Conservative Party Chairman Kevin Hollinrake has denied reports that senior Tories Grant Shapps and Penny Mordaunt are being blocked from standing as party candidates over their stance on the European Convention on Human Rights and net zero, insisting the party remains a “broad church”.
Speaking to GB News, Mr Hollinrake was challenged by presenter Ellie Costello over reports that both figures have been blocked because neither backs leaving the ECHR or scrapping net zero targets. “These are big names in your party. Is the Tory Party no longer a broad church?” she asked.
“I don’t think that reporting is accurate, and we don’t discuss individual cases,” Mr Hollinrake said. “On Penny Mordaunt, Kemi’s set out clearly that the reporting is wrong. She hasn’t been blocked.”
He argued that asking candidates to commit to leaving the ECHR did not narrow the party. “Given the situation with small boats crossing the Channel, and our ability to protect veterans or deport foreign criminals, when you’ve got the rule of lawyers stopping us, you’ve got to act,” he said. Net zero, he added, was “not about being a climate change denier” but about the unaffordability of hitting the 2050 target when UK businesses would pay far more for energy than foreign competitors. “There are key things we need to do right now, because the country is in crisis in certain areas,” he said.
The interview also saw Mr Hollinrake clash with presenter Alex Armstrong over the Conservatives’ housebuilding record, after Labour and Reform both set out new social housing policies, with the Government pledging 70,000 social and affordable homes over the next decade and Reform promising to prioritise British-born workers under 35.
Mr Hollinrake argued both plans relied on borrowing that would mean higher taxes. “We don’t know how Andy Burnham is going to fund his programme, it’s all been backloaded until after the spending review,” he said. “Reform’s plans set out more borrowing, or forcing pension funds to invest, and pension funds have a difficult enough job providing good returns for their members.”
When Mr Hollinrake said the Conservatives had built record numbers of homes in office, Mr Armstrong pushed back, arguing Britain had needed something like ten million homes over the past decade and had built only a few million. “You can choose your own opinions, but you can’t choose your own facts,” Mr Hollinrake replied. “Net additions of homes during our time in office were the highest in 50 years, higher even than the 1970s.”
On tax, Mr Hollinrake was asked whether an early election should be called if the Prime Minister raises income tax or taxes on working people, after Andy Burnham declined to rule out rises in the Autumn Budget. “There are ways of funding defence and cutting taxes, but that’s got to come from cutting the cost of government, reducing welfare and the civil service, and reinstating the two-child benefit cap,” he said. “All of which we’ve set out plans to do, worth around £50 billion a year. But what we always see from a Labour Prime Minister is increased taxes, whether on your home through council tax, or capital gains tax.”
Pressed on whether Britain should incentivise childbirth after Singapore’s Prime Minister announced a family support package worth around £40,000 for a family of three, Mr Hollinrake rejected the idea. “Tying that to the benefits system is totally the wrong thing to do,” he said. “The way to get people to have more children is to get the economy growing again. If people feel positive about their lives, their jobs, their businesses, they’re more likely to have children.”
He also rejected the idea that Conservative governments had relied on mass immigration to fill skills gaps from falling birth rates. “We’ve got nine million people of working age not working, and we want to get them back to work by reforming welfare, so you’re no longer paying cash benefits to people with milder mental health conditions, for example ADHD or mild anxiety,” he said.
Mr Hollinrake was also asked about Ukraine’s decision to give Britain access to Russian intelligence to help protect the UK from Russian aggression. “It’s very important that we collaborate with Ukraine in any way that’s helpful to them,” he said. “We were the first country to provide military support, even before Putin invaded, and if we hadn’t, we’d likely now be seeing Putin in Kyiv looking for further targets.”