Isle of Wight East Conservative MP, Joe Robertson, has spoken from the despatch box of the House of Commons for the first time. Speaking in his Shadow role for Culture, Media and Sport, which includes charities, Joe spoke on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition – the Conservatives’ formal role in Parliament after losing the General Election in July.
Mr Robertson is the first of the new intake of 26 Conservative MPs to make a speech from the Opposition dispatch box which faces the Government on the left of the Speaker’s chair. It is where Kemi Badenoch faces Keir Starmer each week during Prime Minister’s Question Time.
Responding to backbench Private Members Bill
The East Wight MP was responding to a backbench Private Members Bill, brought by Liberal Democrat Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife). The Bill seeks to abolish the limit on the money charities can raise through conducting their own lotteries.
The biggest and best-known example of a charity lottery is the People’s Postcode Lottery and Mr Robertson named the Isle of Wight as an area that had benefitted from its fundraising activity. The National Lottery is not subject to the financial limits placed on charity lotteries by the Gambling Act.
Call for Government to do more to support charities
While speaking, Mr Robertson who previously worked for Dementia UK, took the opportunity to urge the Government to do more to support charities generally to “compensate” them for the £1.4 billion it is estimated they will lose annually from the increase in employer National Insurance Contributions as set out in the Government’s Budget in October.
Joe Robertson MP said,
“The Government knows that [the rise of employers’ National Insurance] will damage the public services that charities deliver.
“That is why they exempted the NHS, but they provided no such exemption for charities delivering health and social care, charities supporting people who need housing, charities trying to lift people out of poverty, charities trying to cure disease, and charities supporting victims of violence against women and girls.”
News shared by the office of Joe Robertson, in their own words. Ed
