Speeches by Burghart.

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for restating what is already known. Obviously, it is a matter of public interest whether the propriety and ethics team had been informed before the right hon. Lady was made Transport Secretary. I ask him again: will he confirm whether the PET was informed by Downing Street of the forme…”

“Was the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team informed by Downing Street of the former Transport Secretary’s conviction before she was appointed as a Minister of the Crown?”

“The right hon. Gentleman is right: as the holder of two shadow portfolios, I get double the money. [Laughter.] I am sorry not to hear an explanation for why the Prime Minister has gone back on his word. There are growing concerns that the mission delivery boards are not being taken seriously. Those concerns were felt b…”

“I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, for giving an oral statement on this very important subject, and for scheduling the statement at such a time as would not interfere with the Opposition day debates—that was very decent of him. I do not intend to rehearse all of the long debates that wer…”

“And, I hope, conversations with the Secretary of State. He will know that the make-up of farming in Northern Ireland is slightly different from that in the rest of the UK: there is a greater density of farms in sole ownership and agricultural land is worth more. That means that farms in Northern Ireland are more expose…”

“I associate Conservative Members with the remarks that the Under-Secretary of State made about Ken Reid; he will be very much missed. A belated happy birthday to the Secretary of State for yesterday. Last week, the Secretary of State suggested to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that the Treasury had not yet cond…”

“First, we had above-inflation pay rises for the unions. Then we had a Budget that the OBR said was going to push up inflation. This morning, we had City economists—real economists—saying that next year inflation will hit 3%. Does the right hon. Lady agree that this Government’s decisions mean higher inflation for worki…”

“Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I am very happy to associate myself and the official Opposition with the right hon. Lady’s remarks about Ukraine. Democracies must stand together. What are the Government doing to bring down inflation?”

“Well, I thank the right hon. Lady for her standard charm. The truth is that the Government are not doing anything to bring down inflation; this Government are stoking inflation. First, we had above-inflation pay rises for the unions. Then, we had a Budget that the Office for Budget Responsibility said would increase in…”

“We have already talked about Ukraine. It was Ukraine and covid that drove up inflation, but this Government are doing it to the British people. High tax, high inflation, low growth, low reform—there is a word for that: it is Starmerism. Yesterday, like many Opposition Members, I spoke to farmers from across the United …”

“Perhaps the right hon. Lady thinks that everyone came to London yesterday to thank the Government. Let us look at the facts. A typical mid-size, 360-acre family farm in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) have spoken to their accountant. Their new liability because of …”

“This is just another part of the Budget that is unravelling. Everyone here and all the farmers at home will have heard that there was no guarantee there. We know what that means: they are coming back for more. Even if the right hon. Lady had made a promise today, it would not have been worth a fig. We know that the Env…”

“I understand why the right hon. Lady does not want to answer questions about the terrible choices the Government have made. It is because the truth is ugly. The truth is that this is a punishment meted out to people who do not vote Labour. It is the same punishment meted out to parents who send their children to privat…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Hon. Members will be disappointed to hear that I do not intend to detain them for long. We support this order. As my noble friend Lord Caine said in Grand Committee in the other place, this is essentially Conservative legacy legislation. We drafted it, we …”

“My point is more that the Government are seeking to remove highly experienced people without offering another way out. We would have been happy to debate that, but we are instead seeing an attempt to deliberately cut out a group of peers from the constitution.”

“I will give way one more time and then I will endeavour to conclude my remarks.”

“I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman has married so well. Of course, life peers do a fantastic job of scrutiny—they do so every day, and I enjoy reading their lordships’ Hansard. What we are talking about is a group of 88 hereditary peers, who have done a very good job in scrutinising Government legislation, …”

“It is very generous of the hon. Gentleman to say that the Prime Minister will create 40 peers at his command—I had no idea that the hon. Gentleman’s career was progressing at such a rate. We all know that that is not what is happening here; we all know that, in the coded words of the Minister, it is goodbye to the 88 h…”

“As ever, wisdom from the Deepings. The truth is that this will not make the upper House a better Chamber for scrutiny. All it will do is remove some of the Labour party’s opponents from that House. The Labour party promised in its manifesto that “The next Labour government will…bring about an immediate modernisation” o…”

“The point that we are making through our amendments is that the Labour party is undermining a key facet of the upper House: scrutiny. We are talking about a body of 88 hereditary peers who have already been performing that job, and have done nothing wrong, but are losing that job because of the measures introduced by t…”