Desmond Swayne MP: speeches

Speeches

• 26 Feb 2025 · High Street Businesses · Hansard source

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  Josh Fenton-Glynn, you have two minutes.

• 26 Feb 2025 · High Street Businesses · Hansard source

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  Order.

• 26 Feb 2025 · High Street Businesses · Hansard source

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  We will start with an informal limit of five minutes.

• 26 Feb 2025 · High Street Businesses · Hansard source

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  I call Steve Darling. Five minutes, please.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Future Skills Programmes: Universities · Hansard source

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  Sir Ed Davey will move the motion and the Minister will respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Future Skills Programmes: Universities · Hansard source

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  Order. Interventions should be brief.

• 24 Feb 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  Does the Secretary of State regret recanting the views he originally expressed in assessing Trump? When the time is right—it is certainly not any time now—can I urge him to consider following the example of Archbishop Cranmer by plunging the offending hand first into the flame?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Chagos Islands · Hansard source

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  Given that what the Minister has told the House today is so at variance with the report from the Prime Minister of Mauritius, surely it rings alarm bells in his mind about the nature of the polity and the individuals with whom he is negotiating—and has he entirely lost his moral compass? The Government are considering taxing death-in-service benefits of our servicemen while at the same time contemplating spending £18 billion on saving a base that we already own.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Renewable Energy: Workers’ Rights · Hansard source

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  Can the Minister assure the House that her ambitions for renewable energy can be achieved without Chinese slave labour?

• 3 Feb 2025 · Employers: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  The ambition of the Secretary of State for an 80% employment level is bound to be made more difficult by the findings in the impact assessment of the Employment Rights Bill, which foresees a £5.4 billion increase in costs and a 53% increase in strike action, is it not?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  May I put it to the hon. Gentleman that the opposite is the case? Our system requires coalitions to be formed. Political parties are broad coalitions in order to overcome that disadvantage and get over the electoral hurdle. In systems that are proportional, parties can secure electoral representation and be much more choosy about their ideological base, in the expectation that they will still get sufficient parliamentary representation. As a consequence, parties make their coalitions after an election, stitched up around a programme that nobody voted for.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  May I interrupt this community lovefest, and ask my hon. Friend to reflect on the experience of Israel, where tiny religious parties are perpetually in government, exercising disproportionate influence and influencing policy in a way that is at variance with the wishes of the majority?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Industrial Strategy · Hansard source

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  Why is it that the Government’s energy policy is driving uncompetitive energy costs in absolutely the wrong direction? Sir Jim Ratcliffe has pointed out that the principal threat to any strategy is actually the uncompetitive costs for those enterprises that will have to populate it.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  These are very substantial sums. A water company in my region was fined £100 million the year before last. It is vital that these amounts go to our chalk streams, which are in desperate need of them.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Extremism Review · Hansard source

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  The repudiation of the contents of this report is a step back from thought crime, but the danger remains of two steps towards it. Is it not outrageous when individuals are harassed by the police when they have not broken the law?

• 28 Jan 2025 · Road Safety: Young Drivers · Hansard source

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  I call Alison Bennett, spokesperson for the Lib Dems.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Road Safety: Young Drivers · Hansard source

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  There will be a three-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Road Safety: Young Drivers · Hansard source

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  Order. I call Jim Shannon.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Road Safety: Young Drivers · Hansard source

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  Before I call Julia Buckley, I wish to make a short statement. I have been advised that she wishes to raise relevant cases that are not currently sub judice but have been subject to a completed police investigation and a coroner inquest. Caution must be exercised by any Member wishing to raise the specifics of relevant cases.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Road Safety: Young Drivers · Hansard source

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  I am afraid I must reduce the time limit to a formal two-minute limit.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Southport Attack · Hansard source

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  But the information released shortly before the trial did not collapse the case. Had it been released in August, it might have had a dampening effect on those unhelpful voices on social media, might it not?

• 27 Jan 2025 · Fiscal Policy: Defence Spending · Hansard source

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  It was the Minister’s assessment of costs that drove the decision to decommission Bulwark and Albion. But if the Brazilians are going to buy them, they cannot have been that bad, can they?

• 23 Jan 2025 · Attorney General’s Office: Conflicts of Interest · Hansard source

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  Sections 46 and 47 of the legacy Act enjoyed unanimous support in both this House and the other place. It is the Government’s choice to repeal those sections that has raised the question before us today and opened up the possibility of compensating Gerry Adams, isn’t it?

• 22 Jan 2025 · Competition and Markets Authority Chairman · Hansard source

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  What will be the impact on growth of a record number of millionaires having left the UK since the Budget?

• 21 Jan 2025 · Servicing Government Debt · Hansard source

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  The Chancellor’s increased demand for Government borrowing drives up its price and crowds out investment by productive private enterprises, doesn’t it? [Hon. Members: “No.”]