George Freeman highlights the problems of undiagnosed and untreated mental health conditions in rural areas and calls on the Government to meet Norfolk and Suffolk MPs to discuss the problems at the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
The agony and damage of undiagnosed and untreated mental health conditions is nowhere more acute than in rural areas, where we see an epidemic of silent suffering. The Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust has long struggled with a series of management problems. I am sure the Minister has seen the recent report highlighting that between 2019 and 2022, we saw over 8,500 avoidable deaths—that is nearly 45 a week. Will she agree to meet me, other Norfolk and Suffolk MPs, and those affected to look at what is really going on here and make sure that we turn that trust into a beacon of the best mental health services, rather than the worst?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue. We were holding regular meetings with Norfolk and Suffolk MPs, the trust, the Care Quality Commission and NHS England, and with the new management team, that trust did appear to finally be turning things around. However, I am concerned to hear the points that my hon. Friend has raised. I am very happy to restart those meetings and will ask my office to arrange them as quickly as possible.
The silent suffering from undiagnosed and untreated Mental Health conditions is becoming an epidemic in hard-to-access rural areas, made worse here in Norfolk by the longstanding difficulties at the Norfolk & Suffolk Mental Health Foundation Trust.
That is why I have spoken up for our mental health services constantly in my time as an MP — and am pleased to be able to raise it in the house today.
We have seen too many broken promises of improvement to NSFT — the people of Mid Norfolk deserve better.
See more on my work speaking up for our local mental health services here.
Pets — from lap cats to working dogs — are a part of our families. Their theft should be treated as such – it is not a victimless crime.
That’s why I was proud to support the Pet Abduction Bill on Friday — helping successfully get it past the crucial second reading.
Whilst it was a heartfelt pleasure to put Tosca my elderly cat & Jassy my fox-red lab on the Hansard record, the issue of pet theft is something that we must take seriously.
It’s an issue which tears families apart, leaves emotional scars on owners for years, and can deprive people of the comforting presence they need to tackle challenges such as mental health.
I was glad to be able to raise some local cases — helping to bring attention to the very personal nature of this crime.
It’s also vitally important that we all play our part, ensuring that we help to secure loose dogs and ensure they are safely handed to someone who can look after them – so that they do not end up like my close friend Marika’s pet dog, tragically snatched after being carelessly tied up by a passer by who found her, and later found deceased near the North Circular.
We must not let our Net Zero ambitions tear up our Norfolk countryside.
For 6 years I have been pushing for a proper offshore ring main circuit to connect offshore wind farms — one that will allow us to expand and accelerate offshore wind energy production while significantly reducing the amount of pylons and other onshore infrastructure required.
These things move frustratingly slowly and key stakeholders, including National Grid and National Grid ESO, need to do more to listen to the concerns of local communities and MPs and take seriously the need to take as much infrastructure offshore as possible.
That’s why I met with OFFSET MPs & National Grid officials again today to push back against proposed pylons and lobby further for a proper offshore grid which protects our countryside.
Find out more about my wider OFFSET campaign here, as well as my campaign to protect our rural landscape and heritage here.
George Freeman secures a Ministerial meeting to discuss fairer funding for rural councils to help offset higher heating, energy and labour costs.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
Rural councils face a disproportionate triple whammy from the rising cost of energy due to the Ukraine war, with rural councils and rural public services having to pay higher heating, energy and labour costs. Could I have a meeting with my hon. Friend to talk about the fair funding formula, to make sure that rural councils are properly funded in this next settlement?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)
As a rural Member of Parliament, I am tempted to tell my hon. Friend that he will be preaching to the choir, but of course I am happy to meet him. He points to the challenges that rural councils face in delivering services in areas that are wide in geography and sparse in population.
Rural counties like ours face much higher costs than urban areas – which are seldom reflected in Whitehall funding formula.
The extra costs of transport and heating hit public services disproportionately hard. As do the growing needs of an ageing demographic.
That’s why I’ve long made the case for a fairer Whitehall funding formula.
With the Ukraine energy inflation, post-pandemic labour shortages and cost of living crisis, we are now facing a perfect storm.
We can’t go on without a fairer funding settlement.
That’s why I wrote, with 40 other MPs and the County All Party Parliamentary Group, to the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to insist on fairer funding for rural areas.
See the letter below.
George Freeman backs the Bill and highlights the devastating impact on pet owners and families and praises the great work done by animal charities in Mid Norfolk.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I pay tribute to you for your long-standing work on animal welfare issues in this House over the years. I will be brief, as I know there are a number of very good private Members’ Bills waiting to be heard today.
I want to speak on behalf of the people of Mid Norfolk, and on behalf of Tosca, our 14-year-old cat, and Jassy, our two-year-old fox red Labrador. It is a joy to have their names in the Official Report. The pets of this country need us to act on their behalf, just like the many people who, in a civilised society, need parliamentarians to speak for them, including the children who cannot vote and all those who need us to take their interests seriously.
More importantly, for all those who have suffered the appalling trauma of pet abduction, it is not a victimless crime. For many people in this country, the abduction or theft of their pet is every bit as serious, if not more serious and traumatic, than the loss of a wallet or the other things that the police generally think of as more serious crimes. I pay tribute to my great friend, the hon. Member for Southend West (Anna Firth), for introducing this Bill and securing Government support. I also thank the Minister for her support. This enlightened Government are working with Back Benchers on both sides of the House to put in place good legislation that the people of this country want.
Our late, great friend, the former hon. Member for Southend West, David Amess—whose shield stands proudly behind his successor—would have been to the fore on this Bill. He was a great champion, as the current hon. Member for Southend West is, of pets and animal welfare.
My dear friend Marika had a beautiful miniature pinscher, which is just about the smallest dog possible. The dog became lost in the undergrowth on Hampstead Heath and somebody found him. Strangely, rather than take this tiny dog—a puppy—to someone or look for the person who had obviously lost him, this person decided, in their haste, to tie the puppy to a railing with a piece of string and abandon him. After an hour of searching, when Marika was told that the dog had been seen, she rushed to the railing to find him stolen, and the puppy’s body was found just off the North Circular 24 hours later.
Five years later, the trauma is ongoing. Marika will be distressed to be reminded of it, but I know she wants me to raise the case, which she has also raised with her local MP. She is delighted that the Bill is being debated on the Floor of the House and that the Government are supporting it.
I am conscious of time, so I will not rehearse the excellent arguments about the legalities. I simply want to take this opportunity to invite the Minister to remind those listening that the Environmental Protection Act 1990—I defer to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland), the former Lord Chancellor and Solicitor General—made it clear that anyone who finds a stray dog has a duty in law to make sure it is returned to a person in office or to the police. The person who decided they were too busy to take Marika’s dog to the park wardens at Hampstead Heath, or to anybody, and tied it up and abandoned it actually committed an offence. It is really important that people understand that as citizens, we all have a duty to dogs. Today’s Bill strengthens that obligation, as well as the criminal sanctions against those who do not exercise their responsibilities and who commit this appalling crime—against pets, but every bit as appallingly, against the people who love their pets and suffer the trauma.
I want to briefly highlight some excellent work going on in Mid Norfolk, and some of the terrible stories that I have seen in my work. Cats Protection in Longham—the Opposition Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), will know it well as a former candidate in Mid Norfolk—does brilliant work on rehoming and microchipping. I am really delighted to see the microchipping framework extended in this Bill. I also want to highlight DogLost in Norfolk and Suffolk, which does great work. My right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) supports that organisation; it has 25,000 members, which speaks to the importance of this issue across our part of the world and across the country.
Personally, I want to highlight Alex Dann of Dann’s Ice Cream in North Tuddenham, who had his dog Patch stolen from beside his ice cream van. He had not lost him, neglected him or left him: while he was serving customers ice cream, somebody stole his dog, and it was reported in the excellent Eastern Daily Press. Rita and Philip Potter also had their Labrador Daisy stolen—I could go on. This is not a victimless crime: it is a crime that causes huge trauma. Pets are doing a huge social service for us all; many people rely on their pets, not just for the glories that they bring to daily life but to help them with mental health conditions, loneliness and a whole raft of conditions that cause huge pain. I am not suggesting that pets should be brought under the provisions of the Department of Health and Social Care, or funded for those purposes, but we should at least acknowledge that they are doing hugely important and good work, which makes the crime of pet theft all the more appalling.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I will not test your or the House’s patience any further. I just want to put on record my support for this Bill and for my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West, and my joy at seeing all parties in this House come together in support of something that the public will be delighted to see Parliament putting in place.
George Freeman speaks in favour of the Building Societies Act 1986 (Amendment) Bill; a Private Member’s Bill that will enable building societies to raise more funds from sources other than member savings and increase lending capacity which will help first-time buyers in rural areas such as Mid Norfolk.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
It is a huge pleasure able to join Friday business as a Back Bencher and to support this important Bill on behalf of my Mid Norfolk constituents. Let me start by congratulating the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on introducing the Bill and on winning that prized first place in the ballot, so that she can make a difference with the Bill. I thank the Government for working with her and all of us who have supported her on the Bill. This is a good example of cross-party work, and of the Government working with Back Benchers in the interests of our constituents and the shared and mutual interests of the citizens of this country. I only wish more people around the country were able to see the quality of the work going on in the House on days like this.
I want, particularly, to highlight the importance of the Bill for rural areas such as mine. The hon. Lady represents the magnificently urban constituency of Sunderland Central, but I represent a magnificently the rural constituency of Mid Norfolk—114 villages and five towns. As I candidate, I rashly promised to cycle the border one Saturday morning, but then discovered it was 94 miles long. It took me rather more than one Saturday morning. Much of this country is rural, up north as well as down south and in the south west. I want to focus on the importance of the Bill and building societies in rural areas and on our town high streets in providing cash facilities, and supporting first time-buyers and pensioners with cash.
In Dereham recently, I saw Nationwide packed, with queues outside of pensioners moving from the bank, which is closing, to support Nationwide, as Nationwide supports them. In my part of the country we have a huge number of retired folk who want cash—they do not all want to be totally digital. They value and need that interaction with a living and breathing human being when they go to save or take out cash. Nationwide Building Society is doing great work to support them. I am really keen to support the Bill, as the hon. Lady knows, largely because of that particular rural need.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
I should declare that I am a member of three building societies, and until recently I had a mortgage with Nationwide. I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of building societies in rural communities. I think of local examples such as Suffolk Building Society, but elsewhere around the country there is Newbury Building Society and similar. That connection to the community really matters. It is important to get on with this primary legislation, but we also need to get the negative secondary regulations through as quickly as possible so that we can boost mortgage borrowing for families who are keen to get on to the housing ladder.
George Freeman
I completely agree—my right hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and we will come to that in due course. She is absolutely right.
I want to focus on building societies in rural areas. The flight of the banks, in particular from rural areas but also from a lot of high street banking and the role they have traditionally carried out—this is partly why the Bill is so important—highlights the importance of cash in the rural economy. Many of my local small businesses are really struggling with how to bank cash properly. We also have a problem in our part of the world with ATMs now being subject to JCB theft—ATMs being ripped out of the wall. So, there is a cash problem and building societies have a really important role.
As well as reflecting the very best of old Labour, this is also, if I may say so, the very best of civic conservatism. This is Edward Burke’s little platoons. This is the weft and the warp of local connected responsible civic community-based capitalism; the sort of capitalism that small platoon civic conservatism has long championed. I would argue that all parties in Government over the past 40 years have slightly forgotten that that needs to be championed. We have seen the rise and the domination of big capital, big banks and big disconnected capitalism. I am here today as a card-carrying supporter of the mutuality model and civic capitalism. I think both main parties have that in common in their different traditions and history.
On rural banking and finance, in Mid Norfolk we have five towns and 114 villages. We are not quite halfway between Cambridge and Norwich. Traditionally, it has been something of a rural backwater. It is an agricultural community, with many retirees and pensioners moving to quiet rural Norfolk. It is a real challenge to ensure that our villages remain vibrant and our towns remain thriving. The model of development over the past 40 years has been over-focused on commuter housing. People drive their cars to Norwich and Cambridge during the day, and that sucks the life out of many of our villages.
The rise of online commerce and digital retail has also taken quite a lot of the life out of many of our towns, and our high streets are struggling to remain vibrant. The Government’s moves to reduce business rates has helped, but the pandemic and the cost of energy crisis, coming off the back of the Ukraine war, has hit rural areas disproportionately hard. That is a theme I will be picking up in the coming months in this House in the run-up to the Budget. Everyone has been hit by the cost of energy increase of course, but in rural areas there is a double triple whammy. Every member of staff in a company has to drive. Most of my relatively low-paid working families have one, two or three cars. They are not a luxury; they need them to be able to get to work. All our public services are hit—our bus services and our county council services—all across rural areas.
We are paying a double whammy because of an over-dependency on transport and heating. That huge rural impact is hitting remote backwater rural areas very hard, particularly in my part of Norfolk.
In that context, it is urgent that we encourage the revival of the rural economy. I have long believed and campaigned locally that, with a slightly different approach to planning and development in our area, we could trigger something of a rural renaissance, with many small businesses popping up off the back of the Cambridge phenomenon and the Norwich Research Park. Small businesses often start off by working from home or looking for converted farm units; they are not in the city centre, but distributed. If we can get more businesses back into villages and small towns, we will have more people of working age in communities during the day. That will reduce congestion and commuting.
The model of a vibrant rural economy is key to so many of the priorities of successive Governments. We will never get to net zero if we keep shovelling people into cars and making them commute long distances in congested traffic jams. The more we can get people to work from home or nearer to home, travelling when they need to during the day and not in peak hours, the better. That vision of rural renaissance is key, but it will never happen if young people cannot afford to buy a house near to where they work, if thriving businesses on the high street are unable to cash-up, save and deposit cash safely, and if pensioners are unable to save, take out their deposits and interact with banking in the way they have for the past 50 or 60 years. We need to ensure that we build an economy for the people who live there.
That is what my campaign, The Norfolk Way, is all about. It is a project to promote that vision of rural growth. The Bill touches on much of that. One has only to see the flight of the mainstream banks out of such areas—I know that colleagues in other constituencies see that—and the desperation that people feel, whether they are first-time buyers or pensioners.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, but we should not see building societies as a panacea; they are closing branches in my area as well. How do we encourage building societies to keep branches open when they are closing throughout the country?
George Freeman
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I do not want to suggest that they are a total panacea; I am lauding and applauding Nationwide in Dereham because it is doing great work, but we need to make sure that the Bill is part of a broader approach. I hope that Treasury Ministers, thinking about the run-up to the Budget and looking ahead, will think about how we can encourage more choice, more competition and more presence from both building societies and banks. We need choice and competition in rural areas and other areas that are not well served as well as in areas that are.
The opportunity for rural renaissance was hit hard by the pandemic, as well as by the Ukraine war, with its impact on energy prices, Putin turning off the gas taps and the cost of living crisis that we have all experienced. It is in that context that the Bill represents a chink of light and has been hugely supported locally. I am delighted to have helped the hon. Member for Sunderland Central bring it to the House.
I want to say something about the banks, because over the 13 years for which I have been privileged to be the Member of Parliament for Mid Norfolk the closure of banks—a cause on which I remember fondly working with the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), in 2009—has gradually hit much of rural Norfolk. Everyone understands that we cannot have a hugely staffed bank branch in every village, but there is a contract at the heart of the state between citizens, Governments and operations such as banks that work under regulations. Banks are there to provide a service, too, and if they are not going to provide that service we need to look at who will.
Sir Oliver Heald
Given the number of people going into banks to do their business these days, it is not unreasonable that there should be some restructuring. I think the idea of banking hubs where all the main banks club together to ensure that there is a proper facility in a town or substantial village is a good idea. Does my hon. Friend think that it is important that they should take in cash and takings from small businesses, because they do not all do that?
George Freeman
I do. My right hon. and learned Friend amplifies exactly the point I was making. He is right that sparsely populated or rural areas will often require different solutions, in the same way as small rural schools require us to network and support them through multi-academy trusts. Similarly, we need to be imaginative in how we support cash access and banking and saving in rural areas. That touches on a deep problem that I have witnessed over many years: Whitehall tends to see these problems through an urban lens, and we need to think a bit about how rural areas often need a slightly different approach. I hope that the Bill and the cross-party support for it will help to encourage the Treasury to think about how we can do more to make this a moment to encourage greater choice and competition out in the market.
It is particularly sad that the banks have stepped back from the service I described over the two or three decades in which many of them have focused rather more on big, international and complex financial trading—the derivatives that led to quite a lot of problems we had back in the great crash. It is particularly sad in Norfolk given that it is where one of our great banks, Barclays, actually started, with the Gurney and Barclay families. The first bank had its roots in King’s Lynn docks. As people were required to pay duties, they required credit finance. I encourage anyone who has not been to King’s Lynn to go there, as it has a beautifully regenerated and refurbished Georgian dockyard, where they can see the plaque commemorating the first credit facility that became the great Barclays bank. It is particularly sad to see a bank such as Barclays step back from the place in which it started. Everyone has history, roots and heritage, and I am not such a romantic that I expect Barclays to put a bank in every Norfolk village, but I do think there is a responsibility on all these companies to make sure that the people they are there to serve are getting the service they need.
I wish, in particular, to highlight the importance of access to cash on high streets for small businesses, as it is becoming a serious problem. I know that the Minister understands it, and I am grateful for his acknowledgement of it. Across East Anglia, and I am sure this is happening elsewhere, we are seeing an increasing frequency of ATM raids, where JCBs are driven into banks and ATMs are taken out. However, that is the thin end of a bigger wedge, and many businesses in Dereham, Attleborough, Wymondham, Watton and Hingham are beginning to struggle with what to do with cash on a Monday morning, and many local people are struggling to find a bank they can access.
I know that many people wish to speak this morning, so I will not detain you or the House for too long, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I want to touch on mutuality, which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) addressed earlier. We need to talk about, celebrate, champion and promote it more in this House. Some 300 years ago, we were writing the rule book for modern capitalism, defining the joint stock limited company and setting out the legal framework in English constitutional law, in common law, that drove the industrial revolution. We created limited liability companies, which allowed people to invest, raise money and back projects, and that was a key part of what this country did.
In an age of globalised capitalism and high technology, we have a challenge to make sure that capital does not become disconnected from the people who are providing the money, the savers, and the people who need the money to build businesses. For capitalism to work, we need a connection between money, the people who are saving it and the people who are borrowing it. The last crash in the City was a clear example of what happens when a disconnection is allowed to get to crisis proportions, whereby people do not know where the money that they have deposited is going and people who buy a complex derivative bond do not know what it is built on or what is underpinning it. We then have a serious problem. I am not suggesting that we go back to an agrarian revolution of trading wheat for a lift on a cart into Dereham, but I think there is a real issue in our economy in respect of connected capitalism.
Conservative Members in particular, as card-carrying advocates for the market, need to continue to champion and make clear the fact that markets work when they have values, connection and people at the heart of them. When markets are completely disconnected, they have no sense of the requirements of the people putting the capital in or taking it out, they do not value that connection and regulators do not understand the importance of the bond of responsibility between people who are trading with each other.
Mutuality is a proud tradition at the heart of the old labour movement, but it is also a proud tradition in civic conservativism—it is Burke’s little platoons. In a spirit of cross-party philosophising on this Friday morning, perhaps I can put some wind in the sails of the movement for mutuality. I would love to see more mutuality in different sectors, such as in finance, banking and housing, where, clearly, the building societies have been a great reform—I would argue that the housing associations have also been a great Conservative reform in housing.
There are many examples of where we could blow on to the embers of mutuality and encourage more of it in different areas, particularly in some of our social care sectors and health provision. It should not be a stark choice between private profit and public state. There is a whole third sector of mutuality— membership organisations that can deliver public goods, with cost reimbursement and important disciplines of financial control that are not necessarily either public sector, with all the efficiency challenges that go with it, or private sector, with all the incentives for high profit. There is a whole raft of organisations out there that we could be deploying better—in health and care, but also in criminal justice and a whole range of areas where the state has struggled in the past few decades to achieve its stated objectives.
James Daly
My hon. Friend is making an outstanding speech, and we could philosophise all day, which I am tempted to do very badly. Mutuality in the modern day requires a profit element. For all building society branches to remain open, the business has to produce a profit. Mutuality in the sense of Ketley’s Building Society in 1775 is a different concept completely. We therefore should always come back to the point he makes that, for mutuality to succeed, it must be based on a civic, conservative and capitalist model. It cannot work in any other way.
George Freeman
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and encourages me to wrap up my philosophising. He is right—I am not at all anti-profit; it is about what is done with the profit. One of the geniuses of mutuality is that the profit is recycled back in to pursue the interests of those who put in the capital in the first place.
Sir Oliver Heald
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again—I must not keep trespassing on the House’s time, because I have a Bill coming up later. Does he agree that if we look at pension funds and the possibilities of extending that sort of approach into social care, there would be a lot in the idea of mutuality? Also, on the point about profit, if those funds were invested in national goods, such as important national infrastructure and things of that sort, we could all benefit, but of course it has a financial aspect to it as well.
George Freeman
Again, my right hon. and learned Friend makes the point even more eloquently than I was trying to do, and he is right. I make this point in all seriousness: in so many areas, such as infrastructure, as he says, I dream of a world in which people can put their own savings into mutual vehicles. I would love people to be able to invest in the Cambridge-Norwich railway development corporation to fund the regeneration of neglected stations, or to create and fund investment vehicles. There is a whole wealth of instruments, vehicles and bodies rooted in that fertile period of 18th and 19th-century English capitalism, and Scottish capitalism, too—the enlightenment in Edinburgh was a big part of it. We could draw on those models better in pursuit of many of our public sector objectives.
As I wrap up, I will return to the more mundane and practical issues. This is an important Bill for updating the law and giving building societies a chance to get back to where they were in the early ’90s. They were responsible for something like 60% of the market; they have dropped down to 20%. We want to help building societies compete and get back to providing their core service to help those who want to save in building societies, not banks, and first-time buyers who, particularly in my part of the world in Norfolk, do not have high salaries and are looking for a safe and reliable local building society that could hopefully help them acquire a local house built for them, rather than for commuters moving into Norfolk. We need to think about the people who are driving public services and the rural economy. For first-time buyers, this is an important measure.
As the hon. Member for Sunderland Central said in introducing the Bill, increasing lending capacity is in itself a huge step forward. I think the figure is £10 billion of extra lending capacity, which will allow the provision of another 20,000 mortgages. That is hugely important, particularly for first-time buyers. I conclude by genuinely congratulating and thanking the hon. Lady for bringing the Bill forward, the Government for working with her and us on it, and all those who have helped. The Bill strikes a small but important blow and sends a key signal that building societies are back. We want to support and help them as part of a broader commitment to civic, small, local-platoon connected capital that can help people in communities up and down this country to save and withdraw money in the way they need, which will support the local economies on which the national economy is built.
The A47 is a major transport artery into, and across, our great county – which is why dualling along its entire length remains a key priority of mine.
Full dualling is vital for the long term safety of motorists and absolutely necessary if we are to help Norfolk unlock its full economic potential – delivering thousands of jobs, as well as the growth and prosperity needed, to help us ‘Build Back Better’ and ‘Level Up’. It will also reduce congestion, the associated pollution and rat-running.
That’s why I welcomed the opportunity to be involved in the A47 Alliance’s latest summit today – receiving updates on the Judicial Review process holding up the North Tuddenham-Easton dualling works and Thickthorn Roundabout improvements, as well on the other schemes and priorities of the Alliance.
(As I have highlighted once again this week, each legal challenge simply causes further delay, drives up costs and wastes more valuable taxpayers’ money. To see my full views on Dr Boswell’s legal challenge, please click here)
I reaffirmed my firm commitment to the A47 Alliance campaign and look forward to working with them to ramp up their work throughout 2024. Collectively, we agreed a number of positive further actions, which I will be following up with the Alliance team to help put into action.
This very much remains an ongoing campaign of mine – and I also continue to actively work with National Highways and NCC Highways on a number of more local, Mid Norfolk specific projects such as safety improvement works at Necton (see more here) and the dangerous junction at Guist (see more here)
Rest assured, I will continue to do all I can to ‘Make Our Roads Fit for the 21st Century’.
To learn more about my historic campaign work on A47 dualling and improving Norfolk (and the East)’s roads more generally, please click here.
Every advanced economy has some immigration and emigration. Before Tony Blair’s open doors policy in 1997, net immigration to the UK was c45,000 per year.
Under New Labour it rose to 250,000 per year as the UK service economy & London boomed.
It fell immediately after the EU Brexit Referendum & agreement, and the pandemic.
Now, with post-Covid economic recovery, low post-Brexit European migration, higher UK wages & catastrophic unrest in Ukraine, the Middle East & Africa, there is now a surging economic demand from UK business for cheap labour & massive surge of desperate people fleeing war, famine & poverty to find a new life in the English speaking world.
That’s why I have long advocated an Australian Points Style system and an annual quota of asylum seekers which we know we can look after properly.
With the EU’s Mediterranean borders out of control we are seeing a surge of human trafficking to get to the UK.
Last year the net migration figure was 𝟲𝟱𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬 (of which c50,000 crossed the channel).
We simply cannot properly process, sort & handle the numbers flocking here for work (economic migrants) or for asylum given:
- The pressure in UK on housing, infrastructure & public services
- The legal constraints of the ECHR (which was designed in 1940s post war to ensure that never again would Europe see mass deportations of minorities like the Jews fleeing the Nazis).
We have to grip this and sort it.
Any government owes it to both its own citizens (and to those trying to come here for genuine sanctuary (like those from Ukraine) to get this under control.
But there is no single magic bullet.
We must get illegal immigration under control — and part of that is stopping the boats.
The Rwanda Bill is one of a package of measures to do that — alongside
- Working with our French counterparts
- Securing a deportation agreement with Albania
- Working with international partners to tackle the root causes which drive people here.
We have seen real progress in the last 12 months since the PM made this a priority — but there is more to do.
One part of this is making clear to those considering embarking on the journey - and the traffickers who profit from selling the dream - that if they come here illegally, rather than by one of the safe and legal routes, that they will not be able to stay.
By doing this, we will break the inhumane model of the people traffickers, and stop lives being lost in the channel.
My reservations around the legal & practical speed of implementation of the Rwanda policy are well known — but I backed it last night because we MUST get tough on illegal immigration & to stop the boats.
People expect nothing less — and rightly so.
With the bill now sent to the Lords for further scrutiny, I look forward to continuing to raise my constituents concerns about immigration — illegal or legal, those coming across the channel, those the authorities have lost track of who are already here, and tackling the gangs who exploit them for cheap labour.
The Rwanda Bill must be part of a package of tougher measures — including strengthening existing enforcement.
I am proud of Britain’s long history of offering refuge — and proud that we have Afghan nationals in Mid Norfolk who came here legally through the ARAP/ACRS scheme.
But let me make clear — we can only be compassionate if we have control, and protect our borders.
People voted in 2016 to “Take Back Control” of many things - but especially immigration.
We need to deliver.
That’s why I’m pushing for the right balance, and proper enforcement — so that we can help those who need it most.