Laurence Turner: ...myself with the comments of Labour colleagues in this debate, but I want to speak about the particular issue of public sector pay and the attempts made in this debate and the preceding one to turn pensioners and public sector workers against each other, including the public sector workers who have been driven to rely on food banks and payday loans, who I was proud to represent as a trade...
Laurence Turner: ...’s closure. That occasion must be marked appropriately in Birmingham and in Parliament. The site is now home to an ambitious redevelopment project and, importantly, some manufacturing jobs are returning, but travel just a short distance and the scars of that closure are still plain to see. The male employment rate remains a staggering 10 points lower than in Birmingham as a whole....
Cameron Thomas: ...daughter. Should any Member of the House wish to don armour and join me at Europe’s largest annual medieval festival, they would be very welcome. I pay tribute to my predecessor, the honourable Laurence Robertson, a Lancastrian who made north Gloucestershire his home and represented Tewkesbury for 27 years, winning at seven consecutive general elections. My defeat of that particular...
Laurence Robertson: ...I thank the Minister for being always available for a meeting to discuss the issue, and always willing to come to these debates? I do not think he particularly enjoys them any more, but he always turns up and listens. I thank him for everything he is doing. I recognise that this issue was dropped on him by previous Ministers; for that, he has my deepest sympathy. I want to point out the...
Laurence Robertson: ...of rural areas manifest itself beyond those we have already discussed? In planning, lower funding means delayed decisions and that some councils and planning authorities are reluctant to turn down inappropriate applications because they simply cannot afford such applications to be taken to appeal. Tewkesbury is the fastest-growing area in the United Kingdom apart from London, so we are not...
Laurence Robertson: ...scheme. I am not against the bypass in principle, if the evidence is there to support it, but even in those circumstances there is no need to half-close junction 9. There is a £220 million scheme turning junction 10 from two-way to four-way just a few miles south of junction 9. What is the logic in doing the opposite at junction 9? Furthermore, a bypass would not solve the problems being...
Mark Francois: ...home-town of Rayleigh, when several sets of roadworks, on the main arteries in and out of the town, were allowed to proceed at almost exactly the same time. When we subsequently looked into why, it turned out that the official at County Hall who handed out permits to developers did not communicate with the one who gave them to utility companies. One constituent put it to me at the time...
Laurence Robertson: ...a couple of preliminary announcements. Hansard colleagues will be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk and I remind everyone—including myself—to turn mobile phones to silent. We will first consider the programme motion on the amendment paper, and then a motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication and the motion to...
Laurence Robertson: ...with a number of times on this issue. I again thank all right hon. and hon. Members for taking part in the debate. We are not going away. I am glad the Minister said that the Government will not turn away. We have to get this issue sorted. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the humanitarian and political situation in Ethiopia.
Laurence Robertson: ...the country? During the urgent question, the Minister said he had diverted aid to Tigray. Did that have any effect, and if so could that practice be repeated? I also ask that other donors do not turn away from Ethiopia because of the conflict. People living in war-torn areas are often the most in need. I want us to continue with our aid programme. We need to target the aid and we need to...
Laurence Robertson: ...policy. Supporting correctly targeted and transparent international development aid was one of the reasons I wanted to come to this place. There would be no shame on the Government if they were to turn round now and accept that they have got it wrong and reverse this policy, and I ask them to do that.
Tom Randall: ...remember is encapsulated in the post-war experiences of Toivi Blatt, a Polish Jew who escaped from the Sobibor extermination camp and later found a new life in Israel and then in the United States. Laurence Rees’s book, “Auschwitz: the Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’”, tells how in the early 1990s Toivi returned to visit his home village of Izbica in eastern Poland. He visited his...
Naseem Shah: ...that promise, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies now estimates that the covid funding gap is £1.1 billion this year and £4.4 billion next year. That means more job losses, more cuts, and in turn less spending and less support for businesses. We know that there is light at the end of the tunnel with the arrival of the first new vaccine, but the reality is that businesses face a long and...
Sadiq Khan: ...enquiries. Tragic incidents like this are terrible reminders of the dangers our police officers face every single day to protect our city. Our officers work tirelessly to keep us safe and we in turn should keep them safe. It is appalling that we have seen a 16% rise in attacks on our officers in London. Assaults on our police officers will not be tolerated and anyone who commits this type...
Laurence Robertson: By way of analogy, if parties do not turn up to this House, or if people resign, or if there is disagreement, we do not collapse Parliament. Will the Secretary of State look at how changes might be introduced in Northern Ireland, working with the local parties, to ensure that, regardless of what disagreements there may be, we do not see the institutions collapse again?
Laurence Robertson: I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, to whom I pay tribute for all his work in that respect. I shall come back to that issue in a moment. Let me turn to the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, which was set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield. It has identified some spending by, for example—this is only an example, and it is not the only one—the Newton...
Anne Milton: ...my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) on securing this debate. I was struck by the account of his visit to Freebrough Academy, and he mentioned Laurence Jackson School. He also mentioned bullying, which is a worry and often goes hand in hand with poor discipline and poor educational outcomes in a school that is generally not succeeding in its...
Laurence Robertson: ...Secretary and his Ministers can divide the cake only in certain ways, and it is their decision. Perhaps we need to grow the cake, which is the point my hon. Friend correctly makes. I want to turn to higher needs funding. I welcome the fact that, again, the Department listened to many of us who said that higher needs requires more spending. Several colleagues did that, and more money was...
Jackson Carlaw: ...us—that moment when first-hand knowledge has passed, and when fewer remain with even a strong second-hand recollection. A huge moment in the story of our nation and the world slips into history. Laurence Binyon’s enduring stanza, which begins “They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old”, was composed when the war was just weeks old, with all the terror and horror ahead....
Deidre Brock: ...too many UK politicians are concerned. The political game has seemed more important than the people whose lives are affected, and the point scoring more important than sorting the matter out. [Mr Laurence Robertson in the Chair] The debates are too small in another way, too. They are about a group of cases regarding the symptoms of a policy malfunction, not about the policy malfunction...
