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Showing every spoken contribution, including 12,832 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
The Minister says there is an area cost adjustment, and yet the leader of Devon county council says that Devon lost £14 million because of the rural services delivery grant, which was removed. How can those two things be true? If a grant that takes account of the fact that it is more expensive to deliver services in a rural area is removed and the council is £14 million short, the extra cost of rural services delivery has not been recognised.
The First Secretary of State talks about a broken political model that will cost jobs and opportunities, and I am afraid the decision that the predecessor Government made on local government reorganisation in Devon is exactly that: it will create a two-tier Devon, leaving one area behind. It has carved out three urban growth areas and dumped together all the bits that are left behind in a vast rural local authority of 100 miles from north to south with a road network equivalent to that of Luxembourg, leaving communities divided with little chance of ever being sustainable. This rural local authority has no chance of the same growth opportunities that the other ones have. This goes against everything the Prime Minister believes in about devolution being done from the ground up with the consent of communities, not from the top down from Whitehall. He told me that himself in July, so I urge the First Secretary and the Minister for Communities to listen to me, to other Devon MPs—perhaps not the Labour ones—and to the thousands of my constituents, and to review this decision.
2. Whether he has had recent discussions with the Welsh Government on the affordability of housing.
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. However, as the Minister is well aware, the Welsh Government have failed to meet their own 2021-26 social housing target. I wonder what lessons have been learned from that, and indeed from the Welsh Government’s introduction of curbs on second homes through the planning system. Surely this refreshed Government must be taking lessons from Wales and applying them across the UK as a whole.
Q6. My private Member’s Bill on community-led homes aims to help combat widening inequality in the UK. In Cornwall alone during the last decade, more than half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money has been handed out to second home owners through tax loopholes, while the housing problems of locals have got significantly worse. The planning system is fuelled by greed rather than need, allowing land value speculators simply to fill their boots while housing problems get worse. Will the Prime Minister meet me so that we can identify tools within my private Member’s Bill to empower communities to address that desperate need?
I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of changes to employer National Insurance contributions on small businesses in Hampshire. It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Barker. I am equally privileged to be joined by a number of local business owners from North East Hampshire, who are in the Public Gallery. Soaring energy costs, a business rates system in desperate need of overhaul and, perhaps the most damaging of all, a rise in employer national insurance contributions: individually, any one of those changes would be hard for a small business to absorb, but together they are too much for many small businesses across Hampshire. When a small business’s costs rise, that cost moves on to workers through stagnant wages, to customers through higher prices and to the business owners in lower profits. When the numbers simply cannot add up, the cost also moves on to local communities, through weaker local economies and hollowed out high streets. In Hampshire, where almost 98% of businesses are small businesses, that is felt by an entire county. Small businesses cannot design their way around these tax changes. A big national chain can negotiate volume discounts, restructure its human resources or draw on a financial buffer; a beauty salon in Church Crookham or a care home in Ewshot cannot. That is why 35% of small firms say that they are planning to close or significantly scale back this year, and why these changes are, in plain terms, a jobs tax. This matters because these are precisely the employers we need. The Government’s own research has warned that without urgent action, one in six young people could soon be a NEET—somebody not in education, employment or training. Hospitality, retail, personal care and customer service are the sectors facing the steepest rise in labour costs, yet they are the very sectors that traditionally give young people their first, vital experience in the world of work.
I wholeheartedly agree. That is the exact crux of the issue, and it is borne out in the data. The Bank of England decision-maker panel revealed that 46% of firms nationally have cut staff because of these changes, and that 20% have paid lower wages than planned. Nationally, small businesses account for 60% of private sector employment, so when they pull back it is not a footnote to the labour market; it is the labour market. Nowhere is that clearer than in the hair and beauty sector. Kerry Mather has run KJM Salons in Fleet for 36 years, employing around 20 people including six apprenticeships, training a new generation in a key town centre location. In the past decade, apprenticeships in the UK hair and beauty industry have dropped from nearly 19,000 to 3,000. If we are not careful, soon there will be no apprenticeships left.
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and I agree that this is a matter for Government, which, of course, is why I am raising it today. The pressure compounds, of course, where a workforce is already stretched. Vehicle repair already loses around 1,700 workers a year. The Institute of the Motor Industry says: “Protecting that workforce is not just a matter for bodyshops and garages—it is a matter for insurers, fleet operators, and ultimately for every driver who needs their vehicle repaired.” Foster and Heanes, a name that is well known in North East Hampshire for providing MOTs and repairs, sits squarely in the path of that shortfall. Where there are no staff available to repair a vehicle, the consequences ripple out to every tradesperson who needs a van back on the road and every local supply chain that depends on vehicles moving on time. In a constituency with limited bus infrastructure, the school run is also affected, because for many families there is no alternative but to use a car. As my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) have said, such business challenges are of course felt across the country. Some 69% of businesses cite employer national insurance contributions as one of the top three cost threats to UK labour market competitiveness, while business confidence has fallen—even since the market turmoil of autumn 2022, which is a really damning indictment of this policy. A quarter of firms cut back investment in the very quarter that these changes took effect, making it no surprise that growth under this Government has never once crept above 0.6%. The policy is just so hard to understand given the rhetoric used by this Government. There is talk of growth, talk of apprenticeships and talk of opportunities for young people, but the action seems to be the opposite—fewer jobs, fewer apprenticeships, less business investment and an economy that continues to stagnate. Small business owners need to understand how the Government can justify this policy. Nowhere is the policy harder to defend than in health and social care. This year alone, independent care providers have been billed an extra £940 million. Ministers point to additional social care funding, but for providers on the ground that funding is little more than a consolation prize, because the Government voted down every single Lib Dem amendment tabled in the House of Lords to exempt care and early years providers from this rise. It has landed on a sector that is already in profound crisis and that simply cannot reduce its workforce to cope. Hundreds of thousands of people are currently waiting for care, many of them stranded in hospital beds simply because the care they need is not available, which piles more strain on to the NHS. Liberal Democrat analysis found that almost 900,000 people had their request for care denied in the last financial year, while—tragically—a further 6,000 people died while waiting for their care to be approved. This policy does not simply squeeze care providers’ margins; it deepens a crisis with a real human cost. That gets to the very heart of the matter. At the centre of this situation, as local business owners in North East Hampshire have told me, are people. Good employers who pay their staff a fair wage, who train and invest in their teams and who contribute to the communities in which they operate are being squeezed to breaking point. Having barely recovered from the covid years, service and retail businesses no longer have the financial buffers they once had. That means their staff lose out not just on a pay rise but on a Christmas party or a team training day, or perhaps their equipment is not replaced as regularly or they do not get a bonus. Whatever the consequence, it is people who are impacted—the ones who this Government claim they want to support. Hampshire’s experience and the national picture are one and the same story, but none of this was inevitable. The Office for Budget Responsibility itself says that firms will pass on 60% of the higher costs, whether through reduced wages or higher prices. Coupled with five consecutive years of falling living standards, the changes to NICs are nothing short of regressive. There is no doubt that our public services need funding and that our country’s infrastructure needs urgent repair, and I am the first to call for those things, but there is a fair way to do this—and one that will not strangle the UK’s economic growth. The Government must focus on taxing those with the broadest shoulders so that they contribute more through a higher digital services tax, on overhauling the broken business rates system, on ensuring that enormous multinational corporations are paying their fair share for doing business in the UK, and on reversing the Conservatives’ banking tax cuts. Positive change is possible. The Government’s steps towards cross-party discussions on social care and the 20% cut in business rates for pubs, clubs and music venues are welcome, but we must go further. Any relief to those sectors cannot leave NICs off the table. Today and every day, I represent the brilliant North East Hampshire business community. Small businesses are the engine room of the British economy, so I call on the Government to give them the certainty they need to invest, grow and create jobs. Our businesses should be thriving, not barely surviving.
I welcome the First Secretary to her place. One area of the state that needs rewiring is support for neurodiverse people, because lots of decision makers do not get it. Will the First Secretary appoint a Minister for neurodiversity to the Cabinet Office to help ensure decision makers across the country get it and solve the challenges related to neurodivergence that they may face?
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In her opening remarks on Report of the important Representation of the People Bill, the shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), repeated—I am sure inadvertently—misinformation about family voting in the Gorton and Denton by-election, despite the fact that it was run within the law and saw me elected with an overwhelming majority, and that Greater Manchester police found no evidence of criminality. What steps can be taken to ensure that the record is properly corrected?
It is a pleasure, Ms Butler, to serve under your chairship. Clearly, Brexit has been a disaster for Britain—the sooner we acknowledge that, the better our conversations will be, because we will then be able to move forward. It has been economically disastrous. As the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) said, it has been a slow puncture; in fact, it has been a huge slow puncture, taking 4%, 6% or 8% off our GDP, which costs every household in the country enormously in real terms. It makes us all much worse off. In North Herefordshire, business owners have spoken about the additional barriers they face when trading with Europe and the admin created by the supposed reduction in bureaucracy. Brexit has been an economic disaster, but it is not just economic: environmentally, we are diverging from Europe, and in 28 areas of law, we now have weaker protection for our natural environment. Socially, politically and culturally, Brexit has been poisonous. It has catalysed and reinforced a toxic political debate, leading to polarisation, the proliferation of disinformation, political short-termism, and a discounting of the rights, opportunities and needs of young people in particular. The UK is now poorer, weaker and more isolated in a context in which we have a completely unreliable and unstable partner in the US President, and we have war on the eastern border of Europe with Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
I am sorry, but because of time I will not. We are also facing the climate crisis barrelling down towards us. All of these issues require stronger co-operation with our closest neighbours. In that context, more than 10 years on from this disastrous wrong turn in British politics—this monumental act of self-harm—it is time to change course. I welcome the noises that the Government have made about resetting. That is certainly a start, but we need to be honest about what we have lost. We need to recognise the importance of co-operation and working together politically as well as economically. We need to recognise that the majority of the British people think that we would be better off back in the European Union, and that is why I believe we need to set out a path to rejoin. The best future for the UK lies within Europe. With the summit coming up, I hope that the Minister will be genuinely ambitious and deep in setting out the path forward.
I would like to speak to amendment 15 and new clause 30, tabled in my name, and to new clauses tabled by other colleagues from across the House. First of all, I welcome the new Minister to her place and I welcome the Bill. I always like to start where there is common ground. It is certainly true that there are steps forward in the Bill: the implementation of the Rycroft recommendations to tackle foreign influence in our politics; movements towards automatic voter registration; and dealing with crypto to some extent, although not enough. Those are all positive steps forward. I also warmly welcome the introduction of votes at 16, which is a long-standing Green party policy. But—there is a big but, I am afraid, Minister—the Bill could and really should do far, far more to clean up our politics. There are three big things that we need to do: get rid of the influence of dirty and big money in our politics; eliminate the poison of disinformation in our politics; and fix the fundamental structures of our politics that disenfranchise so many people. It is therefore frankly ridiculous that in a Bill about elections called the Representation of the People Bill we are not even allowed to discuss new clause 31 on a national commission on electoral reform. This is fundamentally important to our politics. The fundamental principle of democracy is that everybody’s vote must count equally. The Government, of course, do not need to legislate on a national commission on electoral reform. They could kickstart one anyway. I really hope that the Minister will take that back to the Prime Minister—who, after all, is supposedly a supporter of electoral reform—and strongly encourage him to put his action where his mouth is on this issue and demonstrate that, if he is serious about problem-solving, he needs to work to solve the problems in our democracy.
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was speaking in relation to the title of the Bill.
I will move on to my amendments, Madam Deputy Speaker. Amendment 15 seeks to ban all corporate donations. Donations from companies are banned in France and Canada, among many other countries. According to research conducted by CenTax, about a quarter of donor companies are so opaque that it is not possible to identify who controls them, and almost £1 in every £10 given by companies comes, indirectly, from people who could not make donations themselves. This is a loophole in our politics. The Bill already accepts that a company has no independent right to donate, as it depends on the individuals who own it being on the electoral register, so it makes sense to complete the step and ban corporate donations altogether. If the House is not willing to go as far as a ban, it can still strengthen the Bill by strengthening clause 60. I have also tabled new clause 30, which calls for “a review of how campaign expenditure limits could apply on an annual basis”. The new clause would deal with another huge loophole. We recognise that money skews politics; that is why there are spending limits during the short campaign; but we know that politics does not happen just in that short period before an election. Politics happens all the year round, especially now that the online world is such a big part of our politics. Long gone are the days when elections were fought only in those short weeks. Political campaigning happens throughout the year, not just on doorsteps but also online, and it is therefore imperative to place limits on annual campaign expenditure to prevent our politics from being skewed out of all proportion by big money. That is why I support new clause 70, tabled by the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), which would lower limits for campaign spending altogether. In her new clause 120, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) makes a clear case for a cap on all donations. Big money has been allowed to skew our politics for far too long. I would prefer the cap to be much lower, perhaps at £50,000 a year, and that view is supported by the majority of the British people, but any move in that direction would be an improvement. Moreover, some donations simply should not be allowed. I welcome new clause 22, tabled by the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon): there is no place for fossil fuels in a sustainable future, and no place for dirty fossil money in our politics. I also welcome the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), particularly new clause 43, which calls for “a repository of digital political advertising”. This is absolutely crucial: we have to guard against the use of AI to fuel disinformation. We have to take big money out of politics, take the poison of disinformation out of politics, and fix our political system once and for all.
This summer, we have seen extreme heat and prolonged drought, with far too many people losing their lives in heatwaves, huge pressures on farming and many wildfires. We are unlikely to have another cooler summer than this year, and we need to be prepared for an ever-warming world. That requires a cross-Government approach. While there has been lots of talk of a No. 10 for the north—and devolution is welcome—does the First Secretary of State recognise that we could have a No. 10 for the future in the form of a climate protection unit in the Cabinet Office, which is needed to drive the cross-Government approach we must have to keep people safe?
I congratulate the First Secretary of State and welcome her to a very important role in government. I agree with a number of things that she said, particularly about strengthening the role of No. 10. However, there is a large gap in this statement on rewiring the state, and that is to do with civil service reform. There are many excellent civil servants, but I am afraid that it remains a classic 80:20 model; 20% of exceptionally good civil servants do about 80% of the work. If we are really to rewire the state, we need to look at that and not only empower that 20% to deliver more, but find savings from the headcount among the 80%. If the Secretary of State really wants to rewire the state, I urge her to grasp this nettle while she looks at the entire picture.
I welcome the right hon. Lady to her place, and I am sure that she will be very effective at this job. On the issue of wildfires, may I urge her to talk to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is putting further constraints on moorland owners? Moorland owners have traditionally undertaken controlled burning, and they are really worried at the moment that this change in DEFRA policy will make moorland areas such as the one I represent more vulnerable to wildfires in the future?
Normally when functions and roles are devolved from London to another area, we see a diminution in the capital and an increase in the area concerned. There is an obvious danger of duplication by having a No. 10 North and a No. 10 South, so will the First Secretary, whom I congratulate on her appointment, be transparent about this and agree that the public should be able to see how many people are working permanently in No. 10 North, how many are working permanently in No. 10 South, and how many are going back and forth between the two?
4. What steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to strengthen Wales’s place in the Union.
A strength of the Union is unity in diversity. Notwithstanding much progress since 2010, the last two years have seen a diminution in the number of Welsh speakers in Wales, particularly among young people. Does the Minister have a plan to nip that in the bud and stop it becoming a trend?
As a rather lone voice in this debate, I do not complain that it is not going to be a balanced debate, but somebody has to make the case.
Indeed, there are a few of us, but what we are hearing is a group of aggrieved remain supporters who have never come to terms with their grief and remain ideologically committed to rejoining. To anybody who wants to have another referendum, I do not say, “Bring it on,” because that is the last thing the public want, but I say that we would win again. When it comes down to the crunch, the British public do not want to hand back control of our laws to the European Union, and all the polls show that. If we ask them in a poll, “Do you want Westminster or Brussels to control farming policy?”, or whatever policy it is, people always vote for Westminster to maintain control.
I totally agree. Defence is a reserved matter for member states in the European Union. The European Union does not have any troops. NATO is the forum through which we operate, and it is NATO to which we should be committed, rather than setting up a rival defence organisation in the European Union. I will also point out the contributions. According to a table from the House of Commons Library, we were making a gross contribution of £16 billion or £17 billion a year, but, with the rebate, the net contribution was £9.4 billion in the last year of membership. Our latest contribution was £103 million. To all those people who advocate for rejoining or for the reset, where will the money come from? Will it come out of defence or welfare, or will there be more taxation to generate the extra revenue needed once we start making increased contributions to the European Union? There is also the myth-making. There is a myth that there were no small boats until Brexit—what rubbish. The small boats started in 2018, before we left, and by 2020 there were more than 8,500 crossings. That is not due to Brexit. The Dublin regulation was useless. It was in place during those years and it was never enforced. I will finish on the question of forecasts, which are all conjectural. They are all based on what the British economy might look like compared with a basket of other economies, including the United States, which has had a huge fiscal stimulus and an AI boom, and has more free enterprise policies. The fact is that since we left the European Union, Wolfgang Münchau, who somewhat reluctantly voted remain, has made it clear that leaving was an economic non-event. We were growing at about the same rate of France and Germany, and we still are. There has been no smashing disaster in the economy. There is a disaster in Scotland, where the SNP is campaigning against reopening the North sea and supports the high energy costs imposed by the ridiculous dash to net zero—the Government are doing that too—but the fact is that we are better off outside the EU in the long term.
Which goods does the EU charge tariffs on? The hon. Member said that it charges tariffs; which goods are they on?
There are no tariffs.
Will the hon. Member give way?
The referendum was in 2016, but all the legalities of membership of the European Union, including the Dublin convention, applied until 2021. The small boat crossings were rocketing before Brexit. They have nothing to do with it.
The question of scrutiny was raised by the Minister’s colleagues. In the absence of a European Scrutiny Committee, how is this stuff going to be scrutinised if he brings in direct applicability and direct effect of European laws?
What consideration did the hon. Member give to extending his proposed amendment to trade unions, which—a neutral observer might conclude—gave very large sums of money to the Labour party precisely to influence the Employment Rights Bill that it has now turned into law?
I, too, welcome the First Secretary of State to her place—it is great to see her back on the Treasury Bench. I also welcome the creation of the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The right hon. Lady is absolutely right that in a centralised system it was the most underpowered organisation imaginable, and it needed some turbocharging. I hope that the First Secretary will agree that rewiring has to be a process, not an event. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee will remember the great fanfare with which mission-led government was talked about a couple of years ago, before it died a rather slow, lamentable death. Can she assure us that she has both the personal energy and commitment to see this through to the end, as well as the support and resources around her in order to achieve it? I echo the call from my hon. Friend the shadow Minister about the importance of looking at quangos and arm’s length bodies, particularly within the devolution and decision-making space, because too many of them have got out of control. I also echo the point about outsourcing, because outsourcing takes away a lot of agency from local communities and individuals, and that needs to be looked at with some urgency.
At the 2024 general election, just 52% of overseas postal ballots were returned in time to be counted. That is a shocking systemic failure of our democratic process. It means that nearly half of all overseas electors who took the time to register, requested a ballot and tried to exercise their democratic right were effectively disenfranchised by international mail delays. As Members of this House, our fundamental duty is to maximise participation in the democratic system we are privileged to represent. When we look around the world at regimes where the public voice is silenced or undervalued, we must redouble our efforts to prevent a democratic deficit here at home. The amendments tabled by my Conservative colleagues offer practical, common-sense fixes to the deficit we see today, ensuring that all British citizens can partake in our great democracy and that the Representation of the People Bill lives up to its name, representing all those who belong to our nation in a fair and equal way. New clause 63 would address the core logistical bottleneck by permitting in-person voting at designated UK embassies and consulates across the globe. For British citizens who cannot rely on slow, unpredictable international postal transit, this would provide a secure and reliable alternative, allowing them to put their cross in a box on election day. It would work hand in hand with new clause 64, which would mandate a comprehensive review into overseas participation to establish best practice and expand registration. New clause 65 would introduce another simple improvement, allowing citizens to register on the electoral roll when renewing their British passport, which would dramatically boost engagement among our global community. Having rightly expanded the overseas franchise in recent years, Parliament has a moral obligation to provide the administrative infrastructure to make that right meaningful. It is deeply regrettable that the Government have failed to incorporate these practical solutions into the core text of the Bill. We will continue to champion these measures to ensure that every British citizen, wherever they live, work or serve, can make their voice heard at the ballot box.
6. What steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to support the farming sector in Wales.
The Prime Minister said yesterday that he would give back control to people over their destinies. The best way he could do that for farmers in Wales and across the United Kingdom is to reverse the family farm tax. Will the ministerial team advocate for that?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. These regulations make necessary amendments to Northern Ireland’s legislation governing plant health, seeds, seed potatoes and plant propagating material and ensure that it operates in accordance with the Windsor framework. Maintaining strong plant health protections is essential to safeguarding Northern Irish growers, Northern Irish food security and the natural environment. An outbreak of a serious pest or disease could have devastating consequences for agricultural production and rural businesses across Northern Ireland. Plant health legislation is included under article 5(4) of the Windsor framework. The amendments in these draft regulations ensure that DEFRA has the necessary powers to enforce the plant health rules applying in Northern Ireland. They update prohibited lists of plants and pests, phytosanitary controls that govern the movement of plants for planting and other objects and conditions in relation to planting material and requirements for reporting and disposing of infected material. The instrument also removes provisions relating to movements between Great Britain and Northern Ireland that are no longer applicable, introduces a GB-NI code for official labelling and makes several technical corrections. These are important protections and the official Opposition will not be opposing the amendments laid today. It is right that DAERA possesses the powers that it needs to enforce the rules properly and to act where non-compliance is identified. However, we do have some concerns. The Minister mentioned that no public consultation was undertaken on these amendments, but while DAERA and DEFRA engaged with key stakeholders, it is important to note that Northern Irish growers, seed potato producers and other affected businesses must also have a meaningful opportunity to make their views heard. Therefore, I would like to understand from the Minister if a level of engagement was had with those growers and organisations involved in that sector. Will the Minister identify which organisations, if any, DEFRA engaged with? The Government have not produced a full impact assessment or established specific monitoring arrangements because the regulatory requirements already apply in Northern Ireland. They may already apply, but that does not necessarily mean that they impose no cost or administrative burden to businesses. Could the Minister assure us today that any unforeseen costs or practical difficulties will be identified and addressed, particularly if they could disrupt the movement of plant and seed potatoes between Great Britain and Northern Ireland? The official Opposition will not oppose these regulations. Strong and enforceable plant health protections are essential, and these amendments will provide DAERA with the powers it needs to protect Northern Ireland from dangerous pests and disease. However, regulations introduced under the Windsor framework must be accompanied by meaningful engagement, proper democratic scrutiny and close attention to their impact and practical consequences. While not opposing these amendments, we seek clarity from the Minister today around the assurances on consultation with stakeholders and the protection of trade within the United Kingdom.
Further to a similar online petition of more than 4,200 signatures, I present this petition on local government reorganisation in Devon. The plans published in July by the Government appear to have been configured entirely to benefit the urban areas of Plymouth, Exeter and Torbay, and call into question service delivery, local democracy, and local identity across the county’s rural communities. Arguably there is no conceivable way that it can result in growth in every postcode. As a result I welcome the Prime Minister’s agreement yesterday to revisit the current plan, and my hope is that the strength of feeling shown by residents in South West Devon, south Devon, and across the county, will result in a meeting with Ministers to discuss a way forward that benefits the whole county, with local services that we can all be proud of, and that do not create a two-tier Devon of urban versus rural. Following is the full text of the petition: [The petition of residents of the constituency of South West Devon and the surrounding area, Declares that the Government's proposals for the reorganisation of local government in the county of Devon have not adequately taken account of local viewpoints; further declares that it will lead to a democratic deficit for rural areas, introduces a rural council area that is too large to effectively administer, will lead to a disparity between total council tax bills for rural compared to urban areas as parish precepts will continue to be charged for rural areas, will result in the prioritisation of urban needs over those of rural areas, and will represent a loss of identity for long-established rural communities. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to abandon its plans for local government reorganisation in the county of Devon. And the petitioners remain, etc.] [P003232]
I welcome the Minister to her position. I know that many people, not only on the Government side, but on the Opposition side of the House, will be delighted that she has been made a Minister. Can I just challenge her a bit further, or ask for her guidance, on the moratorium point? The Government intend for the Electoral Commission to have strengthened powers to try to tackle the regulatory regime that will be created by the moratorium, but does the Minister not share my concern that if those responsibilities are not enshrined and given to the Electoral Commission in the correct way, this issue will not be as solved as we would want it to be?
Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?
Seeing as this is my amendment, I think I am allowed to intervene to speak on it. I welcome the shadow Secretary of State to her position, and I know she will agree that the reason why we tabled this amendment was that the Green party’s leaflet said, “Punish the Labour party for Gaza—vote Green.” It has every right to say that, although I would argue that it is divisive, but can I assist the shadow Secretary of State by saying, in response to the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), that it is Conservative party policy not to produce election literature in a language other than English during the short campaign, and that the Conservative campaign headquarters dismissed some of our candidates for doing so?
Order.