Speeches by Mayer.

“My hon. Friend talks about bottles, but they are not the only way of packaging up wine. In my constituency, the innovative packaging company ecoSIP makes single serve wine portions but, bizarrely, regulations mean that they cannot sell them in 125 ml containers. Does my hon. Friend think that is a strange anomaly, and …”

“This week, work begins on storage tanks to stop raw sewage pouring into the River Ouzel during periods of heavy rainfall—I know that my constituents and residents welcome that, as I am sure do the fish in the river. Does the Secretary of State agree that since we have had a Labour Government, it really has been all cis…”

“I wonder if my hon. Friend prefers the whoosh as fireworks go up, rather than the bang; I think that is what most people are there for. My constituents get in touch with me to say that when they complain, they feel as if they are passed from pillar to post between the council and the police. Does my hon. Friend agree t…”

“The research found that 39% of the trees were missing or dead. Along the A14, National Highways planted over 860,000 trees in 2020, but the failure rate was 45%. More detailed evidence comes from the evaluation of urban tree planting across four cities—Bristol, Birmingham, Nottingham and Leeds—covering trees planted be…”

“Let me begin by thanking organisations including the Woodland Trust, the Arboricultural Association, the Forestry Commission, Highways England, the Horticultural Trades Association and the National Forest Company, and Ness Champion, founder of the Biophilic Design Conference, for their engagement ahead of the debate. I…”

“Do you think it is clear for passengers at the moment, who have to go away and work out which council website they want to look at, or possibly search for a little sticker in the taxi? We have heard examples and evidence, for example, that perhaps it would be better if there were a national complaints portal. That way …”

“Do you envisage that the national minimum standards will include measures to change or improve the complaints process?”

“How is this going to work in practice? Presumably, these powers pass, for example, to a mayoral strategic authority that set up a taxi licensing committee. Who would have political control of that? Would the directly-elected mayor appoint the chair? How would it work in practice?”

“When we were hearing evidence, at times it seemed to me that words like "arrested", "charged" and "convicted" were being used interchangeably. You could very well, therefore, have a taxi driver who was arrested for something, and a case could take a very long time before it got anywhere near charging, and they would en…”

“The concept would be that the directly-elected mayor would set the political direction for how licensing would—”

“Yes. For your average constituent it is clearly not something you do very often, hopefully never at all, so do they actually know which council it is, particularly if it is near a border? Moving on from that, in your written evidence you said that you were aware, anecdotally, of large operators refusing to provide a dr…”

“Would you consider any form of national band or cap with a bit of local flexibility that takes into account those different wage rates?”

“You were talking before about the fact that one set of standards might be very reasonable in an urban area and a different set of standards in a rural area. When we move from 263 to 70, we are going to have much larger areas that cover both urban and rural. How do you square that circle?”

“There is currently no statutory definition of what fit and proper means. What would the Department’s view be on potentially introducing one for taxi and private hire vehicle drivers?”

“We have touched on this already, but would you envisage standards having expectations for how quickly licences can be suspended or revoked in a fair manner, both for drivers and passengers?”

“Which is not necessarily possible for a taxi driver.”

“Minister, you have talked about the fact that the prices to get a licence are different across different authorities. Why does the Department not just set a standard price?”

“Finally, does the Department think there is any merit in giving independent oversight of the taxi and PHV complaints process? For example, we have traffic commissioners who are rather good at licensing and that kind of thing. Has any consideration been given to giving them some powers in this regard?”

“Thank you for that, but should we really be out there searching for clues, as you suggest? Would it not be easier for everybody if somebody laid out the thinking?”

“Do you foresee the passenger watchdog as primarily taking up the complaints of individual constituents and residents, or do you think that it can deal with more systemic issues? If it spots things happening all over the place, is that something that it ought to be following up on?”