Robbie Moore

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1. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

   Budget Resolutions

   The Chancellor’s big phrase in this Budget has been “breathing space”. It has been said time and again, but it is utterly false, because the Chancellor has not given businesses any breathing space at all. There is no breathing space <span id="672" class="column-number" data-column-number="672"></span>on employer national insurance. Labour’s job tax stays exactly where it is, punishing employers for yet another year. There is no breathing space on wages. The national living wage has actually gone up by 3.9% from April, on top of the Employment Rights Act 2025, with nothing announced to help employers meet the costs. Even the Office for Budget Responsibility warns that these policies will seriously damage job creation in this country. There has been no real breathing space on business rates. The Chancellor says that he is freezing business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure in real terms, but the British Retail Consortium has rightly pointed out that this is just “smoke and mirrors”. This is not breathing space at all. This is our businesses being stifled yet again by this Labour Government. I ask the Minister: what are their ambitions for British businesses? It seems evident from this Budget that they do not have any. They are taxing our British businesses again and again. All this matters because it is impacting my constituency, which is full of hard-working people. I think of the independent shops on Cavendish Street and Low Street fighting to keep Keighley a thriving place, as well as the cafés, boutiques and family businesses on the Grove and Brook Street in Ilkley, and those businesses right across Silsden, Steeton and Riddlesden and our wider area who are working incredibly hard. The pubs, the tradespeople, the hairdressers, the start-ups—they are all hard-working people, yet this Government think that employers in those small independent businesses are not workers. They put out that narrative as if those employers need to be taxed more. Let me tell the House about one of those businesses, which I visited just yesterday. The Turkey Inn in Goose Eye is a pub that is much loved by locals and visitors alike, and I called in there last night to have a meal. The owners of that pub are grafters. They produce excellent food that is second to none and they support our local community with many local activities. They do everything right, working day in, day out to support the community, but yesterday, on the back of this Budget, they announced that they were cutting their opening hours from seven days a week to just four, and they were clear about why. In their own words, they said: “With no measures in the budget to help small hospitality businesses and local pubs like ours, we must take this step”. That is the verdict not of a politician or of a Labour think-tank but of hard-working people in my constituency who have been impacted by this third Labour Budget. The Turkey Inn is not alone. I speak to pubs and small independent businesses every single week in my constituency and they are telling me the same thing. Labour is not on the side of our hard-working businesses, and that is impacting them. This Labour Budget has not provided any breathing space at all. This Government must wake up and listen to our small and medium-sized businesses, who are the backbone of our communities and our local economies, because they are pushing them to breaking point. If the Government do not wake up and listen, I fear for all of them. A simple policy of tax, tax, tax on our businesses with more regulation is stifling those businesses, not helping them thrive.

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2. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

   High Streets: Vape Shops and Barber Shops

   <Question HRSContentId="{DD04D927-7200-4D74-9529-67ED14E43567}">11. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{ED844246-D649-4CC7-8640-9C49024A8DCE}">What assessment she has made of the adequacy of powers available to councils to stop the opening of vape and barber shops on high streets.</QuestionText> </Question>

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3. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

   High Streets: Vape Shops and Barber Shops

   This year alone West Yorkshire trading standards has raided 20 premises in Keighley, seizing illegal and counterfeit goods, and yet residents watch those same dodgy shops reopen within days. Our local trading standards has received well over 3,000 intelligence reports about dodgy shops such as minimarts, vape shops, takeaways and barbers, with reports linked to money laundering, drug supplying, modern slavery and illegal working—and that is just within Keighley. Despite the Government’s rhetoric of wanting to take a tough stance on this issue, why was West Yorkshire trading standards not included in the latest round of funding to support local trading standards with law enforcement action against organised criminal activity? Will the Minister look to resolve this issue?

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4. 29 Oct 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

   Business of the House

   Across Keighley and Ilkley, we constantly see large discarded nitrous oxide canisters, many of them on the side of the road. They are clearly being used illegally by drivers and others. This creates major concerns about road safety, as well as littering, and it is left to organisations such as Litter Free Ilkley to pick the canisters up. There is a clear link to safety and a safety threat from driving under the influence of nitrous oxide, but detection in the body is still difficult for police. May we have a debate in Government time to address that, and on bringing out much stricter controls on the purchase of canisters?

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5. 22 Oct 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

   UK-EU Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement

   The EU summit is to take place in just 28 days’ time, but the Farming Minister cannot answer key questions, not just from us but from our farming community. We still have no confirmation that the precision breeding Act—widely recognised as a huge success—will be 100% protected. We have no reassurance that our current freedom to innovate in gene editing and bovine TB vaccine development will be a red line, and we have no acknowledgment that the alignment with the EU on plant protection products could slash £810 million from farming incomes in the first year alone. What guarantees can the Farming Minister give our farmers right now that this Labour Government will not sell them out to the EU, just like they sold out our British fishermen last May when they previously negotiated with Brussels?

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6. 22 Oct 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

   Business of the House

   Skipton Road in Ilkley is being dug up yet again—I think for the fourth time this year—by Yorkshire Water. The biggest frustration for many of those who pass by is that there is seemingly no one ever undertaking the works when the traffic lights are on red. Can we have a debate in Government time that puts pressure on the highways departments at local authorities, such as Bradford council, to ensure that they sign off the works with a proper plan in place to cause as little disruption as possible to visitors, residents and local businesses whose trade is impacted, and that when utility companies do undertake the works, they do so around the clock?

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7. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

   Support for Farmers

   Yesterday, the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), and I were once again out and about in the fields, talking to our hard-working farmers, this this time in Newbury. We spoke to them about the many hardships they face at the hands of this Labour Government. Week after week, from farm to farm, the message is the same: farmers are exhausted; they are worried; and they feel incredibly betrayed by this Labour Government. They do not feel that the Government are on their side or value the work that they are doing. They feel that the Government have turned their back on rural Britain. I welcome the debate, because it gives us an opportunity to say out loud in the House what every farmer in the country already knows: on Labour’s watch, it is our hard-working farming families who are paying the price. Let me begin by addressing the fiasco that has been the sustainable farming incentive. As I said in this place just last week, I cannot stress enough how badly the SFI has been mishandled under this Labour Government—it has been a complete and utter debacle—and once again our hard-working farming families are the ones suffering. Let there be no doubt: this did not come out of the blue; there were plenty of warnings. The Government, having closed the scheme in March 2025, caused chaos, huge anxiety and additional financial pressure for our farmers.

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8. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

   Support for Farmers

   What Government Members do not seem to understand is that when a highly sought-after scheme is closed, which is exactly what happened under this Labour Government in March 2025, demand inevitably builds up. That was coupled with the budget being reduced significantly. There was 18 months of this Government sitting on their hands, enabling demand to build. What was the result? When the scheme finally opened, it became a competitive scheme. On this Labour Government’s watch, it was “first come, first served”; those who got in were those who could press “send” the fastest. This Labour Government knew what the consequences would be, as was reported in <em>The Times</em> yesterday, but they carried on regardless. The result: approximately 40,000 farmers tried to get into the scheme, but only 12,200 were successful. The application window was slammed shut after just five and a half hours, all because the money had gone. Last week, I stood in this Chamber and asked the Farming Minister very simple questions, but there were no answers. I will try again, so that he can address these in his summing up. The expiring agreements were worth more than £520 million, yet the SFI budget was cut to just £310 million. Where has the additional £210 million <span id="1197" class="column-number" data-column-number="1197"></span>gone? It is vital that clarity and reassurance be given to our farmers. When will the Minister open SFI27? It is not good enough to say, “As soon as possible”; we need clarity. What will the Minister do for those who have agreements that are expiring, to stop the cliff edge in their cash flow? What budget has the Minister set aside for SFI27? We must all remember that this situation comes on top of the Government’s disastrous decision to reduce de-linked payments dramatically, far more quickly than was ever agreed, to a measly £600 per farming business. I suspect that it costs the Government more in administrative charges to distribute those payments than it benefits each farming holding. Our farming businesses now feel the pain, financially and emotionally, as they struggle with their cash flow. SFI is not some isolated incident; it is part of a pattern. Before Labour broke the SFI scheme, it crushed the family farm with its disastrous family farm and family business tax. Before the election, those on the Government Benches looked farmers in the eye and told them that they had no plans to change agricultural property relief and business property relief. In Labour’s very first Budget, which was its first opportunity to show rural communities up and down the country that it cared and understood them, it did not. It brought out the family farm and family business tax—a vindictive tax that strikes family farming businesses at their worst moment. Each and every Labour MP who voted again last week to keep the family farm and family business tax should be ashamed of themselves. The narrative is, rightly, that there has been a partial U-turn—the threshold at which the tax applies has been raised from £1 million to £2.5 million—but that simply does not go far enough. Now, bizarrely, a person’s marital status can raise the threshold to £5 million. That seems ridiculous. Once the farmland, the farmhouse, the growing crops, the stocks, the machinery, the crops in store and the livestock have been valued, the value of a traditional farming business will be well above the £2.5 million threshold. That exposes any hard-working family farming business to an inheritance tax liability that they simply will not be able to afford. This was completely ill thought through. That brings me to the Liberal Democrat motion before us, which only states that they regret “the Government’s changes to Agricultural Property Relief”. It makes no reference to business property relief. I thought that we were aligned on this issue, but clearly we are not. Many farming businesses rely heavily on business property relief. It covers trading assets not covered by agricultural property relief, including machinery, livestock, harvested crops and any rural diversification projects, including farm shops and holiday lets, so I am incredibly surprised that the Lib Dems do not also regret the Government’s changes to business property relief.

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9. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

   Support for Farmers

   This is a Liberal Democrat Opposition day debate. The Liberal Democrats have had many opportunities to prepare for it, but their motion excludes a crucial issue: business property relief. I take the hon. Member at his word when he says that the Liberal Democrats are also concerned about the impact that business property relief will have on many of our farming businesses, but given the huge impact the issue has, I am very surprised that it is not included in their motion. Let me be clear: the Conservatives absolutely regret the continued roll-out of both the family farm tax and the family business tax, and we will continue to demand that the Government scrap both and put back in place the 100% relief on APR and BPR. On behalf of our farmers, our growers and our wider agricultural sector, we urge the Government to ensure that the Prime Minister does the right thing next week in the Budget and axes the family farm tax and family business tax.

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10. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

    Support for Farmers

    My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He is completely right to outline the impact of the statutory instrument that was voted on just this week, which all Conservative Members voted against. I was just about to come on to the point that this does not stop with the family farm and family business tax. As if the dramatic drop in de-linked payments, the SFI debacle and the family farm and family business tax were not enough, from 1 January next year Labour will hit farmers with yet another tax—the fertiliser tax—through the carbon border adjustment mechanism. Industry warns that this new fertiliser tax could pile up a further £75 a tonne, if not more, on current fertiliser prices. This is simply unfeasible. It adds an additional cost to many of our farmers at a time when they are already being pushed to breaking point. The fertiliser tax should not have been introduced, and the Conservatives voted against it last week.

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