Speeches by Bance.

“Lovely pub!”

“Excellent sandwiches, too!”

“I agree with my hon. Friend. Employers may continue to dismiss, as long as they do so for fair reasons and following a fair process, and good employers already do that. My favourite measures in the Employment Rights Bill—this could be a very long speech, but I will bring it to a close—[Interruption.] I will! I will jus…”

“I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, as I have done since the first time we worked together, more than 20 years ago. It is interesting to hear the advocacy for welfare reform. Today we have heard a lot about the difficulties with business rates, and I will not rehearse the arguments—they have been well made by my fr…”

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”

“I would not wish to try the hon. Member’s generosity, but it seems to me that I have already been generous in my tribute to the work of the previous Government in continuing to maintain the machinery of the Low Pay Commission—something that this Government have continued—and in continuing to make sure that the national…”

“I beg the indulgence of the House for a moment to welcome the opening this week on Market Place in central Wednesbury of the new Walden restaurant. The menu looks absolutely delicious, and I very much look forward to sampling it soon. I also want to mention Chris Birch from the Swift Group in Wednesbury, who I met yest…”

“I will ask this question in a spirit of genuine curiosity, if I may. The trade deal done with the United States earlier in the year by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the former Business Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), guaranteed more than 200,000 jobs in …”

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”

“I am so glad that someone has mentioned the construction industry. However, the hon. Member is talking not about seasonal jobs but about contract work. The key to maintaining sustained employment in the construction sector is having a strong pipeline of repeated projects so that people can build their skills and move o…”

“I thank the hon. Member for his kind words, and for his intervention. It is absolutely clear that alongside investment in public services, there is investment in infrastructure, in house building, and in making sure that this is a good country in which to grow and scale a business. I am glad of those things. I am also …”

“Does the hon. Member agree that the way to solve the crisis in apprenticeships in hair and beauty, as well as the crisis of bogus self-employment in hair and beauty, is to strengthen the single worker status?”

“The hon. Lady makes her point well, and she has made it; there is no need for me to respond. After 14 years of flatlining wages, wages are now growing faster than prices. That is incredibly important. I was so proud to see wages go up by more in the first 10 months of this Government than they went up in the first 10 y…”

“One of the things I am most proud of—having stood on doorstep after doorstep in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley at the general election, hearing people tell the dreadful stories of how long they and their relatives had been waiting for hospital treatment—is the 45% fall in people waiting more than a year for their opera…”

“While we are being nice to the hon. Gentleman, I think with affection of the times we have sat together on the “Politics Midlands” sofa. For the benefit of the House, will he tell us how many zero-hours workers he has spoken to in preparation for his speech today?”

“The hon. Member need have no fear about the extent to which I talk to businesses in my constituency and more widely. I see at least one employer every single week—often not in retail and hospitality, as I represent a manufacturing constituency. I recognise the concerns, but I would say that in this country we need to h…”

“Last week I went to Alucast in Wednesbury, one of our brilliant foundries. I have also been to Newby Foundries. Both told me of their relief that the landfill tax will not impose significant additional costs on them. I wonder whether the Chancellor would like to set out the action she is taking to support our brilliant…”

“I am glad to hear that because it is so very important that across the civil service, across Departments and across ministerial portfolios, people get the message totally clear: the priority is British suppliers, British jobs in the United Kingdom and investment to support that. That is the purpose.”

“It contains a significant amount of public money.”

“On that point, we all want to see British SMEs winning public procurement contracts. I was most perturbed—I wonder whether the Minister may want to comment—to read in the Sunday papers that it looks as though the constructional steel work for Net Zero Teesside is going to go to a Chinese-owned company. This was raised …”