Speeches by Burghart.

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his reply. Could he assure me that he is speaking to interested parties in Northern Ireland? Given that Northern Ireland is so closely connected to Ireland, which is part of the EU, farmers there are consequently very concerned that they may be affected by any spread of the disease.…”

“Given the news from Germany, will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster update the House on the work the Cabinet Office is doing to prepare for the possibility of an outbreak of foot and mouth?”

“I would welcome that, too, Mr Speaker, because the right hon. Gentleman was not answering my question—just as he did not answer the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper), and just as his Department is not answering questions of any hue at the moment, as my hon. Friend the Member …”

“Yesterday in Davos, Mr Šefčovič suggested that the UK and the EU were talking about dynamic alignment. As the Paymaster General will be aware, that is, if true, a very significant step. Will he be clear with the House: is dynamic alignment on the table?”

“I would like to return to the question that has just been raised by the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith). When the previous Government passed their legislation, the Labour party was in favour of the amendments made in another place …”

“Let us return to the matter of Gerry Adams. I am sorry to say that I must correct the Secretary of State. The High Court found that those provisions of the legacy Act were unlawful, but it is well within the Secretary of State’s power to appeal that judgment. He has dropped that appeal. I do not wish to teach the Secre…”

“May I welcome you to your place, Mr Mundell, and wish you and all hon. Members a happy new year? The Opposition do not intend to oppose the draft regulations, but we have some reasonably significant questions and I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say. Some 87,000 voters are about to fall off the register…”

“No, I do not think I am being impatient, because this is an extremely important subject. We were all aware, when the Command Paper was published earlier this year, that this would need to be done. The framework was in the Labour party’s manifesto, so we assumed that it was making those preparations. It is perfectly pos…”

“I will not, actually. I have points to make and I want to leave the Minister time to make her speech and take interventions from Members in all parts of the House. One thing that strengthened the Windsor framework was “Safeguarding the Union”, which is critical to where we are now. Hon. Members will remember that the N…”

“As the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim says, if the Bill were to pass—as we know it will not, because it is being talked out—there would not be the same need for that sort of deal, because goods would be flowing freely from GB to Northern Ireland, so the question is at best academic.”

“It is a pleasure to be called in this debate—and nice to have an opportunity to stand up. It is also nice to see such enthusiasm for this subject from Labour Members, and I can see how disappointed many of them are not to have been called in this debate. There are so many things that one might say about the extremely i…”

“I am very glad that the hon. Lady has had an opportunity to make that point. As I have said, we have seen that the Republic is carrying out checks on the other side of the border, so things that we were told were not possible are. If that is the case, it must open up possibilities for the future. I remain strongly of t…”

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for advance sight of his statement. It was very nice to receive it only 12 hours after The Times, although I must say that I received the policy document itself only at 11.05 am, unlike Labour MPs at Pinewood studios who, according to social media, had the document some time before. Whi…”

“It is a pleasure to face the right hon. Gentleman across the Dispatch Box for what I believe is the first time. I am pleased to see three members of the Cabinet on the Front Bench—it is quite right that the Cabinet Office should be so well reflected. The day after he entered Downing Street, the Prime Minister pledged t…”

“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…”

“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?”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”