Speeches by Griffith.

“I welcome the moratorium on, and potential saving of, West Sussex, in response to my opposition and that of thousands of residents who did not want our historic county cleaved in two. Now that he has acknowledged that the proposal from the Government was less sustainable than the status quo, will the Secretary of State…”

“For all the hours we have now spent debating the future of steelmaking in the UK, the Government still refuse to confront the real issue—they know what it is, but they refuse to confront it. It is the Secretary of State for Energy and his addiction to ruinously high energy prices. It is not me who says that but Unite t…”

“We support Lords amendment 1, which limits by two years the power for Ministers to bring further steel businesses into public ownership without coming back to this House. Powers this sweeping should never have been handed to Ministers without limit. We support Lords amendments 2 and 3, tabled by the Liberal Democrats, …”

“Only the Conservatives have a plan to get Britain drilling and reduce energy costs. We will remove legal obstacles blocking new oil and gas projects like Rosebank and Jackdaw and scrap the energy profits levy to make them viable. We will increase private investment in oil and gas extraction, and we will scrap the carbo…”

“We will not stand in the way of these amendments. Many of them are ours, and the rest improve a flawed Bill, but let no one mistake improvement for endorsement. The amendments warrant our support, but the so-called plan and the botched decisions behind them do not.”

“There is no path to profitable steelmaking of any kind in the UK while energy prices here are four times higher than in many of our competitor nations. There is no tariff damaging enough to manufacturers and steel users to compensate for that, even though the Government’s botched attempts are clearly already causing ma…”

“The Government will talk about their British industrial competitiveness scheme, which is welcome, but it is just a sticking plaster on a gaping wound—and the Minister knows it. It is nonsense to claim that their strategy is one of security of supply when the same Government refused to open a coking coal mine, meaning t…”

“We welcome the Government’s Lords amendments 6 to 18, which would require, rather than merely permit, the compensation scheme to provide for an independent valuer and would set out plainly the role that the valuer must perform. When the Government listen and act sensibly, we support them—and we have. It is a pity that …”

“I am grateful to their lordships for their work on the Bill. We support the amendments before the House. Let me be plain from the outset: our objection has never been to steelmaking, or to the men and women who make steel; it is to a Government who have crashed around and used blunt instruments without ever having a de…”

“We support Lords amendments 4 and 5, which were laid on a cross-party basis. They shift the regulations governing continuity obligations and their enforcement from the negative procedure to the affirmative. If Ministers wish to bind steel undertakings and their suppliers, let them do so in daylight, with the consent of…”

“Or deviate!”

“Your legacy!”

“I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. We Conservatives warmly welcome this excellent agreement and congratulate the Ministers and officials who delivered it. I was pleased, when I was the City Minister, to have been part of the team behind the forerunner, the Berne—[Interruption.] Would the Minister …”

“Today, we Conservatives have launched a campaign to save the summer job. Employment rights do not help young people if they cannot get a first experience of work, and they are trapped in a Catch-22 situation of needing experience to get work but not being able to get any during their education years. Young people say i…”

“This week, our hard-pressed automotive industry has sounded the alarm: under the zero emission vehicle rules, British car makers are being fined for making precisely the type of cars people want to buy. That is costing them £5 billion a year, denying consumer choice, damaging British jobs and putting automotive firms a…”

“I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. We welcome the partial U-turns that have been announced, the engagement there has been and the reflection, even at this very late hour, that the original proposals from the Government would have done great damage to British manufacturing. This decision could, how…”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that in a former life, the Minister was punctilious about standards in this House, so I seek your advice as to how he may correct the record. He referred to a letter that I believe he said his office had received this morning or yesterday. In fact, the Department will h…”

“I rise to present a petition from residents in my constituency of Arundel and South Downs in West Sussex. Hundreds of signatures have been gathered from local residents who see at first hand what feels like a constant attack on our countryside and country pursuits by this Government. For example, just in the past coupl…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. It is also always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Halifax. She is the second Minister in her role in this Government, and I sincerely hope that we are not due a third. I wish her well over the coming weeks. There was a time—[Interruption.]”

“There was a time not so long ago when we had a Government who said that they were obsessed with growth—that it was their core, underlying mission. Casting my mind back to that moment makes me feel old, but my goodness, what a long way we have travelled over the last almost two years. I say that because no Government wh…”