David Honeyford: .... However, the focus should be on how we deliver, rather than on a randomly plucked figure. The motion leaves us none the wiser. It has to be about delivery, not words. I will start by getting the elephant out of the room. The line: "addressing the needs of businesses and employers", is interesting coming from the party that campaigned and voted for Brexit, and therefore for trade...
Gillian Martin: ...have been made by Labour colleagues today. Liam McArthur spoke about the need for substantial investment in the grid. I fully agree with him. However, as Ivan McKee and Bob Doris pointed out, the elephant in the room is that successive UK Governments have wasted the revenue from the oil and gas sector in Scotland. I feel slightly sorry for Douglas Lumsden today. At around midday, the wind...
Gerry Carroll: ...of the DUP's boycott of the Assembly, which was self-serving and wrought untold misery on people across the North. However, today's motion about reform of the Assembly fails to address the real elephant in the room: that these institutions, built and run on the basis of communal designation and division, will always be prone to instability. When the Good Friday Agreement was signed, a...
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: ...Parkinson, said. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on this occasion, when I can agree with almost everything she says. It is 176 pages, but it does not address the elephant in the room, which is not foreign ownership of newspapers and media outlets. The elephant in the room is foreign Governments being able to own media outlets, including newspapers. My...
Andrew Bridgen: ...of blood pressure, as well as improvements in medical care. Although I am grateful to the hon. Member for Watford for securing this debate, and to the other Members who will contribute, there is an elephant in the room—indeed, there are so few speakers that there is probably room for a herd of elephants. Why has there been a significant uptick in cardiac deaths in recent years? What...
Ivan McKee: ...on NHS Scotland’s opportunity to recruit from the rest of Europe—and it also brings into stark focus the Lib Dems’ position. The motion recognises the problem with recruitment; however, the elephant in the room is the Lib Dems’ volte-face or about-turn on their position on Brexit, which speaks to their inability to maintain consistency in such matters. The Scottish National Party...
Alan Brown: ...of the projects that UK Governments have had responsibility for and failed to deliver properly, and illustrate just how much that has cost the taxpayer. First, I should probably address a possible elephant in the room. Mr Deputy Speaker, you may well have heard that the Scottish Government have had issues over the delivery of two new ferries. This story seems to have been in the news every...
Lord Addington: ..., it should be the oldest child. There cannot be any real disagreement about that. If you think it is important, that is what you do. The by-elections are always in the background: they are the elephant in the room—except that this elephant is now trumpeting quite loudly. If we had this, we might actually get, for however random the peerage is, women standing. That would slightly...
Sarah Dyke: ...25 years. The cost of care in Somerset rose by 47% between 2022 and 2023, and the number of people needing more care is rising. That equates to a £70 million increase in council costs. There is an elephant in the room almost identical in size to the cost of living crisis that people face right now: fair funding from the Government to allow councils to get the basics right and give local...
Hywel Williams: ...inadequacy of the Barnett formula is so acute. To take the case of junior doctors’ pay, which I raised earlier, Plaid Cymru’s Health and Social Care spokesman, Mabon ap Gwynfor, said: “The elephant in the room is that Wales is not fairly funded, meaning we’re unable to pay our public sector workers what they deserve.” I have a question for the Minister, which I will repeat from...
David Linden: ...debate favours and at what cost. Who are the winners and losers? I appreciate that, in the cosy consensus of Westminster, talking about the royal family is not often appreciated, but there is an elephant in the room here: there is no inheritance tax for the royal family. Indeed, recently, the King, following his mother’s passing away, benefited enormously from inheriting the Duchy of...
Andrew Bridgen: ...not believe that this trend in excess deaths will stop any time soon; in fact, I think it will continue and that the concern from our constituents will only escalate. The Minister talked about the elephant in the room: the vaccine harms. It is that bad, and it is going to get that bad, that apparently even the elephant in the room has died suddenly. The Minister could sort all this out if...
...that the commercial environment has in it. Accounts is a big area, and it would be immensely helpful to have more involvement all round from accountants. I will not say accountants are the elephant in the room, as that would be a discourteous metaphor. They are the people who are never seen in tribunals. They are the people who do not speak loudly to Committees such as these. Yet, service...
...on a system that we all agree is immensely outdated and needs to go. There is no mention anywhere in the Bill of our long-term vision of achieving commonhold. That is our vision, and it is the elephant in the room. The Bill does not even mention commonhold and how we can move towards it. A peppercorn ground rent would massively change the playing field and help us to move towards our...
Drew Hendry: ..., and the Bill is full of such measures. On clause 1, during the autumn statement I welcomed this move, but it does little to deal with the damage to business that has been caused by the big grey elephant in the room that none of the parties wishes to mention, which is Brexit. Far from the ideal of removing red tape and decreasing bureaucracy, as we have heard thrown about in this Chamber,...
Baroness Chakrabarti: ...that established the declaration and the subsequent treaties, to which the noble Baroness referred, that were always intended to protect its values with binding law. It is not so much the elephant in the room as the woolly mammoth in your Lordships’ Chamber. It is a post-fact instrument of post-truth politics, literally seeking to alter an evidential reality unanimously found by our...
Shabana Mahmood: ...what lies behind it: the prison capacity crisis. If prisons in this country were not at crisis point, I doubt the Government would have proposed the Bill. The prisons crisis is very much the elephant in the room, and something that the Government are loth to discuss in detail—I notice it did not feature in the Secretary of State’s opening remarks—not least because, I imagine, they do...
Jim McMahon: ...hon. Friend on the impact he is making on an important issue that affects almost every community in the country. I am glad that he has taken such a robust line on the regulator, because it is the elephant in the room. We have focused our fire on the Government because they have failed and on the water companies because they have taken money and failed, but the regulators have failed as...
Stephen Kerr: ...Courier last Saturday, the farmer, Andrew Steel, said: “Species such as golden eagles and beavers were all eradicated for a reason because they are vermin to the farmers. In my opinion, the white elephant in the room today is that the SNP went into coalition with the Green Party to run the country. How can you actually run the country with statements”—
Jonathan Edwards: ...also found that the flagship post-Brexit trade agreement, the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, will add only 0.04% to GDP in the long run. Despite this major elephant in the room, we face an election in which no UK political party is willing to entertain the one obvious economic move that could be taken to improve matters for the country, namely...
