Sammy Wilson: ...under the state aid rules. Lest people think that this is just an issue for Northern Ireland—they may say, “Well, tough! That was what happened with Brexit.”—let me say that this is the elephant in the room and the issue has not been addressed in this Bill. Those state aid rules apply to trade between Northern Ireland and the Union, but any subsidies to a firm that operates through...
Pat Catney: ...the legislation passed as soon as possible, and I thank the Minister for bringing it forward. Other Members have stated how important it is that the legislation be passed. Some have called it the elephant in the room. I was elected here about four years ago, and, for three years, this place sat empty. That was not my choice. Rather, it was forced on me. A lot of legislation is being passed...
Holly Lynch: ...local service providers. This is a double blow, coming at exactly the wrong time for families and for the economy. Universal credit is an in-work benefit, and the prevalence of low-paid work is the elephant in the room here. I have long campaigned for an end to the youth rates of the minimum wage, which devalue work undertaken by young people. The Labour party would put a stop to that...
Mike Penning: ...going to get is a refurbished Victorian hospital in the middle of Watford. That is not the answer. The trusts need to do what they are told. I will touch on one other area—dementia—which is the elephant in the room, and which my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) mentioned. There is a lottery for our constituents and our loved ones when we are trying to sort out the...
Kevin Stewart: ...make it easier for people to find and apply for roles in care. We are also issuing targeted communications to nursing and social work students to encourage them to join the workforce. However, the elephant in the room—if anybody wants to talk about this to any care providers, please do so—is the amount of staff who have left because of Brexit and folk returning to their home nations....
Joanne Bunting: ...to see the Minister nodding when Mr Weir also referenced that. For me, however, what is most significant about the modern slavery provisions of the Bill is how clause 16 highlights something of an elephant in the room. The 2015 Act, as proposed to be amended by the Bill, would still address only statutory support for victims during the period when they are in the national referral...
Craig Hoy: ...killer was ravaging our care homes and indiscriminately killing our friends and family members. The stakes were simply too high not to take unprecedented action. However, let us not dodge the elephant in the room. No liberal Conservative such as I am would have handed those fundamental freedoms to the state in any other circumstance or on a never-ending basis. The question that we must...
Toby Perkins: ...Mansfield (Ben Bradley) for securing the debate because it is an incredibly important one. I enjoyed the case he made for the need for investment and focusing that on Toton. However, there was an elephant in the room during his speech and that is HS2. I do not believe that the plans he outlined are credible without HS2. He seemed to be making the case that the infrastructure can happen...
Ben Lake: ...framework that treats each nation as an equal partner in our climate efforts. The scheme has brought coherence to one element of our combined efforts to achieve net zero. There is, of course, room for improvement. I draw the Minister’s attention to concerns expressed by the Green Finance Observatory: “The elephant in the room is that offsets are fundamentally not about mitigating...
Michelle O'Neill: ...Minister Simon Coveney, and maybe the Taoiseach as well, raised the issue of the protocol, and rightly so; they were speaking about current political developments. It would have been to ignore the elephant in the room for it not to be mentioned at a summit of that nature, given the implications that Brexit has on our people, our economy and wider society. It was appropriate that it was...
Stewart Dickson: ...Northern Ireland has fallen dramatically behind on mental health care. What engagement has the Minister had with the mental health strategy developed by the youth mental health steering committee's Elephant in the Room project and the specific recommendations that it made on mental health and young people?
Baroness Mallalieu: ...election after all that effort—and the result we know. Of 100 rural seats that Labour held under Tony Blair, only 17 remain now. Yet under successive Governments, nothing has been done about the elephant in the room—and I am sorry to say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, that I do not agree. In this country, every year, 40 million farm animals are slaughtered without...
Alexander Stafford: ...carbon. In the strategy that is hopefully coming up, we need nature-based solutions and, potentially, carbon capture and storage. That needs to be at the heart of the strategy. We cannot ignore the elephant in the room: there is oil still in electric vehicles. I commend the Minister for the work the Government have already done on critical minerals and hydrogen. However, without further...
Peter Grant: ...of the Financial Conduct Authority in relation purely to LCF. If the Government constantly remind us that the sale of mini-bonds was not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, surely the elephant in the room is: why on earth not? The Government will, I know, refer to the principle of caveat emptor. It is correct that anyone making an investment has a responsibility to ensure that...
Daniel Zeichner: ...to give direction and mission, which has been ducked by this House, will inevitably have crept in during that process. To some extent, as the shadow Secretary of State picked up, there has been an elephant in the room in our discussion. During the entire process of discussing the Bill, there has been a background rumble of unhappiness in the research community as we have seen some of the...
Sinéad McLaughlin: ..., while its Ministers here in the North say, "Nothing to see here. Let us just carry on as normal." Last week, I was accused of politicking and electioneering. I make no apology for calling out the elephant in the room. The SDLP has no interest in blocking allocations that are much needed, but we have consistently raised concerns, inside and outside government, about this Budget. The SDLP...
Mike Nesbitt: ...it for that imaginative thinking. I should also declare an interest in that Trevor Ringland and I were colleagues during the 2010 general election campaign. I wondered whether that would be the elephant in the room, but Mr Sheehan said quite clearly that he does not want a unionist representing him. The only problem that I have with that is that what we have here is a consociational...
Baroness Fox of Buckley: ...their mission to serve all audiences in the face of increased competition” from streaming services “and changing viewing habits.” This could identify the wrong problem, and it ignores the elephant in the room. There is a serious issue of broadcasters failing to serve all audiences, but I do not think it has much to do with video on demand. There is a much more profound identity...
Baroness Ludford: ...the European Union. But the Queen’s Speech was even worse in making no reference to Europe at all. There was mention only of the Gulf, Africa and the Indo-Pacific. The EU was the unacknowledged elephant in the room and merited only a sentence or two in the Minister’s introduction. Perhaps that explains why the Government’s European policy is in such a poor state, with hostility being...
...will criminalise trespass at a time when many of those who resort to and reside on unauthorised encampments have nowhere else to go, the reason that being site provision, an elderly but enormous elephant in the room, has not been addressed since 1960, when the Government and Parliament of the day introduced the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, which closed the commons. A...
