Speeches by Murrison.

“Further to the answer that the Minister gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), will she at least concede that it would be opportune to conduct an audit of our critical national industries, to ensure that if there are issues around foreign ownership, or ownership by malign state …”

““Reassurance force” sounds like a euphemism for escalation that would expose our boys and girls to very significant risk, yet on 3 March the Prime Minister said to me, from the Dispatch Box, that we would not be deploying troops to Ukraine without a US backstop and without a US security guarantee. He was right, wasn’t …”

“Does the Minister agree that we appear to have hammered out a cross-party consensus on the need to ensure that this country is able to continue to produce virgin steel, just like every other G7 country, for a whole raft of reasons? Does she agree that the case is underscored and reinforced by the Trump slump, by her pa…”

“Like many colleagues, I have visited Israel, the west bank and Gaza, facilitated by the Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority. I benefited greatly from those visits, and I hope that both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Government will facilitate future visits by parliamentarians. However, does the …”

“rose—”

“The United States is busy increasing its presence on Diego Garcia, most recently with its B-2 Spirit aircraft, probably facing towards Iran. Given that, how much will the Trump White House be contributing to the endowment that the Minister proposes we hand to Mauritius?”

“Rather than traducing what remains of our countryside, what assessment has the Minister made of the UK-Morocco power project run by Xlinks, which would deliver 11.5 GW of energy and power about 8% of our grid needs? It would seem that the block to this project is not the Moroccan Government, nor the Governments of coun…”

“The Minister is right to praise the House of Lords for making sure that the great British pint is in this Bill as an exclusion from the metrology regulations. However, this will not satisfy the metric martyrs. The Minister will remember that the ability to sell in imperial measures was a big issue a few years ago. Why …”

“The hon. Member described the Bill as a Trojan horse—it is more like a Trojan donkey. Does he agree that clause 2(7) is a particular problem, because it appears to take European Union regulations as the baseline for determining safety? To many of us, the assumption that European Union regulations should be the starting…”

“On pints—”

“I declare my interest as a practising doctor and a public sector pensioner who has been through the McCloud process. Does the Minister understand that we will not improve productivity in the NHS as far as doctors are concerned if they continue to retire routinely in their mid-50s—in their prime? They do so because thei…”

“What assessment have the Government made of reports that Iran is considering pre-emptive strikes against American B-2 Spirit bombers that have recently been forward-located in Diego Garcia?”

“On the subject of the political tier, can the Minister say how domestic politicians might be affected—those who have foreign interlocutors, as well as those who are simply involved by virtue of all-party parliamentary groups? As for the enhanced tier, while I appreciate that he is reluctant to be drawn on specifics, ca…”

“The regime’s use of its Kremlin-backed military during a humanitarian crisis to attack its own people is a complete obscenity. Has the Minister called in the Myanmar ambassador so that he can offer an explanation?”

“The Minister has pretty much answered the question I was going to put to her, which was: what assessment has she made of the competitive advantage? I am trying to be helpful to the Government. I know that they say they want lots of growth, and this is an opportunity to get growth, is it not? But to get growth we need c…”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Hobhouse. I will not say a great deal, but the Minister is quite correct to introduce this statutory instrument. Plainly, its provenance is in measures taken by the previous Government. Since she mentioned where most of this work is under way, I am interested to kno…”

“Given the geopolitical uncertainty ushered in by the new American Administration and by America and China’s attitude to net zero, will the Minister assure the House that in making decisions on the future of critical national infrastructure that touch upon the defence of this country, such as the extraction of shale gas…”

“Order. There is a lot of interest in this debate. I will not set a firm limit on speeches, but I suggest that an indicative three minutes should get most people in, but probably not all. I remind Members that if they want to speak, they have to indicate that they wish to do so.”

“Short speeches mean that more colleagues get in.”