggest driver of our economic success is a thriving free market—an environment where businesses are incentivised to invest, creating the prosperity that will underpin our national success. The Government must exercise restraint as they seek to create new bureaucracies, which increase the size of the state under the veil of public service reform, and they should be cautious as additional spending, funded through taxation or borrowing without serious structural reform of public service delivery, will fail every stakeholder who interacts with public services.

In my constituency, Bromsgrove school, founded in 1553, employs over 600 local people and contributes £43 million to the GDP of the UK. While every Member of this House would surely agree that education is the foundation of prosperity, the Government’s proposal to impose VAT on these schools is not only an ill-conceived affront to the children and families who currently exercise choice in education provision but an attack on the wider education system that will undoubtedly do little to enhance the quality of state education and will instead level down education standards across the board. I say that as someone who was proudly educated in excellent state schools.

We must also show determination in delivering vocational skills in agriculture, manufacturing, technology, engineering and trades, which will bolster our prosperity, raising our baseline level of industrial resilience in a world where our adversaries want to blunt our competitive edge. Food and energy security are two of the most significant and interlinked contemporary challenges that we face. The Government must remain pragmatic in their efforts to deliver on both, ensuring that in everything they do, they do not worship at the altar of ideological purity and inadvertently sacrifice our own long-term economic success in the process. In the words of A. E. Housman,

“The house of delusions is cheap to build, but draughty to live in, and ready at any instant to fall.”

I look forward to playing an active role in this House, delivering on behalf of my constituents and in the long-term national interest of our country.

I start by congratulating all those who are making their maiden speeches today, and welcoming them to this place. I also thank my Liverpool Riverside constituents who re-elected me. I give my commitment to continue to be their voice in this place. My constituency is now the most deprived in the country, with 47% of children living in poverty. That is nearly one in every two children, and it is communities such as mine that have faced the sharpest edge of 14 years of austerity and the cost of living crisis. Nationally, 16 million people are now living in poverty; 4 million are children, and 1 million are living in destitution. I am sure everybody in this House would agree that those figures are unacceptable.

Child poverty is completely avoidable in the sixth richest country in the world. Not tackling it stores up problems for the future, costing our economy £39 billion per year, according to calculations by the Child Poverty Action Group. It is not a question of whether we can afford to adopt vital policies to alleviate child poverty, such as lifting the two-child cap; it is a question of whether we can afford not to. This is the reason I tabled amendment (f) to the King’s Speech, with a focus on debate not division, to push for a clear timetable for scrapping the two-child cap. The End Child Poverty coalition believes this to be the most effective way to immediately lift 300,000 children out of poverty.

There is support for this position from right across the political spectrum, and it is something that the Labour leadership has indicated that it will do as soon as financially viable, but there are pockets of money that can be found if we look hard enough. Gordon Brown has suggested that between £1.3 billion and £3.3 billion can be found by imposing a reserve requirement on banks similar to those that the European Central Bank and the Swiss banks currently have, and that £700 million can be found by simplifying the gift aid system.

Economists believe the recent upturn in the economy means that the new Government could begin to consider bringing forward priority policies such as scrapping this cap. Others would argue that progressive taxation should also be strongly considered. The latest Department for Work and Pensions data shows that two thirds of families impacted by the two-child cap have at least one parent in full-time work. The last Labour Government had a big and bold ambition in 1997 to end child poverty within a generation. As a single working mum of twins, I personally benefited from those transformative policies. Without the availability of after-school and holiday provision, I would not have been able to continue working.

I know we have inherited the worst financial situation since the second world war, and that Labour in government is going to have some very careful choices to make about the path forward. We have a massive mountain to climb, but we were elected with a massive majority. The country has voted for change. Removing the two-child cap would send a powerful message of hope to those who have put their trust in a Labour Government to bring about the change we so desperately need. The one in two children living in poverty in my constituency have known nothing but the tyranny of a Tory Government, hunger and hardship during their short lives. Those children cannot and must not wait any longer to be lifted out of poverty.

As I mentioned earlier, the purpose of my amendment was to debate this very important issue, not to cause divisions, and there has been lots of debate this week but we need action. This punitive policy needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history, where it belongs, and in its place we need policies to lift 4 million children out of poverty. Let us put these children and our country first. I call on the Chancellor to make some immediate changes here.

I call Peter Bedford to make his maiden speech.

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) and Members on both sides of the House who have given their maiden speeches with such passion today.

I thank my long-standing friends, family and supporters who have worked so hard to enable my election to this place. Although there are far too many to name, I want to put on record my sincere thanks to Richard Milburn, Paul Taylor, Jon Humberstone, Ravinder Taylor and Ross Hills for their herculean efforts over recent months.

It is customary for new Members to pay tribute to their predecessors. However, I am in the unusual position of my three immediate predecessors being sitting Members of this House. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar), and my hon. Friends the Members for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), and for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), for their assiduous work in the last Parliament for the residents of my constituency. I look forward to working with them collectively for all the residents of Leicestershire.

The new Mid Leicestershire constituency is formed from parts of Charnwood borough, Hinckley and Bosworth borough and Blaby district. The Charnwood villages comprise Anstey, Birstall, Cropston, Thurcaston, Swithland, Rothley, Mountsorrel, Woodhouse Eaves and Old Woodhouse, and the borough is home to the UK’s only mainline heritage railway, the great central railway.

At the heart of the constituency is Bradgate Park in Newtown Linford, a place I call the jewel in the crown of rural Leicestershire. No matter your troubles, you will be able to take a peaceful, tranquil walk, admiring the deer and their fawns, while taking in breathtaking views of the beautiful green surrounds, before looking up at Old John and quietly reflecting on one’s physical fitness; it is a 212-metre climb to the top of that hill.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the ruins of Bradgate House, which is believed to be the birthplace of Lady Jane Grey, who ruled as Queen for a mere nine days; hon. Members can be assured that my maiden speech will not last that long.

The Blaby district areas of Braunstone, Thorpe Astley, Leicester Forest East, Kirby Muxloe and Glenfield also form part of the new constituency. Although they extend from the city, they very much value their unique identities as independent county settlements. Indeed, I put on record my support for the campaign spearheaded by Glenfield resident Steve Walters and local residents to protect Glenfield from the ever-increasing urban sprawl.

The Hinckley and Bosworth villages include Ratby, Groby and Field Head, in addition to Markfield, Stanton under Bardon, Bagworth and Thornton, which for the last seven years I have had the immense honour of serving as a Leicestershire county councillor.

Many of my constituents have legitimate concerns about overdevelopment and the lack of infrastructure to cope with the strains that population growth brings. I think of villages such as Ratby, which has seen its population almost double over the last 10 years, and where, even today, developers are willing to take advantage of the borough council’s lack of a local plan. I urge the incoming Government to ensure that local communities, not faceless bureaucrats in Whitehall, always have the final say on development across our green and beautiful countryside.

I turn to the issues that I will champion during my time in this House. The first is social mobility. As the eldest of three children in a single-parent family, I passionately believe that it does not matter who you are or where you were born; it is what you do with your life that matters. Life chances, owning your own home, getting a career and having a family should not be the exclusive preserve of the wealthy, but should be opportunities available to all.

I believe that the best path out of poverty is through education and training, and I will work constructively with Members from across the House to ensure that reform and investment in these vital tools is the Government’s top priority. The motto of my secondary school is “Aspire, Achieve, Acclaim”, a sentiment that I want to see promoted far more widely across society.

Secondly, I came through the ranks as a local councillor, so I cannot give my maiden speech without referring to fairer funding for local authorities; that is another issue that I wish to spearhead. The system is fundamentally broken, with allocations still linked to historical spending levels. The result is a poorly funded system in which need and funding do not match. For example, the core spending power of Leicestershire county council is a mere £900 a head, compared with almost £1,500 a head in the inner London boroughs. Reform in this area, by Governments of all colours, is long overdue, and I shall be a vocal advocate for fairer funding in this place and beyond.

Finally, dignity towards the end of life will continue to climb up the political agenda, particularly given our ever-ageing population. My election to this House is tinged with sadness that my grandparents are not around to see me give my maiden speech. Both were diagnosed with incurable cancer and, like millions across the country, they wanted greater control of their lives in their final days.

I am here to represent all my constituents, and I pledge to be a vocal advocate for those who are often disillusioned with the political process, or feel that their voice is not heard by those with power. It is the highest of honours to be elected to this place, and I intend to do my very best each and every day to repay that trust.

I call Jonathan Brash to make his maiden speech.

I congratulate all Members who have made their maiden speeches today, including the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford), who paid a moving tribute at the end of his speech.

I thank staff across the parliamentary estate for diligently and patiently looking after new Members in these first few days.

It is an honour to be called to make my maiden speech, which I do proudly as the Member of Parliament for my hometown of Hartlepool. To represent the place where I grew up, where I met my wife Pamela and where we are raising our young family holds a special kind of responsibility for me. The challenges that Hartlepool people face are personal, because they are challenges that I share. When one of our local businesses closes due to spiralling costs, there is a good chance that I have visited it in better times. When a local play area is the victim of arson, my children are among those devastated at the loss of a place they enjoyed, and when someone tells me that they are living in pain because they cannot see an NHS dentist in a town that has been described as a dental desert, I know how they feel, because I cannot get one either.

It is these experiences that drove me to serve my hometown, and it is Hartlepool people who have given me that opportunity. It is now my duty to respond in kind by delivering for them the opportunities that they have been denied for far too long. That is why I welcome this King’s Speech, which prioritises growth in every part of the country, not just those already blessed with affluence.

Hartlepool’s history is one of innovation and industry. Once the bedrock of the British economy as the country’s third-largest port, we built ships that shipped the Durham coal that powered the world. At one point in our history, Hartlepool’s shipyards, such as William Gray and Company, launched more ships than anywhere else in the world. As a major exporter of steel, we built the bridges, the ships, the railways and the infrastructure that transformed not just our economy but economies across the globe. Such was Hartlepool’s strategic importance that, along with only two other places on the north-east coast, it was targeted for bombardment by the German navy during the first world war. In true Hartlepool style, we were the only place to fire back, making the Heugh gun battery the UK’s only first world war battlefield.

Our industrial heritage has not left us. The Expanded Metal Company, which I have had the pleasure of visiting, provided metal mesh for buildings such as the Stephen Lawrence centre in Lewisham, the Young Vic theatre and New York’s New Museum, among many others. Our world famous, and award-winning, Camerons brewery was built during Hartlepool’s industrial heyday, but it has survived, grown and adapted to a changing economy, and a pint of Strongarm is as good today as it was back then.

In moving the Humble Address, my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) mentioned the famous Antony Gormley statues in his constituency. Although there are no Antony Gormley statues in Hartlepool, we are proud to have built the most famous one. Whenever I travel up the A1 through the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) and see the magnificent Angel of the North, I remember three simple words: “Made in Hartlepool.”

If our history is one of industry, innovation and growth, I must tell the House in all candour that it must also be our future. Too often, towns such as Hartlepool have been left behind, an afterthought in our national conversation, able only to reminisce about what we once were, not plan for what we can be. This must change, and I believe it will change under this Labour Government.

Right now, we are witnessing a new industrial revolution sweep the world as we shift to a net zero future. Whereas our past was in coal and ships, our future is in new nuclear, wave and tidal. The election of this Labour Government means that revolution is finally coming to our shores, with a national wealth fund investing in jobs in every part of the country, a proper industrial strategy that forges a real partnership with business, and Great British Energy, which will make the UK a clean energy superpower.

I am determined that Hartlepool will play its part in this transformative agenda, once again at the metaphorical coalface of our country’s prosperity and economic growth. That is nothing less than Hartlepool people deserve. They are my inspiration, with their defiance, grit and determination to succeed in the face of challenge. Even in the toughest of times, we come together, stronger, more united and standing up for each other.

Everywhere in our town, we see courage, community and compassion. I have been privileged to work with brilliant Hartlepool people every day to improve our town, from those in our voluntary sector organisations and community groups to our faith leaders and those in our schools, colleges and clubs, including Hartlepool United; my children and I are proud season ticket holders. All of them are working together in the service of our town.

Hartlepool has produced many leading lights across a variety of professions, from Iron Maiden guitarist Janick Gers to world boxing champion Savannah Marshall, fashion designer Scott Henshall and television presenter Jeff Stelling, whose repeated and impassioned outbursts defending the north-east, its culture, heritage and people from those who would seek to criticise it display all the formidable characteristics of a person raised in Hartlepool.

The Prime Minister has rightly talked about putting his Government back into the service of working people. My unfaltering belief in public service was instilled in me from a young age. I want to take a moment to pay tribute to my father, Charles Brash, a doctor in Hartlepool for over 30 years. One of my earliest memories is of him coming home from a night on call—GPs did that in those days—having a quick bite to eat, and then heading straight back out for his morning surgery. Some people still call me “the doctor’s son”, and I wear it like a badge of honour. His career, spent in the service of others, shaped my values, and my belief that only by putting people first can we achieve the change we need.

I pay tribute to my predecessor, Jill Mortimer. Since her election in 2021, Jill has forged strong relationships in Hartlepool, particularly with veterans’ groups, which I hope to emulate. Public service is never easy, and I thank Jill Mortimer for her service to Hartlepool.

I close by returning to the idea of opportunity. Right now, in 2024, in one of the richest countries in the world, nearly 20% of Hartlepool’s children live in absolute poverty. Nothing could better symbolise the spectre of opportunity denied—the opportunity for a safe and secure upbringing, to fulfil their boundless potential, to get a good job and raise their own family in security and prosperity. So I welcome the announcement by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Education and for Work and Pensions on developing an ambitious child poverty strategy, because as Members know, the record is clear: when Labour is in government, child poverty falls.

I am privileged to stand in this place, but I will never lose sight of the fact that it is a privilege gifted to me by Hartlepool people, far too many of whom have been denied opportunity for far too long. Hartlepool people have a reputation for, on occasion, electing fighters as opposed to quitters, and I am pleased to tell the House that they have done so again. My duty, my service, is to fight for them every day to secure the brighter future that our town deserves.

I call Nick Timothy to make his maiden speech.

I congratulate the other new Members on their excellent maiden speeches, in particular the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash), where I know his predecessor, Lord Mandelson, recommends the mushy peas.

It is an honour to be called to speak for the first time. I pay tribute to the last MP for West Suffolk, Matt Hancock, who oversaw the delivery of the covid vaccines, a vital achievement for our country. Less well known is that Matt once rode in, and won, the Blue Square Cavalry Charge horserace in Newmarket, a feat that required him not only to be propelled forward by a thoroughbred horse at 30 miles per hour, but to train for three months and lose 2 stone. For all these reasons, not least the dubiousness of the idea that I have 2 stone to lose, I can assure the House that I will not be stepping into my predecessor’s stirrups.

Newmarket is the best-known town in my constituency. It is most famous for horseracing, an international success story that brings thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of pounds to the local economy every year. From Charles I to Charles III, racing gives West Suffolk its long connection to royalty, but unfortunately ours is not an unblemished record, for Newmarket was once the home of Oliver Cromwell’s new model army. Old Ironsides championed free expression yet persecuted his enemies. He attacked aristocratic privilege and patronage, but handed power to his cronies. Censorious, joyless and puritanical—it is like he wrote the Labour manifesto.

Fortunately, we have left those days of self-denial behind, and from the Star in Lidgate to the Queen’s Head in Hawkedon, the Affleck Arms in Dalham to the White Horse in Withersfield, and many others, we have some of the best pubs in Britain. And we have plenty more besides: beautiful villages, vibrant towns and farms that feed the country; Anglo-Saxon settlements and ancient churches; rolling countryside and big Suffolk skies; dense forest and the world-famous gallops; businesses doing everything from seed drills to particle engineering; charities such as Reach in Haverhill and the day centres in Brandon and Newmarket; Highpoint prison near Stradishall; the airbases at Lakenheath and Mildenhall; and public servants working for their communities every day.

I look forward to championing them all and addressing our challenges too, including dealing with flooding in Clare, Cavendish and elsewhere, and fighting the appalling decision to approve the Sunnica solar and battery farm, due to be built on high-quality agricultural land. In Brandon, lorry traffic is a problem. We need the Ely and Haughley junctions sorted to get freight on to the railways. In Mildenhall, where 1,300 new homes are coming, we need a relief road. We are not against new house building in West Suffolk—we have had 3,000 new homes built in the last five years—but we need attractive family homes in the right places. We need services and infrastructure to keep pace. We need to get tougher with the developers and reform the construction market. We need to drastically cut immigration, not just for the economic and cultural reasons that should by now be obvious, but to limit new demand for housing.

Our largest town, Haverhill, has doubled in size in only 30 years, to almost 30,000 residents. It has an incredible community spirit, but the town centre is struggling. We need a new start for our high streets, and I will fight for a railway linking Haverhill to Cambridge. The development of Cambridge looms large for us, but I want us to embrace the opportunities, not just fear the risks. If we get it right, we have the chance to get better infrastructure, new investment and more jobs. That is why I wanted to speak in today’s debate.

From potholes to public sector pay, the thread that runs through all our challenges is an inconvenient truth. While it is plainly incorrect to claim that the new Government have the worst economic inheritance since the war—[Interruption.] It is incorrect, but we are less prosperous than we often tend to assume. This is not a question of party politics, but of the decline and failure of our country’s long-established economic model. Put simply: we do not make, do or sell enough of what the world needs.

Our £33 billion trade deficit—1.2% of GDP—means we sell off valuable assets and build up external debt to limit the current account deficit. We end up with less control over our economy, and more exposed to global risks and shocks. From low pay to regional inequality, poor productivity to the funding of public services, all the things we worry about are symptoms of this wider problem.

We need to question economic theory, challenge Treasury orthodoxy and think beyond the intellectual limits of ideological liberalism. Theories like comparative advantage have led us to offshore industry and grow dependent on hostile states, like China. But international trade is neither free nor fair, and net zero cannot mean sacrificing our prosperity and security. Being a services superpower is a great advantage, but alone it is not enough. We need a serious strategy to reindustrialise, narrow the trade deficit and rebalance the economy. We need to change and, in the months and years ahead, I look forward to debating how we do so.

I call Alan Strickland to make his maiden speech.

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) on his maiden speech, and all those who have spoken for the first time in the House today.

It is an honour to make my maiden speech as the first Member of Parliament for the Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor constituency. I pay tribute to those who came before me. The former Sedgefield constituency makes up the majority of the new seat. In addition, we have taken Spennymoor and Tudhoe wards from Bishop Auckland, and Coxhoe ward from City of Durham. I wish to put on record my thanks and pay tribute to Paul Howell and Dehenna Davison for their public service, and to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) for her continuing dedication to her constituents.

Unlike some former Members of this House, I am not fluent in Latin, but I am assured that the motto of my hometown translates as “Not the Least, but the Greatest we seek.” This has not only served as a powerful statement of intent for the new town of Aycliffe since 1947, but captures the shared spirit of the towns and villages across this new constituency—varied in history, but united in a desire to get on, to do well, to strive for a better future. My own family’s story is testament to this spirit of aspiration that has long defined the working people of our country.

Several generations ago, both sides of my family were drawn from mining villages across England to the Durham coalfields because of their reputation for good wages and reliable work. In turn, my grandparents moved from pit villages to Aycliffe new town, home for two years to the late Lord Beveridge, in search of modern housing and better jobs for their children. My parents’ generation then worked hard to give us the opportunities that they never had, including higher education, the chance to work across the country and across the world, and personal freedoms to flourish. This ethos—that each generation raises the next, that background be no barrier, and that opportunity be distributed as widely as talent—is the driving force in families in my constituency and a lodestar for this Government.

But making that a reality requires strong economic growth across our country. We must back the industries of the future, such as Hitachi Rail in my constituency, which manufactures world-class, green trains, and employs 700 highly skilled workers and another 1,500 in the supply chain. I thank a former Member of this House, Phil Wilson, for his tireless campaign, alongside The Northern Echo, which led to the plant being located in the area some years ago. I am also grateful for the public commitments made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Transport Secretary to support Hitachi’s future. I look forward to working with them to secure those jobs and expand high-tech manufacturing more widely. That includes the innovative work at Sedgefield’s NETPark. This Durham University spin-off hub develops innovative products in satellite technology, drug development and biological weapon detection, which are then exported around the globe. The creation of jobs in the industries of the future is particularly important in a constituency with former mining communities, where ongoing economic development is badly needed.

I do not want the House to think that my constituency is all work and no play. We are famous for the Sedgefield ball game—a historic Shrove Tuesday tradition not for the faint-hearted. We are home to excellent football clubs, including Newton Aycliffe, where my parents served on the committee, and Spennymoor Town. Spennymoor itself typifies our rich cultural history, with a heritage trail dedicated to Norman Cornish, one of the pitmen painters, who learned his craft alongside his mining in the Spennymoor settlement.

Some of the best brass bands in the country can also been found in the constituency. They not only keep alive the cultural traditions of our past, but provide excellent, high-quality music education for new generations of young people today. We are also home to incredible local produce, including artisan chocolate made in Coxhoe, and award-winning real ale brewed at the Surtees Arms in Ferryhill—I have personally quality-assured the latter on several occasions. On the topic of ale, my predecessor Tony Blair was noted for hosting world leaders in pubs across the constituency. I have yet to find a pub without a photo of the former Prime Minister and his closest NATO allies, but my diligent search continues.

Finally, I am proud of our thriving community organisations. The Ladder Centre does invaluable work to support residents, and the Cornforth Partnership is a lifeline for those looking to get back into work. Just as Durham coal powered our economy in the past, so constituencies such as mine can power our modern economy, with high-tech, green manufacturing and research.

Let me return to where I began—“Not the Least, but the Greatest we seek.” Mr Deputy Speaker, in this House, let us commit ourselves to seek the greatest—the very best—for our constituents, for our communities and for our great nation. I look forward to seeing the economic measures in the King’s Speech start to spread wealth, growth and opportunity to every corner of this United Kingdom, including the people of Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor.

I call Gregory Stafford to make his maiden speech.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) on his maiden speech. I do not think that we crossed over at university, but mutual friends tell me that he was an excellent president of the Oxford Student Union. We can tell that his debating skills were honed there, and we saw that in evidence this evening.

I want to express my gratitude to the people of the new Farnham and Bordon constituency for placing their trust in me and for allowing me the honour to represent them here in Parliament. I feel that giving a maiden speech is a bit like giving a best man’s speech at a wedding, as you are surrounded by disapproving elderly relatives who are going to hang on every word, but I can assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that none of the jokes that I have made before in any best man’s speeches will be given in this House, especially as I know that my mother-in-law is watching on the Parliament channel.

I also wish to thank my family—especially my wife, Caroline, and my daughters, Susannah and Lucy, who have put up with me a lot over the past year—for their patience and support, as well as my parents, James and Theresa.

Other hon. Members have noted that they are not the first people in their family to be Members of Parliament. I am not even the first sibling to be a Member of Parliament. I pay tribute to my brother, Alexander, who served the people of the Rother Valley constituency so diligently in the previous Parliament.

Apparently, it is also customary to express gratitude to our predecessors in the seat—a small political obituary, as it were. Fortunately, both my immediate predecessors, my right hon. Friends the Members for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt) and for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), are still, as Members can see, very much in their political prime. None the less, I want to thank them for their generous support and advice since I was selected. They have both achieved amazing things for the constituents whom I have inherited. Campaigning was a sobering affair. On the doorsteps I was told: “Oh, we do like Jeremy”, or “Damian did such wonderful stuff for us”, or “You have very big shoes to fill”. To rub salt into the wound, the week before the election, the local paper ran a story on how much the people of Haslemere would miss the shadow Chancellor—believe me, I know my place.

Speaking of predecessors, the predecessor of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire, Lord Arbuthnot, should be praised for his sterling work on the Horizon scandal and for bringing justice to the sub-postmasters so cruelly affected. I still hope that those who were responsible—by act or omission—are brought to justice.

The newly created Farnham and Bordon constituency crosses the counties of Surrey and Hampshire, making the life of a new Member of Parliament even more complex than it already is. More than that, the name, while referencing the two largest towns in each county, ignores the other towns of Haslemere and Liphook and the many villages that range between the larger population centres. Many argued for, and I supported, a less specific but more all-encompassing name for the constituency, such as the Wey Valley, taking its name from the beautiful River Wey that runs through it. Clearly they are not romantics in the Boundary Commission, so Farnham and Bordon stuck. The only saving grace is that its initials spell FAB, which sums up the area that I represent.

This “FAB” constituency ranges from Farnham in the north to Haslemere and Liphook in the south, Whitehill and Bordon in the west, and the western villages of Surrey, such as Tilford, in the east. Bookended by the north and south downs, it is an area of outstanding beauty, with thriving market towns, pleasant villages, and a thriving sports and arts scene, including the prestigious University for the Creative Arts. It also has a significant military connection, most obviously in Bordon, which was home to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers until 2015 and is home to the Longmoor ranges, where Ukrainian troops are being trained. Military history is everywhere, from Amesbury school in Haslemere and Hindhead, where Montgomery lived during the war, to the Canadian war graves and memorial in Liphook, and the site of the first ever two-minute silence in this country on Castle Street in Farnham. The residents of this new constituency are ever thankful for the role that our armed forces have played in keeping us safe.

From Arthur Conan Doyle to Jonny Wilkinson, King John to Flora Thompson, and Graham Thorpe to the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), heroes and villains have been born, lived, worked and played in this fabulous constituency, but it is not the beautiful scenery, the historic gems, or the famous people who make this constituency the best in the country. It is not even the fact that my grandparents ran Stafford’s sweet shop in Haslemere for many years—what little boy would not want grandparents who ran a sweet shop? It is the current residents, businesses and community spirit that make FAB special, and a joy to represent. Every day there are local events, charitable occasions and community festivities to get involved with. Indeed, I doubt that anywhere else in this country can rival the number of duck races in the area.

Following that Cook’s tour of the constituency, one might be forgiven for thinking that there are no issues to solve—a home counties garden of Eden. It of course cannot be denied that there are many areas of significant affluence, but it should not be concealed that there are areas of high deprivation, and I will champion their improvement. The constituency’s location is both a benefit and a curse. Within easy commuting distance of London, it provides a rural haven for those who wish to live outside but work in the city. That also makes it rich pickings for housing developers who look for any open space, green or otherwise, to build on. I am not against housing development—we need homes for our children and grandchildren—but we need the right homes in the right places, with the right tenure mix and with the supporting infrastructure.

Conservative-run East Hampshire district council has done everything that it can to persuade the new Government to modify their housing targets to make them more appropriate for our area, including writing to the Deputy Prime Minister. I hope that she will respond positively. Indeed, if there is one issue that unites the whole of the new Farnham and Bordon constituency, it is that infrastructure has not kept pace with development. That is particularly acute in Bordon, where thousands of houses are going up without the supporting infrastructure. The GP surgeries, the NHS dentists, the schools, the roads and the leisure centres all need upgrading and expanding rapidly to meet that housing growth. We must not build more houses until infrastructure catches up. Otherwise we will be left with housing estates devoid of services, security and society. I am deeply concerned about the new Government’s plans on house building. Labour’s changes to planning, imposing top-down targets and removing the rights of local people to have their say on developments, are a retrograde step that has been met with anger from my constituents and resolute opposition from me.

I mentioned the need for health services in our area. Having spent most of my career in healthcare, latterly working for seven years in the NHS improving clinical services and patient outcomes, I know that both locally and nationally things need to change in the NHS. We need to have a grown-up and honest discussion with the public about how we are going to deliver, provide and fund the NHS and social care going forwards. For an ageing population with increasing healthcare needs and diminishing birth rates—that is, the people who are going to pay for the NHS—we need a cross-party discussion that brings all parties together to make long-term decisions on how we proceed with health and social care in this country. If I achieve nothing else in my time here, starting that conversation, and hopefully progressing it fruitfully, will be something to hope for.

As a traditional, common-sense Conservative, I believe that we cannot pay for health and social care unless we have a strong economy. Despite a global pandemic, a war in the east of Europe and instability in the middle east, and regardless of the picture that the Government are trying to paint in their press releases, the most recent statistics show that the economy is turning around and is on an upward trajectory. I will oppose any measures by this Government, including the misguided nationalisation of industry and the socialist labour rules, that I believe will hamper or reverse that trend.

Equally important is to safeguard ourselves from external threats. The rise of a resurgent Russia, China and North Korea is something that we should all be concerned about. I do not believe that it is hyperbole to say that we are in a pre-war era, and we need to ensure that our borders, skies and infrastructure, both physical and digital, are safe from threats. That is why I absolutely believe that we should move to 2.5% of GDP spent on defence immediately, and increase that to 3% when practical.

In short, we must protect our economy, healthcare and national security to ensure the prosperity and safety of our country, but mindful that maiden speeches are not meant to be controversial, I shall leave it there and return briefly to the subject of my FAB constituency. In 1668, Samuel Pepys recorded that the people of Liphook were “good, honest people”. Given his own morals and motivations, I am not sure whether he meant that as a compliment, but I assure the House that it is as true now as it was then for the residents of Farnham, Bordon, Haslemere, Liphook and our surrounding villages, and I pledge to be a good, honest servant of them in this place.

I call Rachel Blake to make her maiden speech.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I thank the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) for describing his constituency so passionately. While we may strongly disagree on the need for growth and new development in this country, we may agree more on the future of our NHS, and I look forward to working together on that ambition.

I am a proud Londoner, and like many Londoners I was not actually born here; I am delighted to share with you that I was born in Manchester and my family comes from Lancashire. In fact, for most of my childhood I was aware of only one football team—the Bolton Wanderers—but for the last 42 years London has been my home, and the chance to represent my home city is truly a special honour. I put on record my thanks to the residents of the Cities of London and Westminster for placing their trust in me as their representative.

I start by thanking Nickie Aiken for her service. She is a pioneer, as the first woman to represent the Cities of London and Westminster, and is remembered fondly by many residents. She has shown me kindness and offered her advice, for which I am grateful. I know that here and across the constituency she will be remembered for her tireless work campaigning to regulate pedicabs, and her work to end the Vagrancy Act 1824 and deliver the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. I also pay tribute to my good friend Karen Buck, who represented the St John’s Wood neighbourhood wards of Abbey Road and Regent’s Park, which joined the two Cities constituency in the recent boundary review. When walking through Westminster with Karen, it is hard to find anyone in her constituency who does not know her and has not been helped by her. Through her tireless casework for tens of thousands of constituents, and her Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, Karen has made an outstanding contribution to lives in Westminster and beyond. She is a fearless representative and campaigner and a kind and wise friend. I am so grateful for her advice, and will do my very best to live up to her high standards.

From 1977 to 2001, the two Cities were represented by Peter Brooke, who is remembered for his work as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and later as the Secretary of State for National Heritage. Finally, I also remember J. S. Mill, who represented the City of Westminster from 1865 to 1868, and who in 1866 became the first person in the history of Parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote. I hope that he would be happy to see Nickie, Karen and I delivering on his pioneering work for equality here in the two Cities.

Truly, when a woman is tired of London she is tired of life. The Cities of London and Westminster are home to great cultural institutions: the National Gallery, the Royal Opera House, the commercial centres of Oxford Street and Edgware Road, innovative start-ups alongside major international corporations, the Government here in Westminster and Whitehall, the international financial centre of the City of London, the beautiful Hyde Park, Regent’s Park and St James’s Park alongside the residential squares of Belgravia and Marylebone, and yes, Buckingham Palace.

Many Members will know the neighbourhoods of Soho, Fitzrovia and Covent Garden as places to spend a night out. In fact, tens of thousands of people live here. We have St Bartholomew’s, one of London’s oldest churches, Bevis Marks, the oldest practising synagogue in the UK, and London Central Mosque. Just minutes away from Parliament we have the Peabody estates of Westminster, the pioneering and beautifully designed Churchill Gardens and Lillington and Longmoore estates, the architectural delights of the Barbican and Golden Lane and the historic communities of Petticoat Square and the Guinness estate in Portsoken ward.

All those places are home to diverse communities living side by side, but also to inequality and injustice, and the struggle to find a stable, affordable and decent home is holding people in my constituency back from meeting their potential. That struggle is holding our city and our country back from meeting our potential. Tackling the housing crisis has brought me into politics, and this debate on the King’s Speech proposals for economic growth is an important time to highlight the situation that many of my constituents face. Nearly 20 years ago, I worked at the Treasury on the Barker review of planning. It is with sadness that I note that we are still not delivering the homes we need. I am determined that this Government will deliver on our promise to build more affordable homes.

Ending no-fault evictions will bring certainty and security for the approximately 40% of households in the Cities of London and Westminster who are renting privately. Our cross-Government strategy will put Britain back on track to ending homelessness, rough sleeping and temporary accommodation, which have been rising here for years and are harming so many. I am grateful to organisations such as The Passage and The Connection here in the two Cities for doing so much to support vulnerable people. The Cities of London and Westminster has one of the highest proportions of leasehold homes in the country. Residential leasehold is trapping tenants with unaccountable landlords, and I am pleased the Government have pledged to introduce a leasehold and commonhold reform Bill.

It is characteristic of such an international place that global patterns affect our local communities. The rise of short-term letting and the risk of dirty money in property are contributing to a loss of homes for Londoners, and as their representative here I am determined to tackle that. I will be standing up for our local hospital and St Mary’s in Paddington, and continuing our campaign to secure funding for the redevelopment of London’s major trauma centre.

The story of the two Cities is one that is optimistic, outward-looking, hard-working and driven. I hope to continue to represent this place in that fashion. I am the first Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament to ever represent this historic constituency, and I join colleagues in closing with a pledge to approach this new Parliament with a renewed commitment to respectful debate and disagreement. Elections are a time to make a choice. Now that a decision has been made, it is time to move forward with a relentless focus on public service and delivery.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for kindly calling me to contribute to this important debate on the King's Speech, after 11 very good maiden speeches and 11 very promising—even fabulous—starts to parliamentary careers. Those who have been in this House a little longer will know that our great friend the late Sir David Amess, whose plaque now rightfully hangs on the wall, had a great talent for managing to combine a very large number of topics into one speech. I lack Sir David’s skill, so I will seek to confine my remarks this evening to three topics, all development related.

The first topic relates to an expansion in medical capacity for the NHS, and specifically to proposals to expand the Jones family practice in Hockley. I declare an interest: my wife Olivia has worked in the NHS for nearly 20 years. In essence, the plan is to expand the practice, with a first-floor extension to create eight new GP consulting rooms and additional training facilities. Rochford district council recently approved planning permission for the extension, and the senior partner, Professor Dr Mahmud, and his active practice management team are now seeking approval from local NHS bosses to support the scheme.

It is my intention as the recently re-elected local MP—for which I am very grateful to my constituents—to lend weight to these positive proposals. They are designed not just to expand capacity, but hopefully to provide training places for graduates from the new medical school at Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford. For the record, I have also been working for some time to try to expand Riverside medical centre in Hullbridge, and I will be pursuing that with the NHS as well.

Secondly, the town of Wickford has suffered a dearth of supermarket capacity in recent years. My constituents endured something of a perfect storm last year when the Aldi supermarket was closed, while at the same time the old Co-op nearby has effectively stood semi-derelict for three years. During that supermarket vacuum, my constituents were forced to fall back on the small Iceland in the high street and Wickford market.

I was very pleased to reopen the enlarged Aldi last autumn, and it is now doing a brisk trade. However, the Co-op still remains undeveloped and, while boarded up, is occupying valuable spaces in the town’s principal car park. It is a long and complicated saga. Suffice it to say that the site was bought several years ago by a development company named Heriot, which originally came up with a plan in conjunction with the supermarket chain Morrisons to redevelop the store, with an underground car park and some flats above. I always had doubts about the commercial viability of those proposals, especially the underground car park, and the scheme collapsed some months ago.

Nevertheless, Heriot is working on what might be called a plan B, and for some months has been in what it describes as “advanced talks” with another major supermarket chain. For commercial reasons Heriot asked me not to name the supermarket in this speech, something I have agreed to respect—although I have to say that the name of the company in question is now effectively an open secret, and was even being reported back to me on doorsteps by my Wickford constituents during the general election.

I spoke to the directors of Heriot in advance of this debate, who assure me they are seeking to bring their commercial negotiations to a conclusion as soon as possible. They are well aware of my frustration at these three years of delay, which I conveyed to them again this morning, and they have asked me to relate that they realise that my Wickford constituents have already waited a long while for a new supermarket. That is an issue I campaigned on heavily at the general election, so I hope Heriot will be able to announce something definitive this summer. My message to Heriot is simple: “You have had more than enough time—get on with it.”

Finally, over two decades I have seen examples of both good and bad development in my constituency. Young people cannot live at home with their parents into their 50s and 60s, so it must be possible to build some houses in a sustainable manner to meet the housing need. Crucially, however, the infrastructure required to accompany them has to be built first. To put it another way, from long experience, if development is to be successful—and it can be—as I said earlier, it has to be done with people, rather than to people. The proposals at a place called Dollymans Farm in my constituency, which I was re-elected with a mandate to oppose, are precisely the opposite of that. We all want to find somewhere suitable and appropriate for people to live, but we have to do that in the right way.

It is an honour to be re-elected for the fourth time to the redrawn seat of Brentford and Isleworth, and to follow such impressive maiden speeches, particularly that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake), in whose constituency we all work.

After nine years sitting in Opposition it is a pleasure to be on the Government side of the Chamber and to support this Government’s legislative programme, which brings hope, opportunity and change for my constituents and for the country at last. I will focus my response to the King’s Speech on the Government’s ambitious proposals around transport policy—not only because it is an area I have long been involved with, having served on the Transport Committee for five years and chaired five all-party parliamentary groups on transport, but because transport was brought up regularly on the doorsteps in this last election.

The theme of today’s debate is economy, welfare and public services. Effective transport policies are essential to the change we need to see in all three areas, as well as in addressing our climate crisis, so I am pleased to see the bold and ambitious plans set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh) and her team to do just that. For access to work, education and health services, for supplying our manufacturing and retail sectors and for supporting our wellbeing and family life, decent transport choices are essential, and nowhere are they more needed than in the new communities that will be built, if the traffic on the roads to and around them is not to grind to a halt. Whether in city, town or countryside, we need the full range of transport options—ones that are affordable, accessible, efficient and environmentally sound.

On buses, I am delighted that, through the better buses Bill, the Government will end the ideological and control-freakery policy of banning local authorities from running their own municipal bus companies. Such companies were killed off by the Thatcher Government in a bout of ideological rage, with only London retaining a regulated bus service. The rest of England should have what we have in London: regular day, evening and weekend services, simple fare structures, and high standards of safety, accessibility and passenger information. Those are being developed by the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and I look forward to seeing other local authorities—of all parties, I am sure—following his example.

To be an alternative to driving, and for us to cut road congestion and pollution, rail travel must be reliable. I am therefore delighted to see Bills to create Great British Railways and to bring train operations into public ownership. That is essential for a simplified and unified rail system that focuses on improving passenger services while getting value for the taxpayer. Our constituents, and many Members of this House, have had terrible experiences of cancelled trains, or of sitting on the floor for hours despite booking a seat. We will now see a Government and a Department that do not use transport as a cudgel in our culture wars, or as a crude electoral hammer to override local authorities that want to introduce sensible measures to encourage cycling and walking.

Transport is at the heart of the challenge of national renewal that we have set ourselves: kickstarting economic growth, boosting jobs and living standards, and building sufficient homes in sustainable communities. Of course there are challenges ahead—not least in further growing capacity in our overloaded rail network. I welcome the plan to improve east-west connectivity across the north of England, but funding further increases in rail capacity will unfortunately be financially unsustainable until we see the economic growth that the Chancellor is working on. Aviation expansion is acceptable only if it passes the four tests that we set ourselves in opposition: cutting carbon dioxide emissions, overcoming local environmental impacts, providing regional benefits across the UK, and deliverability. I know that the new Secretary of State and ministerial team will work across our travel and transport sectors to improve transport connections to the benefit of our country as a whole.

I call Robin Swann to make his maiden speech.

It is with honour and humility, and a sense of trepidation, that I rise to make my maiden speech. I think of those who have spoken here before and the gravity and seriousness of the issues that have been debated and discussed. I hope that this Parliament is no different in how it discharges its duties, and that we in this intake of new Members live up to those standards. I congratulate the many new Members on their maiden speeches, which have set a high bar.

Like everyone else in this House, I wish to thank sincerely those who placed their faith and trust in me by electing me. I am indebted to the electorate of South Antrim for the support that I have received from across the entire community—indeed, entire communities—in my election to this place. I also thank the dedicated campaign team who supported me during what was an honourable campaign.

I pay tribute to my predecessor, Mr Paul Girvan, not just for his tenure as a Member of this House, but for his time as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and as a local councillor. South Antrim has moved between Paul’s party and my Ulster Unionist party on a number of occasions. With that, I carry the privilege and honour of returning the UUP to this place after a seven-year absence, and the charge and responsibility of bringing a moderate and reasoned Unionist voice from Northern Ireland, in my party’s tradition of working positively and constructively with all to achieve the best outcomes for all our people, and of working across this House to strengthen our Union and to deliver a Union for all.

I turn now to my constituency of South Antrim. I want those here this evening to know what a fantastic part of our country it is. Like so many constituencies, it has a mix of main towns—Ballyclare and Antrim—and a range of what were once small villages but are growing into large villages, such as Toome, Doagh, Crumlin, Randalstown, Templepatrick, Ballynure and many more. Much of the constituency is a large and productive rural area, while part of the expanding urban area of Glengormley is merging with north Belfast in Mossley and Mallusk.

South Antrim is home to industry, research and cutting-edge business in large and small employers. Indeed, I look forward to working with the Chancellor and her Government in further supporting those businesses through the Bills in the King’s Speech, and especially through the national wealth fund. South Antrim is the base of Belfast international airport, which I believe has a real opportunity if it gets its much-needed rail link and the further expansion of Aldergrove and our Royal Air Force base. That is why I believe that we also need a UK air transportation strategy, which I may raise later in the Adjournment debate—if the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) will take an intervention from me!

South Antrim’s agricultural sector is another pillar of our community and contributes significantly to our local economy. Our annual Antrim agricultural show celebrates that agricultural heritage by bringing together farmers, producers and visitors from across the country and showcasing the best of rural life and promoting a strong sense of community. It is on this Saturday at Shane’s castle, and I would encourage and welcome anyone who wants to attend.

Lough Neagh—the largest freshwater lake in the British isles—is another jewel in South Antrim’s crown, but it is currently struggling because of neglect, like many of our waterways. However, the Stormont Executive’s new recovery programme is in place, and I hope that—with national support, given the need for action on our waterways—Lough Neagh will once more be a tourism and recreational attraction for visitors from far and wide.

A number of issues debated over the past few days will have a direct impact on the people of South Antrim, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom—none more so than the future and support that the Government will offer our national health service and those who rely on and work in it. The Government have the opportunity to reverse the past years of neglect. Health may be devolved, but that does not mean that we in this place can abdicate all responsibility for our national health service. We have the excellent Antrim area hospital in my constituency, but it needs resource and support to develop its potential. As a former Health Minister of Northern Ireland, I know that we have plans to deliver better services, but change needs recurrent resources, which have been lacking in recent years. I look forward to working with this Government to rebuild our national health service.

I know that I am speaking to the converted on how great South Antrim is, because I have been overwhelmed by the number of Members from across the House who have approached me to tell me of a relative or friend who lives in my constituency. Indeed, I look forward to representing them and all my South Antrim constituents in this place.

I congratulate all the hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches on their passion and their commitment to their constituency, which has come across so well. Age does not wither, nor custom stale the privilege of being in this place, and I too want to thank my constituents, who have returned me to Parliament to represent them all and the wonderful city we call home.

I spent 14 years on the Opposition Benches, standing up for my constituents against a Government who were bearing down on them. It is absolutely fantastic to speak from the Government Benches in support of a Government who will help and empower them. Some Conservative Members have been painting a rosy picture of our economic inheritance, but the message of working people in Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West was clear and consistent: “We need change.” It is not hard to see why. People are worse off; over a third of children in Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West live in poverty; and over 2,000 households in Newcastle are homeless. Those are just a few of the issues that my constituents face, so please, let us not pretend that we should be grateful to the last Government.

But everything changed on 4 July. Indeed, as I was buying my fish supper last Friday at one of the excellent fishmongers in Grainger market—locally smoked cod, since you ask—they told me that on 5 July, sales of halibut soared. That is an expensive fish, so they took that as a sign of celebration, but also of optimism, hope, and confidence in a better future. There is nothing fishy there, because the Bills set out in the King’s Speech will give Newcastle our future back. Our destiny will be in our own hands, with the English devolution Bill and the better buses Bill giving local leaders such as our fantastic Mayor Kim McGuinness the powers needed to drive growth and prosperity locally. Our region’s immense potential in the green industries of the future will finally be unlocked through the national wealth fund and Great British Energy; planning reform will take the handbrake off building new homes and spaces for business, making us an even greater city with an economy that provides great jobs and good homes for all Geordies; and by expanding the rights of workers, tenants and minoritised groups, the Government will make sure that work pays and everyone in Newcastle enjoys their fair share of our national prosperity.

Having worked around the world as an engineer, I have been proud to champion science and innovation in Newcastle and across the UK. I am now privileged to have both of Newcastle’s fantastic universities in our constituency, and our city is looking forward to building a proper industrial strategy once again—one that can boost our universities as drivers of inclusive economic growth. Unlocking private investment through measures such as the national wealth fund and the recently announced pensions review will super-charge spin-outs and start-ups in the north-east, and I believe that sites such as Helix—home to innovative businesses and entrepreneurs in cutting-edge industries—are a tantalising glimpse of the future of Newcastle.

Technology has the power to make our constituents’ lives so much better, and measures such as planning reform will make that a reality. As an ex-shadow science Minister, I have spoken to Lord Vallance, as he begins his ministerial role, to offer my support, and to make the case for investment in regional research and development. I know that the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology team are already committed to opening up careers in science to everyone, getting money outside the golden triangle and connecting science to industrial strategy, healthcare and economic growth.

As I have said, this Government inspire hope that has been lacking in Newcastle— that is, apart from on match days. That is why, as the MP for St James’ Park, I welcome the football governance Bill. From Mike Ashley to the Saudi Public Investment Fund takeover, football governance has been a thorn in our side, and Geordies around the world will welcome the safeguarding of our precious football club.

My constituents sent me to this place because our party promised change. With this King’s Speech, with this Government back at the service—

Order. I call Olly Glover to make his maiden speech.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to give my maiden speech today. I aspire to match the eloquence of the previous speakers in this debate, including the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann), who gave the most recent maiden speech; his passion for his constituency is very clear.

I start by paying tribute to my immediate predecessor, David Johnston. I admire the fact that Mr Johnston entered politics because of his passion for social mobility. I have met constituents who have been personally helped by him, and I aspire to follow his lead. I was pleased that the first email in my parliamentary mailbox came from Lord Ed Vaizey of Didcot, Member for the predecessor seat of Wantage between 2005 and 2019, offering his congratulations. That was a warm and encouraging gesture. I arrive in Parliament following a career on the railway, serving the public, and I hope to apply my knowledge and experience to working with others to advance both rail infrastructure and public services in my seat.

The name of the new Didcot and Wantage constituency is an improvement on the previous name, Wantage, but remains imperfect. While Wantage and Didcot are the larger towns of the three in the seat, residents from Wallingford are aggrieved by their omission. Mr Deputy Speaker, I can assure you and this House that all three towns will have my attention and care. The same applies to the dozens of villages in the seat; I am fortunate enough to live in one of them, Milton. All our villages have a unique character and set of attractions. Pendon museum in Long Wittenham includes an homage in model railway form to the 1930s Vale of White Horse landscape, and there is also the ancient Uffington white horse and the beautiful chalk streams of the Letcombes. The constituency’s economy is diverse: we have the technology and science centres of Milton Park, Harwell campus and Culham near to farms that have been passed down through generations. Didcot hosts many industrial and business units, and residents benefit from the great western main line for fast commuting to and from London. Organisations such as Didcot TRAIN, the DAMASCUS youth project and Sustainable Wantage illustrate the strong culture of public service and volunteering.

My constituents rightly have high expectations. During the election campaign, one of them highlighted the lack of biographical detail in a leaflet about me, and asked me whether I was a doctor, a surveyor, a banker, a teacher, or an alien from outer space. Despite my love of the voyages of the crew of the USS Enterprise, Mr Deputy Speaker, I can reassure you and everyone in this House that I am not an alien. Of course, my constituency contains many non-humans, albeit perhaps not aliens. Many a local party volunteer has come to tire of my frequent canvassing of cats as well as humans. On occasion, this has helped my cause: while I was in conversation with one voter, his cat, Matthew, intervened. Matthew took a strong liking to me, with a great deal of leg-rubbing, even sitting on my lap on the pavement. The voter, astonished, told me that Matthew hates nearly everyone, and that his favourable verdict on me would be taken into account.

Turning to the subject of today’s debate, my constituency shares many of the same challenges as the wider country. Access to GP appointments is often difficult, particularly in Didcot, which continues to yearn for a new GP surgery in Great Western Park. NHS dentistry barely exists, and sewage dumping in our waterways is a great concern, as are proposals for a large reservoir near Steventon and the Hanneys. Many residents desire to walk and cycle more, but need pleasant and safe routes and paths in order to do so, and while the constituency benefits from fast railway connections, the reliability and capacity of the service provided can be somewhat patchy, and we continue to lack a railway station serving Grove and Wantage.

Perhaps the greatest issue on constituents’ minds is the cost of housing and recent, very substantial increases in the numbers of houses. I commend the Government on their commitment to genuinely affordable housing, but ask them to bear in mind that residents would be more supportive of housing growth were the health, education, and transport facilities needed to support it delivered in parallel. I promise to work tirelessly for my constituents in the pursuit of progress on these issues, and thank them again for the opportunity to serve. It is a genuine honour to be stood here, and I look forward to working with Members from across the House to achieve those aims.

I call Josh MacAlister to make his maiden speech.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I pay tribute to the fantastic maiden speeches that we have heard from across the House this evening, including that of the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover); I am sure that the whole House is reassured to know that he is not an alien.

The first and only time I entered this Chamber before being sworn in as a Member of Parliament was as a secondary school citizenship teacher, bringing dozens of teenagers here to see their Parliament. On that occasion, I was required to use my teacher voice a number of times, but that is not something I plan to make a habit of in this House.

I begin by putting on record my thanks to my predecessor for the now abolished Copeland constituency, Trudy Harrison. We may disagree on matters of policy, but she has been unfailingly gracious to me and generous with her time, demonstrating the “country before party” approach that we can all learn so much from.

I may be new to this House, but I am not new to pushing Governments to get things done, as Opposition Members will know only too well, and I have worked with a number of Education Secretaries over the years. I founded and led a national charity to get more people into fulfilling careers on the frontline of children’s social work to ensure that every vulnerable child has a champion fighting their corner. From that, I was asked by the last Government to chair a landmark independent review of the children’s social care system. That review found that the disadvantage faced by the care-experienced community in our country should be the civil rights issue of our time. Evidence of that disadvantage is found in worse education outcomes, worse health outcomes and shorter lives, but that disadvantage is fuelled by something that politicians often find too hard to discuss, and that MPs certainly find too hard to mention in this Chamber: the absence of love. I believe every child has the right to be loved, and we have the ability to build a care system that can provide that for them. I hope this Parliament will take up the challenge of addressing this moral outrage. The problem is huge, but the solutions are known, and with enough will, tens of thousands of lives can be transformed.

It is a great honour and privilege to stand here as the first Member of Parliament for the new Whitehaven and Workington constituency. Whether it is the people of Whitehaven or the good people of Workington who are the jam eaters continues to be a source of fierce debate. Of course, I will remain neutral on that question, as I will on all rugby league-related matters.

Nowhere is more blessed than my constituency, home to the highest peak and the deepest lake in England, with miles of beautiful coastline and the stunning western part of the Lake district, which has inspired millions. Let me here pay special tribute to our amazing mountain rescue volunteers, our Royal National Lifeboat Institution volunteers—just this week, it will be celebrating its 200th anniversary—and all those who give up their time to volunteer in search and rescue services. I have an interest to declare as a serving mountain rescue volunteer, and I will champion volunteer search and rescue services at every opportunity.

Behind the doors of the towns and villages across my constituency, you will find the warmest and friendliest marras in the country, people forged by the drama and confidence of the surrounding landscape and people with humility, respect and determination at their core. These are people such as Gary McKee, who ran a marathon every day for a year to raise over £1 million for cancer support; those in the growing network of Andy’s man clubs in our community, tackling the crisis of male suicide that my area faces; and community leaders, such as Rachel Holliday of Calderwood House, giving people a route out of homelessness.

Our area has also forged those who were not born West Cumbrian, but who made our corner of the world their home, including pioneers and entrepreneurs such as Frank Schon, later Baron Schon of Whitehaven. Frank was an Austrian refugee who fled the Nazis, was bombed out of London and was taken in by a kind Cumbrian farmer. He went on to set up and lead a global chemicals company based in Whitehaven, before later chairing Harold Wilson’s development corporation and going on to serve in the other place. Today, my community is home to dozens of Ukrainian families that could well have the next Frank Schon in them. I hope we can offer those who wish to stay a permanent home here in this country.

Lord Schon is one famous example, but there are thousands of men and women like him—from Whitehaven to Workington, Gosforth to Egremont, Cleator Moor to Seascale and Flimby to Seaton in the north of the constituency—pioneers, entrepreneurs and grafters who have helped west Cumbria to lead the world. It is because of this graft that my constituency is home to the UK New Balance trainer factory—I am not wearing them right now—and the Iggesund paper mill, which has been experimenting with leading carbon capture technology. It is home to Forth Engineering and React Engineering, and hundreds of other businesses represented by Britain’s Energy Coast Business Cluster, from the coal and iron mines to the steelworks.

Of course, there is the world’s first civil nuclear power station at the site now famously known as Sellafield, home to a world-leading decommissioning mission, which is stimulating innovation in robotics and AI. We led the world, and we can again. We have the people, the will, the determination and now, thankfully, the Government to do it. Our nuclear heritage and our skilled workforce mean we have what it takes to be the ideal location for the next generation of nuclear power. The Government are determined to make the most of new jobs in the energy transition, to reform our broken planning system and to decarbonise the grid, and these three things offer the opportunity for the people of Whitehaven and Workington to fly.

A Labour Government with a proper industrial strategy and the right targeted investment could completely transform the economic geography of my community. These are decisions that need to be made to create the growth we have promised and to tackle the climate crisis our planet faces. I am determined to play my part to deliver this Labour Government’s mission and to ensure that west Cumbria feels the maximum possible benefit of the change we want to bring about for our country.

I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches today, particularly the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), who gave an excellent speech. As with many of the maiden speeches, now I really want to visit his constituency. It just sounds like an absolutely amazing place. I particularly congratulate all the new Members who have come from a council background. Being a local councillor sets them up fantastically for coming here. It means they are under no illusions about the hard work that is required to be put in for their constituents and the people who live in their area. Congratulations to all of them.

I also congratulate the Chancellor on being the first female Chancellor. As the first woman in this place ever to lead on the economy, although I have been followed by a number since, I am incredibly glad to see one on the Government Benches. I hope that, as she said, her tenure lasts significantly longer than those of some of the Chancellors we have seen in recent times.

Today’s debate is taglined “Economy, welfare and public services”. Apart from the maiden speeches, speeches focusing on anything other than economic growth have been fairly few and far between. I will not for one second deny that economic growth is important, but the whole point of it is what we then do with it. It is about what we do with the extra tax take generated from the growth we have created. There is no point in having growth for growth’s sake. There is no point in having economic growth, and no point in the Conservatives saying how fast the UK is growing compared with other countries in the G7, if the same handful of people are getting richer and richer and the vast majority of our constituents are struggling harder than they ever have before.

We need to ensure that the economic growth and the increase in the tax take that the Labour party is hoping to deliver involves a benefit for all those who live in these islands and in our constituencies. It is massively disappointing to hear that the five pledges and priorities for the Labour party in government do not have eradicating child poverty at the heart of them. I am really glad the Government are bringing together a discussion taskforce to reduce child poverty, but today they could bring 300,000 children out of poverty and move 700,000 children into less deep poverty simply by scrapping the two-child cap.

One of my previous colleagues in this place, Alison Thewliss, campaigned incredibly hard on the rape clause—everybody will know of the work she did on that. There are 3,000 women across these islands who are eligible for an exemption from the cap because they have applied under the rape clause. They have had to tell the Government they were raped in order to get an uplift in their benefits. That is horrific, and even if the Government are unwilling to move on the two-child cap they should be doing something about the rape clause and what people are having to prove in order to get the exemption.

It would be very easy to increase growth, again overnight, by increasing migration. Migration to these islands increases the amount of growth. The economy would immediately have grown if the Prime Minister had gone to the summit with the EU leaders this week and said “Yes, free movement benefits us: it benefits our economy, benefits our society, benefits our young people, benefits our musicians, and benefits so many different groups and individuals. It benefits our culture; it makes this place a better place to live. Therefore we are signing up again to free movement.”

We need only look at some of the past Budgets, such as a Budget George Osborne gave from the Dispatch Box, when it has said in the Red Book that increasing migration will increase the tax take because of the economic growth it will bring. My constituents and people across Scotland recognise that, and we will always argue for a better migration policy—and if the Government are not willing to do it for all of these islands, we will argue for one tailored specifically to Scotland so that we can make our own decisions that suit the needs of our communities and encourage that economic growth.

It is a pleasure to speak in support of the King’s Speech under a Government committed to putting country before party to improve lives in this country. That is what I pledged to the people of Bedford and Kempston, whom I thank for putting their faith in me again to work hard for them and to restore their faith in politics as a force for positive change.

The last Government reduced our public services to a shadow of their former selves. In 2019 a study jointly funded by Bedford borough council and the NHS found that Bedford borough was 40% under-provided for in the primary care estate, despite a rapid growth in population since 2011. HMP Bedford has been in and out of special measures, so I am pleased that the Government have already taken action to improve the crisis in prisons.

I am also pleased to see early priority given to strengthening community policing by increase numbers of officers and giving them greater power to deal with the antisocial behaviour that blights our communities. I hope this Government succeed where the last Government failed in implementing a fairer funding formula for Bedfordshire police. Wrongly funded as a rural force, it is one of the lowest-funded forces in the UK despite a £10 million year-on-year increase to £156 million for 2024-25.

The housing crisis is causing untold misery to many of my constituents, so I am pleased that building houses will be a priority for our Government. It is indefensible that I know of parents who are beginning the summer holidays living in hotel rooms without access even to a fridge or a microwave to prepare food for their children because no suitable social housing properties are available. Even food bank vouchers are not helping when basic staples such as UHT milk cannot be kept fresh once opened.

More than 15,000 children and 17,000 adults are on waiting lists for mental health treatment in the area covered by the NHS Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes integrated care board. For years the NHS provider has had the capital funds to bring in desperately needed in-patient mental health facilities, but the previous Government consistently refused to provide the capital expenditure cover so that we could have those facilities in Bedford. I hope the new Government’s plan to get the NHS back on its feet includes an overhaul of how new projects are funded, because the existing capital departmental expenditure limits are not working.

Many of my constituents will be very happy to see planned legislation to bring rail back into public ownership and to reform bus services and franchises, including by allowing local control and supporting public ownership, but one of the most significant transport issues in my constituency is East West Rail. Bedford is uniquely adversely impacted by the East West Rail project, because the preferred six-track route requires the demolition and blighting of homes. Residents have been in limbo for more than five years in unsellable homes. The proposed planning and infrastructure Bill will speed up planning decisions for major infrastructure and house building and seek to reform compulsory purchase compensation rules to ensure that the compensation paid to landowners is fair. The statutory consultation stage is imminent, and I hope the Government will listen to the concerns expressed by my constituents and will not leave people in limbo while decisions are made without their knowledge, as has happened before. If we want to restore faith in politics, we have to ensure that our communities come with us on plans to affect their lives.

The Universal Studios plan to build a park near Kempston is exciting, and I look forward to working with the Government to make sure we get this potentially huge investment opportunity for Bedford and Britain over the line.

I start by wishing His Majesty the very best of health on behalf of myself and my constituents. As we welcome many new Members to the House, His Majesty sets a clear standard for public service that we can all hope to emulate. I have had the privilege of listening to a number of maiden speeches from across the House—all fantastic, all unique. I am sure all new Members will have received countless pieces of advice, so I will just say this: none of us, new or returning Members, should ever forget what a privilege it is to serve in this House and in this Parliament, the mother of all Parliaments.

We on the Conservative Benches have much to be proud of in the legacy of the last 14 years. Just last week we have seen inflation remain at the Bank of England target rate of 2%. We created more than 800 jobs a day for the last 14 years. It was under the Conservative Government that, in 2023, the UK became the third most valuable tech economy in the world, worth $1 trillion. We also boast more billion-pound companies than France, Germany and Sweden combined. As has been repeatedly mentioned, we have the fastest-growing economy in the G7.

I want to address the notion that the Government are trying to push, where they talk down the economy, paving the way for tax rises. It clearly does not stack up. If the Chancellor insists on pushing this alternative narrative, as we have heard today, some questions need answering, because surely all those promises made during the election cannot have been made by the Chancellor, or the shadow Chancellor as she was then, flying blind, especially when the OBR provides the transparency that she now denies she had.

Throughout the campaign, we heard about how the Government’s policies were fully funded. If the Chancellor did not use the OBR forecasts, what was she using to make those promises in the first place? I do not think anyone is fooled by this narrative or these tactics. Most importantly, if they are going to raise taxes, which will they raise? They need to come clean about that, because the British people deserve the truth, not whatever the Government are trying to peddle to justify their tax and spend policies. The Government can be assured that the Opposition will do our duty and hold this Government to account.

I want to address a number of things in the King’s Speech. I have to say I was astonished by the lack of respect in the King’s Speech to rural communities. A lot of my communities in my rural area felt incredibly disrespected, and it was incredibly disappointing. I am also disappointed and deeply concerned by the Government’s focus on building on the green belt. We have some of the most precious green belt land in Meriden and Solihull East, not least the Meriden gap, which is a hugely important throughway for migrating wildlife. It is not clear how the Government will protect the Meriden gap.

In fact, the only thing that has been clear in the early days of this Government is that they are willing to set aside local community opinions, and anyone who challenges that will be accused of being a nimby. My villages in Balsall Common, Hampton in Arden, Marston Green, Knowle, Dorridge, Chadwick End and Hockley Heath have already made huge sacrifices when it comes to green-belt land, not least because of HS2. These top-down targets and vague references to grey-belt land are already causing huge anxiety. This matters because when it comes to setting aside community opinion and disenfranchising whole communities, the tactics that the Government are already employing are the best way to do it. I am deeply concerned by that. We on the Opposition Benches will ensure that we hold this Government to account.

The title of this debate includes public services, and one of my key campaign pledges was to restore A&E services to the borough of Solihull. My argument on that is simple: we have about 220,000 people in the borough, and if there is an emergency, my constituents have to go all the way to Heartlands hospital or Warwick hospital, which are way too far away. It is clear to me that the case is strong. One thing I will be campaigning for in this Parliament, whether it takes five or 10 or 15 years, if I am lucky enough to be returned repeatedly—I make no assumptions on that, of course—will be to get that A&E service. I will be working with the integrated care board to achieve that.

I will finish on this: my constituents and the British people have been clear. As we discharge our duties as His Majesty’s official Opposition, their expectations are that we do so with integrity and humility, but always with courage and boldness in what we stand for and who we are. I assure my constituents that for the sake of our country we shall not falter.

I call Kate Dearden to make her maiden speech.

Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for allowing me to make my first contribution to this House. I thank the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) for his contribution to the debate.

Today’s debate is a crucial one for how we rebuild our economy in a way that works for all. I am delighted to be joining my many, many excellent new Labour colleagues in making their brilliant maiden speeches. I am also delighted to follow the incredible Holly Lynch. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Holly dedicated her talent and energy to supporting her constituents. She was a casework champion who still found time to push for protections for our emergency service workers and for global causes, such as Fairtrade. Holly’s commitment was second to none, and I will do my best to follow in her footsteps.

In succeeding Holly, I am proud to take my place in one of Parliament’s great traditions: the Labour women of Halifax. Since the election of Shirley Summerskill in 1964, there have only been four years where Halifax has not been represented by a Labour woman. I am lucky to have the support of brilliant women, from the Labour Women’s Network to trade union colleagues and my late teacher Elaine Barker who set me on the road to this House. I am standing on the shoulders of my sisters, and I will not let them down.

Halifax is a town bursting with history. It was a centre of the wool trade and textile manufacturing, with the Piece Hall the most beautiful and well-known testament to our heritage, but there is far more to the history of Halifax than that. We have a magnificent minster, the imposing Wainhouse Tower, and Shibden Hall, home of lesbian diarist Anne Lister. Halifax’s industrial heritage has meant a close connection to socialist movements. It was a stronghold for Chartists, a centre of trade union activism and the birthplace of Halifax building society, and it has a legacy of co-operative movements. As a trade unionist and now a Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament, it is a history I am proud to celebrate, and celebrating our history has become a big part of Halifax’s future.

The Piece Hall is now one of the UK’s best music venues. This summer it is hosting Idles, Tom Jones and the Ministry of Sound, and I will leave it to hon. Members to guess who I would prefer to see. We have reimagined the beating industrial heart of Halifax at Dean Clough mill as a centre for arts, culture, food and shopping. That, combined with the beautiful nature of the Calder valley, has seen Halifax transforming into Haliwood. Many in this Chamber will have seen “Happy Valley”, but there is also “Gentleman Jack” and “Last Tango in Halifax”, and we even hosted Marvel for its “Secret Invasion”. As a Member of Parliament for Halifax, I will lobby for any future editions of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” to come and celebrate the home of toffee, Rolos and Quality Street.

There are so many other things that make Halifax a unique and special town, from our fabulous independent department store Harveys—where I bought today’s lovely dress—to Eureka! the museum where I and every other former schoolkid in the north of England went on school trips, and, of course, the famous Shay, home to Halifax Town and Halifax Panthers.

I must also mention some of the challenges that my town still faces. Like most of the ex-industrial UK, we have faced decades of neglect and under-investment. Halifax endures significant deprivation, with above-average levels of unemployment and child poverty. Access to housing is a problem, especially for young people, and the availability of GPs came up time and time again on the doorstep. The people of Halifax have struggled for too long with the cost of living crisis, low wages and poor public services. That has been the story of my town and of our country.

As anyone who knows Yorkshire will guess, the people of Halifax have done much to help each other. Halifax is the home of Andy’s Man Club, which many Members will know from its essential work to support men’s mental health. I met its volunteers as well as those of Healthy Minds, which is another great charity helping tackle mental illness. Noah’s Ark debt centre offers crucial financial support, and the Holy Nativity church in Mixenden is one of several organisations running a food bank and a pay-what-you-can café. Daisy Chain café provides a haven for the elderly to meet and socialise, and St Augustine’s Centre gives much needed support to refugees.

Those brilliant community initiatives have done their best to help those who have been struggling in recent years, and they have achieved much. However, we know that the buck stops with us and that we must address the issues facing our nation and prove that things can get better. These issues, when not addressed, lead to suffering, despair and anger. We on the Labour Benches can celebrate our success at the election, but a victory for our party is only ever a means to an end. Our goal now is to bring about the change that we promised.

I am proud to be delivering my maiden speech in this debate, where we set the agenda for what we will do to improve the lives of everyone across the country. Part of this is close to my own heart: the new deal for working people. In my previous role at the brilliant Community trade union, I was proud to be part of drafting those aims alongside trade union colleagues. The agenda on extending workers’ rights, including for those who are self-employed or part of the gig economy, is one that I want to champion over the next five years.

I would like to end with a few thank yous. First, I thank all the people I have mentioned so far, who make Halifax the wonderful town that it is, for everything they do. Secondly, to the incredible activists of Halifax—the Labour team in our town should be the envy of constituency Labour parties nationwide—I could not be more grateful. As every Member in this House knows, we are here because of those around us—the family, friends and colleagues who support us—so I want to thank my wonderful friends, my mum, my dad, my sister, and my partner Brad. Finally, I thank the people of Halifax for trusting me. I will fight every day to achieve everything that I can for them and reward the faith that they have shown in me.

I call Ben Obese-Jecty to make his maiden speech.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am grateful to you for calling me to make my maiden speech during this King’s Speech debate on the economy, welfare and public services. I congratulate the hon. Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden) on her maiden speech. As a former officer in the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, I note that her constituency has deep links with my former regiment, and indeed its antecedent regiments, the 33rd and 76th of Foot.

It is fantastic to hear new Members on both sides of the House speak so passionately and eloquently about their constituencies. I speak as the first new Member of Parliament for Huntingdon since 2001, but I am only the third Member in my lifetime, and the fourth Member since the second world war. It is therefore an enormous privilege to have been elected to represent the constituency, and I am honoured to have been voted for by my constituents to follow such a long-serving Member of Parliament. My predecessor Jonathan Djanogly served the House and his constituents for some 23 years. In Parliament he served on the Trade and Industry Committee, as shadow Solicitor General and as a shadow Business Minister. In government, he was the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice.

My predecessor’s proudest achievements came from the work that he delivered locally. His work on tackling flooding from the River Great Ouse saw significant flood alleviation projects delivered in St Ives and the Hemingfords, and further upstream in Godmanchester. That work has saved thousands from the crippling impact of flood damage on homes and businesses. I intend to build on that, delivering further flooding solutions across the constituency for villages such as Alconbury, Abbots Ripton, Wistow, Kimbolton, Broughton and Earith.

My predecessor is also rightly proud of his work in facilitating the delivery of both the A14 and the A428—road infrastructure projects that have transformed travel across Cambridgeshire, and stand to greatly enhance the region in its position at the tip of the UK innovation corridor. The development has set the conditions for Huntingdon’s future growth, offering the opportunity for better jobs and taking advantage of the Cambridge cluster and expansion across the region, meaning that Huntingdon can be a business hub in its own right, not just a dormitory town for London and Cambridge.

Despite the growth that Huntingdon has seen over the past 60 years, first via the post-war London overspill and now via expansive development, the constituency is still characterised by its thriving towns and vibrant villages. From the market towns of Huntingdon and St Ives to our rural villages, from Sawtry to Somersham, Houghton to Hamerton, Covington to Colne and Pidley to Perry—and three dozen others that will not stretch to my tortured alliteration—each has their own character and identity. Huntingdonshire is a region with a rich history, and one that it will be a privilege to steward.

That history extends to some of my other predecessors. Many Members will be aware that Huntingdon is the seat of a former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, who is still held in the highest regard across the constituency. It was an honour to receive his endorsement during the recent election campaign. Famously, it is also the former seat of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was the Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628 for just over a year until Charles I dissolved Parliament. Records show that he made just one speech in that time—so far, so equal.

It is clear that Huntingdon expects a certain level of stature from its Members of Parliament. Notable as Sir John Major and Oliver Cromwell surely are, arguably they are not Huntingdon’s most famous product. It is not even the celebrated diarist Samuel Pepys, who attended Huntingdon grammar school. In fact, that accolade should be awarded to a lunch-time staple that everyone is familiar with; one that everyone has a favourite version of; and one that some Members may well have had for lunch this very day.

John Montagu, three times First Lord of the Admiralty, Postmaster General and Secretary of State, is not notable for his political career or his colourful social life. John Montagu, whose family home was Hinchingbrooke House in Huntingdon, is best known today—somewhat arcanely—by his title and the moniker bestowed upon his favourite snack to consume during long sessions at the card table. Such was the popularity of said snack that other card players also wished to order it. They would cry, “I’ll have the same as Sandwich.” It is obvious where this is going. John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, was not prepared to break from the card table to eat, so would ask his servants to bring him slices of salted beef between two pieces of toasted bread. Yes, among its formidable political alumni, Huntingdon can also lay claim to a genuine global culinary revolution, described by The Wall Street Journal no less as Britain’s “biggest contribution to gastronomy”. Huntingdon is the birthplace of the modern sandwich—every day is a school day.

I digress. Huntingdon’s rich history is also characterised by an inextricable link to service via its long relationship with military aviation, initially through the Royal Flying Corps and subsequently during the second world war through RAF Bomber Command’s Pathfinder force and the United States army air force’s 303rd bombardment group. On 4 July 1942, the US eighth air force flew the first American mission over Nazi-occupied Europe from RAF Molesworth.

Latterly, during the cold war, RAF Alconbury saw the US air force provide covert high-altitude reconnaissance along the East German border in a new variant of its famed U-2 spy plane, in addition to providing battlefield damage assessment in the event of a nuclear strike. Most of that base is now Huntingdon’s newest housing estate, Alconbury Weald—surely the only housing development in the country with fully functional nuclear decontamination and washdown facilities. RAF Warboys, RAF Upwood and RAF Brampton have all since disappeared, but the constituency still retains those links. RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth are still operated by the United States air force, and RAF Wyton is on the cutting edge of our defence intelligence capability. Those links carry through into the constituency itself and it is striking just how many veterans have made their home within its boundaries. One in nine households within Huntingdon are home to a veteran, a staggering number when compared with other constituencies and a community that, as a British Army veteran myself, I am proud to represent as their Member of Parliament—even if to many of those RAF veterans I am just a Pongo.

I know well how important it is to support our veterans’ community and to commit to improving veterans’ welfare. Having undergone the process myself, I know the transition from service to civilian life has its challenges, and there are many stories of both success and failure. I served on a veterans advisory and pensions committee and know well how important it is to ensure that veterans are able to access the services they need. Veterans’ identity cards have helped to open those pathways for many who would otherwise struggle to evidence their service, but I hope the Government will look closely at how support itself is provided. Restructuring Veterans UK and creating a more comprehensive holistic offering, easing access via an overhauled veterans gateway, could streamline access to the welfare services that our veterans need.

While the cohort of veterans in this House is smaller than in the previous Parliament, it is now younger and sports Members on both sides who have more recent operational experience and, crucially, more recent experience of the often difficult post-military transition to a civilian life. Parliament is well-placed to champion veterans’ welfare and, given the debt our democracy owes to those who have served so proudly, I hope we can collectively ensure that the finest armed forces in the world are treated here as the finest veterans in the world. I know Huntingdon’s veterans will expect me to challenge the Government to meet that standard.

I am hugely proud of having been given this opportunity to serve Huntingdon, to be its champion both in Parliament and in the constituency. I look forward to meeting the challenges ahead.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) on a fantastic maiden speech and in particular the passion with which he talks about veterans and the need for more support for veterans.

I start by thanking the people of Nottingham East for electing me once again to represent them in Parliament. It remains the honour of my life to represent my home city. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), who is a formidable champion for our city. She will be missed by the residents of Castle ward, which is now in my constituency following the boundary review.

What a contrast between this King’s Speech and the last. For the first time in 14 years we have a set of policies that prioritise people’s rights and wellbeing: policies that draw on the rich history of the Labour movement; policies to help protect the right to strike, to enhance the right to flexible working, and to end fire and rehire. We also have policies that echo some of the great achievements of previous Labour Governments, which recognise the value of owning and running services and infrastructure for the common good.

The failure of previous Conservative Governments to combat the climate crisis should terrify us all. We have so much catching up to do if we are to avert the chaos it threatens, so I welcome our Government’s plans to speed up the transition to renewables through a publicly owned clean energy company. And with a Bill to bring rail services back into public ownership, I hope to see far less regularly those chilling words: “rail replacement bus service”.

I am also relieved to see the return of some policies that successive Conservative Governments promised but never delivered: a Bill that will end no-fault evictions and improve renters’ rights; and another that will ban so-called conversion “therapy” once and for all. I have heard from survivors the horrific impact these hate-fuelled conversion practices have had on their lives. To finally end them, it is right that such a Bill is trans-inclusive and it must be loophole-free. It is time to challenge the confected moral panic that is harming LGBTQ+ people, in particular the trans community. This is not the 1980s and we are not going back there. Instead of pitting trans rights against women’s rights, our Government have an opportunity to demonstrate what improving women’s safety actually looks like through delivering on our promise to halve violence against women and girls. The constant harassment on our streets and the hidden abuse in our homes is what we need to prevent, not trans people using the bathroom they feel most comfortable in.

The Conservative party has made our society poorer, more unequal and more authoritarian. From the 4.3 million children forced to live in poverty—more than one in three in Nottingham East—to the destruction of our public services and the damage to our democratic system, our country is in crisis. The laws that allowed these things to happen in the first place belong in the dustbin of history. We should start by scrapping the two-child benefit cap, which would immediately lift 300,000 children out of poverty.

This election delivered a historic victory for our party. Our regular meetings of east midlands Labour MPs used to be quite lonely affairs; well, they are not any more! I welcome my new hon. Friends to their places—their victories are justly deserved—but this was also a historic election for other reasons that we cannot afford to overlook. Disillusionment with politics is providing fertile ground for those who wish to divide us, and if we are to keep the far right from gaining further ground, status quo politics will not be enough. Tweaks to a failed neoliberal economic system will not deliver the improvements in living standards that people need, nor will they prepare us for the challenges of the future. With a historic victory, we have a historic responsibility to redistribute wealth and power into people’s hands so that they feel the difference a Labour Government can make. The measures in the King’s Speech are important first steps in that direction, but let us turn them into bold strides in the coming months and years.

I could not finish my first speech in the new Parliament without highlighting the unbearable situation in Gaza. Palestinians need a ceasefire now; indeed, they needed one nine months ago. I welcome the shift in my party’s position over recent months, and I welcome the restoration of funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, but when British weapons are continuing to be used in contravention of international law—

Order. The hon. Lady’s time is up.

It is an honour to return to the House and to represent residents of this new constituency.

Constituents tell me that the issues that matter to them most are health and social care, rural affairs, housing and local services. About 2.5 million people are out of work with long-term sickness, so the challenge for this Government is to fix the health and care crisis, because a healthy economy requires a healthy NHS. This new Parliament presents an opportunity to work collaboratively to fix many of the issues plaguing my constituents.

There is a dental provision cavity in Somerset. There are no dentists in Glastonbury and Somerton taking on new NHS patients. One practice in Street has not had an NHS dentist in post for 18 months, although the job has been advertised continuously. I am sure that all Members have heard many heartbreaking stories from people suffering in dental agony. I recently spoke to Ian from Langport, who told me that he was unable to access the crucial NHS healthcare that he needs. His only option is private dental treatment, which will cost him more than £3,000. For Ian and for so many others, this is simply unaffordable. It is no wonder that residents are left open-mouthed when they hear that £8 million was underspent on NHS dentistry in Somerset last year alone. NHS dental contacts need reform urgently, and the recruitment crisis must be unblocked.

People are also waiting longer to see a GP. Last year the number of four-week waits rose by 49% in Somerset. The number of GPs must increase in order to guarantee patients the right to see a GP within a week, or within 24 hours if the situation is urgent. By improving local frontline services, we will reduce pressure on our hospitals. I was delighted to visit a rural health hub during the last Parliament, and I call on the Government to maintain support for such hubs because they have proved that they offer flexible and accessible healthcare provision for our rural and farming communities.

This week is Farm Safety Week, and it marks the 10th anniversary of the Farm Safety Foundation, an organisation that I am proud to work alongside to highlight the key challenges faced by farmers and farm workers every day. People working in agriculture are 21 times as likely to be injured at work compared with the national average, while 95% of farmers under 40 agreed that poor mental health was the biggest problem facing the industry today. The agricultural sector is crucial to the rural economy, and farming is vital to UK food security, but inflationary pressures continue to damage farm businesses, and the mismanaged transition from the basic payment scheme to environmental land management schemes is forcing many farmers out of business.

Food security also requires fair access to international markets, but the last Government’s botched trade deals damaged that. Those deals undermine our nation’s health and our environmental and animal welfare standards, and they must urgently be renegotiated. To protect the rural economy, there needs to be fairness in the food chain, and the groceries code adjudicator needs more teeth. That would support our farmers and protect consumers from unfair price rises.

Glastonbury and Somerton is home to some of the lowest-lying land in the country, so a serious commitment to food security requires a robust approach to flood management. Of course, agricultural land will always play a vital role in preventing flood damage to urban areas, but this cannot be at the expense of agricultural businesses, which need to be properly compensated for the sacrifices they make. Ensuring that water is managed correctly also means managing the nutrient load of rivers and lakes. We require legislation to ensure that nutrients enrich and improve our soils, rather than being leeched away into our rivers, which adds to the pollution crisis.

Making such reforms would unlock the 18,000 homes in Somerset that already have planning permission and are currently waiting to be built. The new Government have pledged to make that possible, and I welcome the new Secretary of State for Housing’s recent commitments on this issue. I eagerly wait to hear the Government’s plans, because there is a serious shortage of homes and a solution is desperately needed. However, I am clear that homes must be built in the right places and to the best possible environmental standards, and they must be delivered with the infrastructure that communities so desperately need. After years of an out-of-touch Conservative Government taking us all for granted, I am looking forward to having the opportunity to work together to deliver the ambitious changes we desperately need.

I call Lizzi Collinge to make her maiden speech.

A maiden speech: I call Alex Easton.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to say well done to the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) for her maiden speech. Congratulations! I rise today to express my heartfelt gratitude to the electorate of North Down for the tremendous privilege of electing me to represent them in the House of Commons. I am so humbled and privileged, and I pledge before God to serve them to the best of my ability. I will always put you first. I would like to express my sincere appreciation for the work of my predecessor, Dr Stephen Farry. I wish him every success in his future endeavours.

I am a proud Ulsterman, and anyone who knows Ulstermen and Ulsterwomen will know that we are very generous and love to meet new people, so I would like to take this opportunity to invite everyone to visit North Down. It is the best part of the United Kingdom to live, work and invest in. Our stunning coastline features the beautiful city of Bangor and Crawfordsburn country park, alongside historical sites such as Bangor abbey and Grey Point fort. North Down is also home to exceptional golf courses, including the Holywood golf club, where the brilliant Rory McIlroy honed his skills from the age of seven. With excellent road and rail access to Belfast, North Down offers a perfect blend of natural beauty and modern amenities. Please come and visit; you will be welcome. Maybe not all at once, though.

I would like to extend a warm welcome to the distinguished right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn) in his new role as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I wish him every success.

I fully support the plans laid out in the King’s Speech that aim to deliver economic prosperity and kick-start growth. The partnership approach with the Northern Ireland Assembly is particularly welcome, and I am encouraged by the figures from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs showing that Northern Ireland has recorded the fastest year-on-year job growth for the second consecutive month, significantly outperforming other parts of the United Kingdom. Furthermore, I am encouraged to note that median monthly wage growth in Northern Ireland is outpacing that in other parts of the United Kingdom, positioning us fifth among the 12 UK regions. It is imperative that we build on this economic success and translate it into improved quality of life and regeneration in North Down.

We must also be mindful of the fact that most of Northern Ireland’s trade is across the vital east-west axis with Great Britain, alongside the important, albeit lesser, north-south corridor with the Republic of Ireland. According to the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, sales and exports along the east-west corridor between Great Britain and Northern Ireland were valued at £12.8 billion in 2021. In comparison, sales and exports between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland totalled just £5.2 billion. This highlights why the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is invaluable and should be cherished, as it enhances economic quality of life for all our people and communities across Northern Ireland.

We can look to our Ulster Scots heritage in Donaghadee and Millisle as prime examples of outstanding development, spearheaded in the early 17th century by two distinguished figures: Sir James Hamilton, first Viscount Claneboye, and Sir Hugh Montgomery, first Viscount Montgomery. Their legacy should serve as inspiration for the ongoing economic development of Donaghadee and North Down, particularly in areas of industry and infrastructure.

However, not all is well in my constituency. The Queen’s Parade project in Bangor has seen Queen’s Parade lying derelict for decades. Our minor injuries unit has been closed, and we have no open police station inquiry offices—I bet no one else in this Chamber has no open police station inquiry offices in their constituency.

People in my constituency cannot see their GP, the roads are full of potholes and there is a lack of social housing and new starter homes for young families who want to start on the housing ladder. I really hope that this Government will help to improve my constituents’ lives.

It is essential to note that the Northern Ireland protocol is fundamentally flawed. It creates a de facto border in the Irish sea, undermining the integrity of the UK by separating Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. This arrangement has led to increased bureaucracy, hurdles and trade barriers, disrupting economic stability and supply chains. Furthermore, it has caused political and social tensions in Northern Ireland, raising legitimate concerns among Unionists about their place in the United Kingdom. I contend that by prioritising the EU’s regulatory framework over the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland to be a full part of the UK, the protocol disregards democratic principles and subjects us to foreign laws. It needs to be changed. It needs to go.

Finally, I want to mention my parents. My mum and dad were killed in a fire at their home in Bangor last year, and it caused a lot of heartache for me. I want to say that my dad believed in me. After four attempts to get to Westminster, I finally succeeded. Dad, I hope I made you proud.

When you have everything taken away from you like that, it makes you realise just how important your family are. It makes you see everything that you have taken for granted throughout your life, such as the health service, which has always been there for us. I appreciate the people in the health service and the Police Service of Northern Ireland who tried to help my mum and dad—I so much appreciate you. I also pay tribute to the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service, who did everything in their power to help my mum and dad. I just want to let you know that I appreciate everything you have done for my family. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

Order. It is my intention to start the wind-ups at around 9.30 pm.

I speak for the whole House when I say to the hon. Member for North Down (Alex Easton) that I know his father would definitely be proud of him today, and of the work that he will go on to do in the House. He should take that with him in every step in this place. His parents would be, and are, proud of him. I congratulate him on his maiden speech.

I thank my constituents in Blackpool South for re-electing me as their Member of Parliament for the second time in as many months. It feels a lot nicer speaking from the Government Benches than from the Opposition Benches. Hopefully I will do my constituents proud. The legislation announced last week is important to my constituents, who, after 14 years of Tory rule, live in the second most deprived constituency in the UK. They have been deprived of opportunities, decent healthcare, quality housing and safety. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak about some of those issues on their behalf today.

Many colleagues in this House will have visited my constituency at some point in their life, perhaps for a party conference, a childhood holiday or a cheeky weekend away. Blackpool is not a place people pass through, and the chaos of the railways under the last Government has left us abandoned at the end of the line. I am relieved that this Government plan to bring our railways back into public ownership. A reliable and affordable service will allow my constituents to access better opportunities.

The King’s Speech gives the rest of the House the opportunity to recognise Lancashire’s potential for growth. Like our Greater Manchester, Merseyside and West Yorkshire neighbours, Lancashire would benefit greatly from a devolution deal, and an elected metro mayor who has powers over transport, roads, urban regeneration, skills and housing. I will work alongside my fellow Lancashire Members in this House and council leaders to secure the best devolution possible for our county.

This morning, the Environment Agency issued a pollution warning across my constituency’s coastline and advised against entering our waters. This is the fifth day since my re-election that such a warning has been issued. That is unacceptable. It not only threatens tourism but my constituents’ health, wellbeing and sense of local pride. Local campaign group Fylde Coast Against Sewage deserves recognition for its hard work testing the waters of our shores. The water special measures Bill will strengthen the powers of the regulator, so that Blackpool residents can hope to once again reap the benefits of our greatest natural asset.

Though the town has served the working classes with entertainment, work in Blackpool is precarious, and often poorly paid, insecure and seasonal. The employment rights Bill, which will ban exploitative practices and enhance employment rights, will transform the lives of working people in Blackpool, just as the former Labour Government did for my family. As a fellow working-class northerner, the Deputy Prime Minister knows that she has my full support for her pioneering new deal for working people. Thousands of my constituents are set to receive a pay rise that will help lift them out of poverty.

I am pleased that legislation will be brought forward to strengthen community policing and give the police greater powers to deal with antisocial behaviour, as well as strengthen support for victims. Reclaim Blackpool Map is a grassroots project run by women in the town, highlighting the prevalence of public sexual harassment. As a white ribbon ambassador for over five years, I have been working to educate men, young people and boys in my community. I know that the new Minister for safeguarding will work tirelessly to tackle violence against women and girls, and she has my full support.

Blackpool is a place of great resilience, where people muster to fight against the odds. That was tangible in March 2019 when I joined thousands of fans returning to Bloomfield Road after the successful boycott campaign to remove the corrupt owners of Blackpool FC. Huge credit goes to Blackpool Supporters Trust, whose campaign restored integrity, pride and professionalism to the club. The football governance Bill is a step in the right direction towards returning the game to the fans who make it what it is. I cannot talk about football fans without acknowledging the 97 who will finally get justice under this Government’s Hillsborough law.

In conclusion, there will be many measures of success for this Government, but one important symbolic one will be the success of Blackpool. As a Member of Parliament, I will be fighting to ensure that the people of Blackpool South are no longer at the back of the queue.

I call Victoria Collins to make her maiden speech.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech today. I thank the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Chris Webb) for his passionate speech and join him in his comments about the hon. Member for North Down (Alex Easton), to whom I pass on my massive congratulations and say that I am sure that his father would be extremely proud of his position here and of the public service that he will give.

I stand here exactly 50 years since my mum came to the UK from Malaysia. She came here for an education and stayed to build a business and raise a family. As I helped in my mum’s shop, my parents instilled in me values of community, tolerance and perseverance—something that I hope will guide me during my time as an MP. One of my predecessors, Bim Afolami, also proudly shared his story as a child of immigrants in search of a good education. He brought the values that he learned to his role as MP for Hitchin and Harpenden.

It is a real honour to be the first MP for the brand new seat of Harpenden and Berkhamsted. More than just two towns, the constituency is a rich tapestry that fills the north-west corner of Hertfordshire with history, natural beauty, culture and innovation. We are a collection of proud and vibrant communities with four beautiful chalk streams and the Grand Union canal tying us together like silver threads. The River Bulbourne runs through Berkhamsted, where the Crown of England was surrendered to William the Conqueror in 1066, and its river course would go on to fill the three moats of Berkhamsted castle. The River Gade starts near Little Gaddesden, which neighbours the Ashridge estate—somewhere Members may have seen in films and dramas such as “Robin Hood”, “The Crown” and, of course, “Bridget Jones’s Diary”.

Members of the House are most welcome to join me locally at the Rex cinema or peruse one of the largest film collections in the world at the British Film Institute’s national archive.

As we swoop across the constituency, the River Ver exits above ground near the village of Markyate, traversed by the Roman Watling Street, and continues through Flamstead and Redbourn. Our final chalk stream, the River Lea, flows through Harpenden and Wheathampstead, a Domesday village that has been home to two Prime Ministers.

Not only have these precious chalk streams witnessed historic events and the lives, hopes and dreams of countless local people, but, with only around 200 of them in the world, they are of rare ecological importance; they are known as England’s rainforests. Sadly, however, we have seen their decline, as sewage has been pumped into the waterways, with the River Ver, having finally recovered its flow, seeing more than 2,500 hours of sewage discharge this year alone.

The same fate goes for the Grand Union canal, where people can jump out at Tring. Although they may not be able to see zebras or cassowaries in Tring park any more, they can visit them in our natural history museum. People in our part of Hertfordshire are proud of their natural landscapes, and I join them in campaigning to protect our environment and tackle the climate crisis.

The other side of our local communities blossomed from the industrial revolution, which brought another type of silver track—the train lines. Rumour has it that some of the original commuters are still waiting for that rail replacement bus service. Britain initially led the world in railways, but the decline of our public transport feels as if it gathers pace year on year. Bus services that are vital to our towns and rural communities have been cut by more than half in Hertfordshire in recent years, and that is not to mention the cuts to local authorities that have impacted other vital services.

We are not immune to the health and social care crisis, either, as local people struggle to get the care they need, wait weeks to see a GP or cannot find an NHS dentist. Indeed, one of my other predecessors, Mike Penning, who served Hemel Hempstead for 19 years, campaigned tirelessly on healthcare for the area. I aim to continue as a champion of ensuring that local people get the healthcare they need, and closer to home.

Local people have continued the enterprising spirit of the area, which still thrives today, from building e-bikes to distilling gin, creating start-ups and innovating in agriculture at Rothamsted Research, with its thriving agritech hub. Indeed, our greatest assets are our local people—open-minded, tolerant, hard-working and compassionate. It is for them, and thanks to them, that I am here, and I will always put them first.

Given the picture often painted of our corner of Hertfordshire, Members might think that we are solely an affluent commuter area, but that is far from the reality for everyone. So many families, individuals and local businesses are struggling to make ends meet as bills continue to rise. I remember the struggles that my family faced when the economy turned and business got tough. That is why I am passionate about supporting local families, tackling inequality, and not just the vital local businesses that we value today but the entrepreneurs and enterprises of tomorrow.

Standing here, in the most diverse Parliament that we have ever seen, we see that we have a real opportunity for change. We must act now to rebuild the trust in politicians and politics that has sadly been eroded in recent years. For me, that means putting local people first—the people of Harpenden, Berkhamsted, Tring and our villages, from Long Marston to Jersey Farm, and from Ringshall to Sandridge. Thinking back to where my story began, it is a privilege to be in this place, representing a story that so many others in our country have some share in. My mother came to this country in search of opportunity, and through her own hard work she found it. Through everything that I do here, I want to ensure that the same opportunity is available for all who seek it out, and I will continue to be guided by those values of community, tolerance and perseverance.

I call Luke Akehurst to make his maiden speech.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make my maiden speech. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) on a fine speech, and a very impressive description of her constituency and her motivations for coming to this place.

It has taken me some time to get elected to the House. I first stood in a general election back in 2001, so no one can accuse me of being a young man in a rush. I am humbled to finally be here, having done some other things in party politics along the way. I pay tribute to my late mum and dad, who inspired me to get involved in politics. They gave me my Labour values, and I am sorry that they just missed out on the chance to see me get here. I also thank my family for their huge support, including lots of campaigning and lots of patience, as my speech has come rather late in this debate.

I thank the electors of North Durham for voting for me to represent them in this House. I promise that I will always fight for their interests, and I could not want to represent a finer constituency. I follow into the House the right hon. Kevan Jones. He is an extremely tough act to follow, and I wish him well both in overcoming his health troubles and in his new role, having been elevated to the other place. Kevan was elected MP for North Durham in 2001, and served the constituency and this House with distinction for 23 years. He was utterly committed to the defence and security of our country, serving as a Defence Minister, with multiple stints on the Defence Committee. He was the longest-serving member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, a vice-president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and a commissioner of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. That is highly appropriate, given the number of veterans in the North Durham constituency—particularly people associated with the Durham Light Infantry.

I am sure that in the other place Kevan will continue to work on defence and other issues, such as the sub-postmasters’ campaign for justice. His continued work on the Horizon redress advisory board will give reassurance to victims. Kevan will continue to pursue an outcome for sub-postmasters who used the Capture software in the 1990s, which is currently the subject of an independent investigation that was commissioned by the Government earlier this year. Many hon. Members will know that Kevan is a keen photographer, often capturing and sharing the beauty of North Durham. Countless voters and local organisations have told me how much they have been helped by Kevan. He is held in high regard not just across this House but across North Durham.

I have been elected in a long line of Labour Members, all, as far as I can discern, from the same moderate tradition in the party that I stand in, and including distinguished Front Benchers such as Giles Radice and Jack Lawson, who served as Attlee’s Secretary of State for War in the closing days of world war two. The Chester-le-Street part of my constituency has a unique distinction in the history of the Labour party, having returned a Labour Member to the House continuously since 1906—so no pressure on me to keep winning at all. However, that long Labour history does not mean that North Durham is a safe seat. In every characteristic other than never having been lost, it is a red wall seat and has been electorally competitive in the last two contests. Indeed, this most recent election campaign was rather livelier than I would have preferred.

Chester-le-Street is only one part of North Durham under its current boundaries, however, with the other major town being Stanley. The constituency is rural—surprisingly so. Aside from the two main towns, there are numerous villages. I may get into trouble for not listing some of them, but I will try to list the major ones: Sacriston, Tantobie, Tanfield, Beamish, Bournmoor, Lumley, Pelton, Pelton Fell, Craghead, Ouston, Lanchester, Burnhope, Castleside and Annfield Plain are just some of them. I wish to thank the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden), who previously represented Lanchester, Burnhope and Castleside in the North West Durham constituency in the last Parliament, and who has been most courteous and helpful in handing over responsibility for those fine communities.

I urge hon. Members to visit North Durham. As well as fine towns and villages, it has stunning countryside and attractions including Beamish, the world-famous open-air museum that brings the history of north-east England to life, and Durham county cricket club’s Riverside ground.

Kevan always described North Durham as a rural constituency with urban problems, and that remains the case. Mining is at the heart of the history and previous economy of North Durham. Almost every village has a pit wheel memorial; many also have memorials to terrible mining disasters, and many have lodge banners that are paraded at the Durham gala. The decline of the industry over many decades and its eventual destruction in the 1980s, along with the closure of other major local employers, left terrible economic and social scars and a sense that some communities in the constituency have been left behind. Levelling up, if it reached anywhere, did not reach the proud communities that elected me.

That brings me to the local importance of the topic of today’s debate: economy, welfare and public services. North Durham needs economic stability and growth. It is a travesty that there are so many families dependent on food banks. It needs new skilled and well-paid jobs in the industries of the future. It needs investment and procurement decisions by the Government to be targeted at creating jobs where they are most needed.

North Durham needs a fairer distribution of public spending. Changes to the local government funding formula over the last 14 years have been unfair and removed resources from authorities such as Durham county council that are dealing with the highest levels of deprivation, and hampered their ability to deliver effective local services. That urgently needs to be changed in the next local government funding settlement.

Capital spending on public services is also urgently needed. On Friday, I visited Sacriston academy, a primary school, and was horrified to find excellent teachers delivering high-quality education, but in a setting that was literally falling down, with ceilings held up by scaffolding joists and whole classrooms, built in 1910—indeed, famous former pupils include Bobby Robson—now unusable due to water penetration through the ceilings and walls. Local children deserve so much better.

Public transport in the constituency is not fit for purpose. We need more frequent and reliable buses and more trains stopping at Chester-le-Street. We also need the economic regeneration of local town centres. The once thriving Front Streets of Chester-le-Street and Stanley are run down and need new life.

I thank the House for listening to me today. I look forward to contributing to debates here and to fighting tenaciously for the cause of North Durham and its people and the wider north-east.

Order. I apologise to any Back Benchers who have not been able to get in, but I am afraid we now have to move to the wind-ups, and I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) on an excellent maiden speech that highlighted the values of equality and fairness—principles that many of us can agree on—and on demonstrating his stamina by being the last Member to be called. With that level of stamina, I am sure that he will give the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) a run for his money.

It is an honour to sum up for the Liberal Democrats. Once again, I extend a warm welcome to new Ministers and to our country’s first female Chancellor. I also congratulate new Members from all parties who gave their maiden speeches today. Their speeches did not disappoint; they were poignant, funny and bursting with passion. When I gave my maiden speech in 2019, I was very proud to say that St Albans has more pubs per square mile than anywhere else in Britain, and today’s maiden speeches have given us enough historical nuggets for a maiden speech pub quiz—maybe I will write it on the train journey home.

I am pleased that the topics of economy, welfare and public services have been brought together. Why? Well, during the general election, the Liberal Democrats put health and care front and centre of our campaign, and we did so for two reasons. First, it was the No. 1 issue that constituents raised with us on the doorstep. Every single person is impacted by the crisis in health and social care. Secondly, we know that health creation and wealth creation are two sides of the same coin. We cannot have a thriving economy if our population is sick.

We Liberal Democrats set out an ambitious agenda during the general election, and we are pleased about some of the pledges in the King’s Speech. We are pleased that there will be reform of the Mental Health Act 1983, which is incredibly long overdue, and a number of other public health measures—especially on the protection of children’s health. However, we in this House all know that it is equally important to tackle the social and commercial determinants of health, and tackling child poverty is just as important as tackling the aggressive marketing of vapes and energy drinks. That is why scrapping the two-child benefit limit is in our Liberal Democrat amendment.

It is also important that we focus on access to health and social care services. People must be able to access the care that they need when they need it. That is where the Liberal Democrats want to see more ambition. We need to fix our crumbling hospitals, we need mental health hubs in communities, we need to boost our GP numbers, we need to guarantee that people have a legal right to see their GP within seven days, and we need to put an end to dental deserts.

We all know someone who has had cancer and died, or someone who has had cancer and survived, but in every single year from 2015, the Conservative Government missed their cancer treatment target. We cannot allow that to continue. That is why we Liberal Democrats wanted there to be a legal right—through a statutory duty on Ministers—for this House and the public to hold Ministers to account on ensuring that people can see a GP and get their cancer treatment when they need it.

We Liberal Democrats will also be unapologetic and unrelenting in our focus on social care. We have campaigned for free personal care, and we will continue to do so. Free personal care is good for people’s independence and dignity, and for the NHS. It would also enable the many millions of unpaid carers, who currently pick up the pieces of a broken social care system, to up their hours, do more work, return to work and boost our economy. Health creation and wealth creation are two sides of the same coin.

We look forward to seeing the Government’s employment rights Bill with interest. We Liberal Democrats have campaigned for improved pay for care workers, including by proposing a higher minimum wage starting at £2 more, but that has to come with improved investment so that local government no longer has to rob Peter to pay Paul. We can no longer suppress the pay of experienced care workers to fund improved pay for new starters. We must stop ripping the heart out of a retention strategy just to tackle recruitment. We have to do both.

The King’s Speech was also an opportunity to go further on care. It was an opportunity to introduce paid carer’s leave, make care a protected characteristic, create a royal college of care workers, introduce measures to tackle to scandal of carer’s allowance overpayments, and put in place a framework for cross-party talks that would finally put social care on a firm financial footing for the future. I recognise that the King’s Speech is an opportunity for the Government to set out their priorities, but I hope very much that many of these ideas—particularly for fixing social care—may be announced in due course. As our party leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), has said, the Liberal Democrats will continue to be the voice of carers in this Parliament.

If we want to boost the economy, we have to recognise that there are now several stages to people’s lives and careers. There has to be lifelong learning, upskilling and reskilling from cradle to grave, but we still have to make sure that every child has the best start in life. At the moment under the current system, many children—particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities—are put at a big disadvantage from the get-go, and a huge part of that is SEND funding. As one quick example, my area of Hertfordshire is one of the poorest funded education authorities for SEND. Under the Conservatives’ funding formula, it would take 15 years for children in Hertfordshire to catch up with those in neighbouring Buckinghamshire, itself one of the poorest funded education authorities. That is an entire generation of lost young children and lost education because of a Government spreadsheet formula. It is just another unforgivable legacy of the Conservative Government, and I implore the Labour Government to look at this issue with fresh eyes and real urgency.

Another engine of our economy is small businesses and high streets. Many speakers this afternoon, including many people giving their maiden speech, have talked about the high streets and local businesses that are the glue that hold our communities together. I would like to push the Government to go further, particularly on reforming business rates. Some people may remember that in the aftermath of the mini-Budget, the ex-Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt), had spent the summer campaigning for a complete overhaul of the business rates system. On his first day in the job, I challenged him on whether he would in fact review that system. He gave me a wry smile from across the Chamber and said that he regretted campaigning so hard for it from the Back Benches. That review was left in the “too hard” basket; it is part of a long list of challenges facing the Labour Government, unfortunately with a similar refrain, but I implore Labour Ministers not to do the same. Sitting in their in-tray will be the results of the high streets taskforce, which I am sure will confirm what we already know: that the business rates system is broken, crippling high streets—particularly heritage pubs—while Amazon warehouses are being given a tax break. That system is not the foundation of a fair economy.

To conclude, there are measures in the King’s Speech that we welcome, but we want to see far greater ambition for our high streets, our children and our public services, particularly health and social care. We believe that our amendment to the Address goes some way towards addressing those things, and we urge Members to support it.

I call the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

I congratulate everybody who has made their maiden speech in this debate. It is a big moment in one’s parliamentary career, but you are out the other side and nothing will be quite as traumatic as what you have experienced today. To go through them very briefly, I thank the hon. Member for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale (Georgia Gould), who told us that her great-grandfather—I think—came from Lithuania to set up a store in the middle of her constituency, which is her connection with it. The hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Sarah Sackman) paid a very generous tribute to Mike Freer and the dangers and intimidation that he faced. She was also generous to Mrs Thatcher—she is clearly a very generous lady.

The hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) paid tribute to Grant Shapps and his numerous and frequent Cabinet positions, as well as his commitment to Ukraine. The hon. Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh) paid tribute to the 190 Labour women MPs who are now in the House, as well as to Harriet Harman. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) managed to weave King John and A. E. Housman into his speech, and informed us that Hollywood is not a city on the west coast of the United States, but is actually within his constituency. If you want to see film stars, ladies and gentlemen, go to Bromsgrove.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) has the peculiarity of having three forebears who are still Members of this House. He was generous to each of them, which shows that he is a wise man and will go far. The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) stressed the industrial and shipping heritage of his constituency, and how it was indeed bombarded by the Germans in world war one, but it gave as good as it got. My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) praised his predecessor, Matt Hancock, of course focusing on racing and horses—although not, I noticed, on horseplay as such.

The hon. Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) focused, with great pride, on the Hitachi Rail company in his constituency—shortly, I am afraid to tell him, to be seized by the Labour party and nationalised as part of its Government programme. My hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) stressed defence spending, the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) leasehold reform and the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) the importance of agriculture.

I was out of the Chamber for the speech of the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), and the Whip’s note simply says, “He said that there was a cat rubbing his legs”, or something to that effect. [Laughter.] Representing a highly rural constituency as I do, I know that strange things do occur, particularly late on those dull winter evenings.

The hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) stressed the importance of children in care. The hon. Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden) referred to her constituency as the new “Haliwood”, so another Hollywood reference there. I thought my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) gave a very witty speech, and stressed the association with the RAF in his commitment to veterans. The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) paid tribute to David Morris and his support for the Eden project, and I was particularly pleased to see her do that.

The hon. Member for North Down (Alex Easton) made I think one of the most moving maiden speeches that we have heard in this House for a very long time. He spoke very movingly about his parents, and we all know what pride his dad would have had in the fact that he has been successful in his fourth attempt to join us here in the House of Commons. The hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) referenced the fact that a Roman road—Watling Street—runs through her constituency and spoke passionately about the importance of community and tolerance.

Finally, the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) spoke warmly of Kevan Jones, whom all of us who have been in this House for a while remember with great fondness, and the importance of skilled and well-paid jobs in his constituency. I hope that I have pretty much covered everybody and said the main things that needed saying.

Let us now turn to the debate itself, and it seems to me that the right hon. Member for Leeds West and Pudsey (Rachel Reeves), while I congratulate her warmly on being the first female Chancellor—I think that is a huge achievement and is to be very warmly welcomed—is, I am afraid, suffering from some level of amnesia. She appears to have forgotten the legacy that we have bequeathed to her. Inflation, which was up at over 10% last autumn, is now back to target. Mortgage rates are softening, real wages have been growing in each of the last 11 months and taxes have been coming down more recently under the previous Government. When it comes to debt, we were on target, as we handed over to the right hon. Lady, to see debt falling in line with her own fiscal target at the end of the fifth year, and we of course have the fastest growing economy in the G7.

One wonders where this amnesia is coming from, and it is of course nothing more than smoke and mirrors. It is to cover up the fact that the Chancellor is rolling the pitch to raise taxes. Against all the commitments she made during the general election, she will be raising those taxes in the autumn. It will not be because we have bequeathed her something of which she was not aware in advance. The IFS has made it very clear that the books were “open”, as Paul Johnson said, for all to see.

When it comes to public services, we have a proud record. On education, we have the best readers in the western world. We have been going up the PISA scales for mathematics and sciences, something that did not happen under the last Labour Government. Crime has been halved, broadly speaking, across the period from 2010 to the present day. When it comes to work and welfare, we have a near-record level of employment, and we have a low level of unemployment. And economic inactivity is lower than in every single year under the last Labour Government. What was Labour’s record? When they left office, unemployment was double the level that it is today. Under every single Labour Government in history, unemployment has been higher when they left office than when they came in. Most disgraceful of all is that youth unemployment was up 43% under the last Labour Government; under the last Conservative Government it was down by over 40%.

As for welfare, under Labour there were 1.4 million people languishing on long-term benefits for almost a decade. On pensions, we saw the 75p pension increase and the Gordon Brown raid on private pensions of £180 billion—from which the pension system never fully recovered. It is, therefore, no surprise that, under Labour, we ended up with the fourth highest level of pensioner poverty across Europe. Under Labour there were 1 million more people in absolute poverty after housing costs. There were 200,000 more pensioners in poverty and 100,000 more children in poverty under the last Labour Government than there are today.

We will be a responsible Opposition: we welcome the commitment to growth in the King’s Speech; we welcome the commitment to building houses, as long as that is with sufficient local consent; we welcome the Budget responsibility Bill in principle; and we welcome the announcements that the Chancellor has made regarding pensions: consolidating pensions and ensuring that we get better returns for pensioners and that we invest in long-term pension capital.

But there are too many echoes in this King’s Speech of the Labour of old. The nationalisation of the railways. The consolidation of GB Energy. The long hand of Government reaching—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Labour Members cheer now but they won’t be cheering in a few years’ time. They have short memories; I remember when the railways were nationalised and it was not a pretty situation. They are bringing forward French-style employment laws that will lead to less efficient businesses and to tribunals. They will be increasing the freedoms of trade unions, who are their paymasters. And they will be dispensing with minimum service levels; that will lead to more strikes and the inconvenience of the public, but certainly not greater growth.

What have we heard in the King’s Speech on welfare, one of the biggest challenges of the modern age? Zip, absolutely nothing, nada, diddly squat—absolutely nothing from the Labour party. They talk about moving the National Careers Service from the Department for Education to the Department for Work and Pensions; well, I hardly think that will move the dial. Their back to work plan is named exactly as our back to work plan was that my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt) the shadow Chancellor and I launched last autumn, but it has nothing standing behind it—not the billions of pounds of support we put in place to encourage people to go into work and to transform lives.

All we have heard from those on the Government Benches is a denigration of our job centres; these are described as places of fear by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and by the Minister for employment the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Alison McGovern) as places that do not offer real help. What an insult to the tens of thousands of hard-working people up and down our country who go into those offices to help people improve their prospects and improve their lives. They are against what they call punitive sanctions; it will cost hundreds of millions of pounds to remove those and it will result in less engagement with the help that is available and diminish people’s life chances. There have been no comments whatsoever from the Government Benches on our work capability assessment reforms, that according to the Office for Budget Responsibility will see 400,000 fewer people on long-term sickness benefits. They opposed in poetry; they have to govern in prose. They have not even picked up the pen, but let me be clear: we made mistakes in government and we have paid the price at the ballot box, and it is right that my party now faces a period of reflection and does so with humility. The electorate has spoken, and we must listen. But that is not the same as saying that the vision that is Conservatism has died, even if of late it has been too often obscured. That vision still burns bright. It burns bright as a beacon of freedom, enterprise, opportunity and, yes, stability and hope in the face of—

Order. Will the shadow Secretary of State please curtail his remarks now?

I commend our amendment to the House.

I have never seen the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) do a comic turn quite like that. Opposition clearly suits him, but if he wants to lead his party out of its catastrophic defeat, he will have to do a lot better.

I am honoured to close today’s debate, not only as I am speaking from this side of the Dispatch Box for the first time, but after so many truly wonderful maiden speeches. Members from all parts of the House talked about the social, cultural and economic heritage of their constituencies and about the real challenges that their constituents face, but also their talents and potential for a brighter future, given that they have a Government who are on their side. There are too many Members to go through individually, especially on the Government Benches, but let me just say this: your constituents will be very proud of you, as will your friends and family. I say that especially to the hon. Member for North Down (Alex Easton). Members have spoken with passion and conviction, especially on the Government Benches, about the need for change and to make true on our manifesto promises, and that is what this Government will deliver.

This King’s Speech turns the page on the last 14 years of chaos and decline, and it takes the first steps towards national renewal, delivering growth in every part of the country, tearing down the barriers to opportunity and repairing our public services through investment and reform. Growth is this Government’s No. 1 priority, because it is the only way that we will improve prosperity, put more money into people’s pockets and transform our public services. Our plan starts with economic stability through the fiscal lock and our Budget responsibility Bill, so that we never again repeat the mistakes of the last Conservative Government, who crashed the economy, leaving working people to pay a heavy price.

Our planning and infrastructure Bill will get Britain building again to deliver the homes and other infrastructure that our country needs. Our national wealth fund will unlock billions of pounds of private investment to support good jobs in clean energy and other growth industries of the future. The Department I am now privileged to lead is central to our growth and opportunity missions, through unlocking the potential of our pension system, getting people into work and on in their work and driving down poverty in every part of the country.

First, on pensions, people who have worked hard and saved all their lives deserve a decent income in retirement. Although the previous Government talked about the need for pension reform, in reality there was little action. In contrast, we have acted immediately. Our new pensions Bill will bring together all the different pension savings that people build up across their working lives and drive better value for money in pension schemes. These measures could help improve incomes in retirement and boost pension pots by more than £11,000. Our landmark pensions review, announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, and led by the Minister for Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Emma Reynolds) will go even further in unlocking investment in British businesses and improving outcomes for British pensioners.

The second way we will boost growth and unleash opportunity is by getting Britain working again. Last week’s labour market statistics underline the truly dire inheritance we face. Britain is the only G7 country whose employment rate has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Some 9.4 million people are now economically inactive—either not in work, or not looking for work. That is one in five of the entire working age population.

Of those people, 2.8 million are locked out of the workplace due to poor health. That includes over-50s, often women with bad hips, knees and joints—I know about that only too well—and young people with mental health problems, often lacking basic qualifications. One in eight of all our young people are not in education, employment or training. What a damning indictment of the last Government. But behind those statistics are real people, with real hopes and dreams, who were written off by the Tories, denied opportunities and support, and then blamed for the position they are in. Let me tell the House now that, under the new Labour Government, that will change.

Our plan to get Britain working will be a cross-Government effort to drive change and unleash opportunity in every corner of the country. We will create more good jobs in clean energy and through our modern industrial strategy. We will make work pay and improve the quality of work through our new deal for working people. We will cut NHS waiting times, improve mental health support and transform skills and childcare to tackle the root causes of the problem, and fix the foundations for work, not just paper over the cracks.

We will deliver fundamental change in the Department for Work and Pensions, too. First, we will overhaul jobcentres, bringing together Jobcentre Plus with the National Careers Service to create a new jobs and careers service to help more people get to work and get on in their work. Secondly, we will drive down economic inactivity through new local work, health and skills plans led by mayors and local areas, devolving responsibility and resources to provide the right support in one place, because the man—or even the woman—in Whitehall will never know what is best in Leicester, Lowestoft or Leeds.

We will also deliver our youth guarantee to ensure that every young person is earning or learning, because unlike Conservative Members we will never accept almost a million young people being written off before they have even begun. Under this Government, there will be obligations to engage with support, look for work and take jobs when they are offered, as there always have been since the original Beveridge report, but there will be no more divisive, derogatory rhetoric or claiming that people just think that they are too bluesy to work. I am in politics to solve problems, not to score cheap points and grab empty headlines that do nothing to tackle the problems in people’s lives.

Alongside our plan to get Britain working again, we have taken immediate action to deliver our manifesto commitment for an ambitious strategy to tackle child poverty. I am proud that the last Labour Government lifted more than half a million children out of poverty. The contrast with the Conservatives could not be greater, with 700,000 more children growing up poor during their time in office. The fact that 4 million children are now living in poverty is a stain on our society. That is why, within a week of taking office, I called in child poverty experts and campaigners to help start work on our plans. It is why the Prime Minister announced our new ministerial taskforce to drive action across Government, underpinned by a new child poverty unit in the Cabinet Office. I will lead that work with our Education Secretary. As the Prime Minister announced, we will look at how to use all the levers at our disposal, including household income, employment, housing, children’s health, education and childcare so that we drive up opportunity, drive down poverty and give all children the best start in life.

The Government were elected on a mandate for change, to change our economy so that it works for working people, to get our public services back on their feet and to transform opportunity by tearing down the barriers to success in every corner of this great nation. The King’s Speech takes the first steps to rebuild Britain and make every part of our country better off, delivering real change to people’s lives, giving them the chances and choices they deserve and to begin—finally—the task of restoring faith that politics can once again be a force for good.

Question put, That the amendment be made.