Richard Thomson: ...at the UK economy right now, it is fair to say. It is hard to fathom, but in attempting to do so, we can point to a few self-inflicted wounds, and not just from the last Budget. Let us address the elephant in the room that Brexit certainly has not helped in any way, shape or form. My travel arrangements today mean that I have not been able to keep up with the latest developments on whether...
Ed Miliband: ...standard of international leadership. That means ending the perverse ban on onshore wind and the blocking of solar, the cheapest and cleanest forms of power. Secondly, we need to acknowledge the elephant in the room: fossil fuel. The COP26 President argued, unsuccessfully, that the conclusions of COP27 should include the phasing out of fossil fuel. If we extract all remaining reserves, we...
Caroline Lucas: ...trade; there will be a 14% drop in investment; it will increase food prices by 6%; and it will deliver lower wages, workforce shortages and the highest inflation in the G7. When will he name the elephant in the room? When will he start to address that and reverse some of the damage that it is doing?
Jenni Minto: ...to thank those who took part in our round-table discussions and submitted evidence, the clerks for their diligent work and my fellow committee members for leaving party allegiances at the committee room door to allow us to scrutinise the important subject of the impact of Brexit on devolution. As Sarah Boyack said, we really did not want to be here. I am going to stray slightly into the...
Lord Alton of Liverpool: ...have the potential to derail any peace deal. We should be very clear-headed about its pitiless, brutal and cruel ideology and its indifference to the suffering it causes. Until we address the elephant in the room and attend to justice and accountability, that will not change. Peace without justice will not endure. I hope the Minister agrees.
Mr Mark Ruskell: ...management group’s recommendations to prevent overgrazing and the trampling of young trees is vital to achieving those efforts, but that point has not yet been mentioned in the debate. Is it the elephant in the room? I do not know, but we have to tackle the issue of deer management in order to make progress. In addition, national parks need to refocus on the nature and climate...
Karen Adam: Amid the positivity of what the cabinet secretary has set out today, the elephant in the room—Brexit—is still there. Our trade in goods with the European Union was 12 per cent lower in 2021 because of Brexit and it has been reported that the cost of lost exports to the EU is more than £2.2 billion. The food and drink sector in Scotland has been blighted by the hard Brexit that has been...
Lord McNally: ...planned for local radio. The proposals received a rough ride from a cross-section of Labour and Conservative MPs, all jealous to protect their local services—and rightly so. But there was an elephant in the room: if not local radio, where should the axe fall? The truth is that there is only a limited number of services that cutting Gary Lineker’s salary can cover. The problem with...
Lord Sikka: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for facilitating this very timely debate. I want to talk about the elephant in the room, which is the finance industry and how it has destabilised the whole society. We have about 41 regulators for the finance industry, but they have very little idea of what the finance industry actually does. Indeed, it came as a shock to them after the banking...
Ian Murray: I will come back to hon. Members—I promise I will come back—but let me just make some progress. All this brings us to deficit and debt, which is the great elephant in the room when it comes to independence. Let us talk about what independence would cost, and the scale of public service cuts that would be required. Very helpfully, These Islands—an organisation that believes that Scotland...
Lord Benyon: I entirely accept that point. I would be treating your Lordships with disrespect if I did not mention the elephant in the room: a bit of mid-air turbulence in recent weeks, which may have somewhat contributed to some of the wheels of government not being correctly oiled. However, I assure the noble Lord that we are determined to deliver proper, meaningful targets as soon as we can.
Ben Lake: ...to the nationwide effort to reduce our carbon footprint. Even the Green Finance Observatory has expressed concerns about the current UK emissions trading scheme system. It states: “The elephant in the room is that offsets are fundamentally not about mitigating climate change, or even about removing past emissions, but about enabling future emissions, about protecting economic growth and...
David Honeyford: .... No one should be left behind. These people are our neighbours; they are our friends and our families. Shamelessly, DUP Members have sat, today, nodding along, laughing at times, but there is an elephant in the room: I suspect that the majority of you do not even agree with the decision that your leadership has inflicted on our people. How could you agree with that? It is disgusting, at a...
Gillian Martin: ...hosted an event with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine at which I heard from an advanced clinical practitioner who pointed to the roll-out of more ACPs being vital to supporting emergency rooms. I ask the cabinet secretary what we can do, within the work of the urgent and unscheduled care collaborative, to facilitate that. I welcome the £50 million funding that has been used to put...
Elliot Colburn: ...trained, but I wanted to touch on that point to provide some food for thought, because I understand that the issues around excess mortality rates are of extreme importance. Easily the biggest elephant in the room while discussing the safety of the covid-19 vaccine and a potential inquiry into its safety is that the Government have already announced a public inquiry into their handling of...
Alan Brown: ...rivers and coastlines, and obviously on criticism of the performance of water companies, there is one big issue that I want to touch on, which it seems the Tory Government have been blind to. The elephant in the room, which was touched on slightly by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, is the right to connect for developers in England and Wales. This means that a statutory water...
Willie Rennie: I congratulate the minister on getting through her whole speech without once mentioning the enormous elephant in the room: last night’s television documentary. We were told that everything was published, that the Government was an open book, that there was nothing to hide, that it had investigated every single inch and every dark corner, that there was no corruption here and that critics...
Jonathan Reynolds: ...to businesses in the long term to protect themselves from rising energy costs through efficiency measures and the transition to renewable energy? I also ask the Secretary of State to address the elephant in the room: who is paying for this? The Government say that they cannot cost this package, but it is clearly expensive. This Government say that they can cut taxes, increase spending,...
Richard Thomson: ...able to look out of their windows and see the infrastructure but not be able to see the benefit of that infrastructure on bills due to the way we choose to structure our energy markets. There is an elephant in the room here—the impact of Brexit, both directly and in the tardy nature of any benefits that might come through. I think particularly of our fishing industry in Scotland, but it...
Peter Dowd: ...of this nature is proposed. I know that the Minister will be well aware of that, given the schemes in his own constituency. Let us move on to the issue of the port of Liverpool, which is the elephant in the room—and it is a particularly large elephant. The port of Liverpool has been permitted an expansion, with little thought given to the infrastructure needed to support it. If there is...
