Speeches by Pinkerton.

“Back in November, the Chancellor promised to support the great British pub by introducing permanently lower tax rates in more than 750,000 retail and hospitality properties. In my constituency, the Half Moon will experience an 157% rise in business rates, the Inn at West End an 87% increase and the Frog in Deepcut an i…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I thank the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi) for securing this debate. We have had unanimity across the House, with a real feeling of injustice at the rising charges that we see at almost every airport that has been mentioned today. It …”

“May I take the Minister back to the circumstances of constituents who are living in retirement communities? I have a community of constituents who live at Mytchett Heath, owned by Cognatum Estates. They are experiencing very high service charges, and I have written to the Minister about that before. They are made nervo…”

“Will my hon. Friend give way?”

“I am grateful. More than 1,800 of my constituents have signed the petition that has prompted today’s debate. It would be arrogant for me to assume that those people are necessarily indicating their support for an EU customs union, although it would be sensible if they did. But what I hear from them is that they are fee…”

“I thank and congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this important debate. I seem to remember that he once referred to himself as a “quiet man”, but he has had a loud voice on this issue. I also congratulate the other excellent speakers we have heard today…”

“My hon. Friend describes the tankering of sewage from his constituency. In 2023, those tanks arrived in my constituency and the sewage was stored in open tanks on a Thames Water site for an entire summer, casting a stinky pall over the whole of Camberley town centre. It was an environmental crime and Thames Water promi…”

“There is an old warning from Benjamin Franklin: “If you do not hang together, you will hang separately.” Given the events in Venezuela in recent days, and given the active threats against Cuba and Mexico, in the past against Canada, and today against Greenland, I ask the Foreign Secretary, where is the line? For the Un…”

“In my constituency we have had a 113% increase in our housing targets. A seven-year land supply has now dropped to little over three and a half years, making us susceptible to the very speculative developments that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Does he share my concern that in the circumstances in which speculative dev…”

“We welcome the Minister’s announcement. As a recovering academic—a distinction that I think I share with him—I have witnessed at first hand the impact of our exiting the Erasmus scheme on university student intake. Welcoming students from across the EU into our education institutions and giving our own students opportu…”

“The introduction of a remedial order is welcome and necessary, even if its timing is potentially vexed. The order promises to finally end the policy of conditional immunity that was integral to the 2023 legacy Act—a policy that may have had benign intentions, but that put us at odds with our international legal obligat…”

“I thank the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) for securing this important debate, despite what may be happening down under at the moment. Grassroots cricket plays a fundamental role in shaping us as individuals. Although such cricket clubs clearly help to keep us fit and healthy, their influence extends fa…”

“The Government are absolutely right to say that the United Kingdom needs a new relationship with Africa. Many Members in this House had hoped that that partnership would be sustainable, strategic and built on mutual trust. Africa, after all, has one of the youngest populations in the world and incredible economic poten…”

“The Liberal Democrats have been clear from the start: nothing should be happening to the Chagossian people without the full democratic input of Chagossians themselves, who, in the custom of other overseas territories citizens, we should recognise as a self-governing and self-determining people, even if the UK has depri…”

“I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to place a duty on the Secretary of State to enter into negotiations with the European Union to agree a customs union between the United Kingdom and the European Union; and for connected purposes. Up and down the country, businesses know it, the public feel it and i…”

“The hon. Gentleman and I represent different political traditions, but I am glad to know that we are bound together by a shared sense of what a liberal society looks like. The only purpose of having an ID of this kind—a mandatory ID—is to enable people to ask for it. When we enable the conditions to be asked to prove o…”

“I thank the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee for her report. It has been a pleasure to serve under her chairship on that Committee for the past year, and it is a personal sadness that I no longer serve on it. She mentioned that the Committee received evidence about a collective loss of confidence and fai…”

“The hon. Member mentioned the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter). Recently, she was good enough to organise an extraordinary showing of a film called “Children in the Fire” in one of the Committee rooms. It explained in detail, through some very personal stories, the devastation that childr…”

“I thank the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for securing this very important debate. There have been plaudits and praise enough for all the speeches made by Members across this House—they have been an extraordinary collection of speeches and thoughtful interventions that show intellectual c…”

“On “The News Agents” podcast yesterday evening, the Deputy Prime Minister, when asked about a UK-EU customs arrangement, said “that journey of travel…is self-evident”. Given that the botched Brexit deal is costing the UK Exchequer £90 billion a year, can I ask what that self-evident journey means for the Government’s o…”