Speeches by Cane.

“There is opportunity cost anyway. We are going to be talking about infected blood—those people could be helping to surge on that. We have the whole issue of how to evacuate people from the middle east—we could have people working on that. There is an opportunity cost, even if there is not an extra financial cost, to th…”

“I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Our constituents do not want compensation or apologies: they want a mobile signal that they can rely on. How can they have confidence that their digital connectivity will improve if Ofcom does not engage with a reliable reporting system to direct investment in response to on-the-gr…”

“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this important debate. I agree with much of what she said in her speech, and much of what other hon. Members have said. My hon. Friend’s constituency shares many similarities with mine: they are a comparable size, have a comparable…”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would like to apologise to the House for failing to declare an interest when tabling three written parliamentary questions to the Treasury and one written parliamentary question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. When I tabled those questions, I inadvertently fa…”

“What would be the solution to the single member representing an area? How would that area still be represented?”

“Yes, thank you. I just wanted to pick up on Councillor Hamilton’s reference to training. What do you think about some sort of centrally-funded training and something to actively encourage parish and town councillors to attend training? You touched on the point that for a small parish council, the cost of training can b…”

“Yes, Chair. I am a district councillor, East Cambridgeshire District Council.”

“Councillor Boughton, do you think that would work for principal authorities—such as counties where there may be only one member for the division? Is that the only sanction?”

“I commend Cotswold district council for that work. Unfortunately, when I tried to get East Cambridgeshire district council to condemn the two-child cap, the Conservatives refused. This policy was poorly conceived from the outset and has amounted to little more than attacks—not on parents, but on vulnerable children gro…”

“Like so many Members from across the House, I welcome the Government’s decision finally to scrap the two-child limit on benefits—I just wish they had done so much earlier. The two-child limit is a cruel and unfair penalty on those in the most urgent need of welfare and support. The cap does not tackle the exploitation …”

“I can see suspension working for parish councils, but once you get to town councils and principal authorities, people are elected to represent a part of that area. How do the people that councillor should be representing continue to be represented at those levels?”

“It moves on quite well from what we were just talking about. There has been lots of talk from you all about needing stronger sanctions. What kind of sanctions would be appropriate and effective?”

“I congratulate the petitioners on bringing forward this important debate. The Government’s immigration White Paper has caused no end of confusion, anxiety and distress since its publication last year. To me, and to countless constituents who have contacted me because they are worried for their livelihoods, it is profou…”

“There has been a recent, rather prominent case, and you cannot remove a peerage other than through an Act of Parliament, so as well as removing their right to sit in the House of Lords, should there be a mechanism to remove their peerage as well?”

“That creates a kind of arms race in the size of the House of Lords. You talked about looking at—effectively—retirement ages, but what other mechanisms do you have in mind for reducing the size?”

“Subject to what might be discussed, I should declare that I am a civil service pensioner.”

“Moving on to the thorny issue of disgraced peers, you committed to tackling the issue of how we remove them. What plans have you got to address that?”

“You are an historian; you like to have your documents tidy. I am an archaeologist, so I am used to digging them out, but never mind. Part of the reason for these citations is that you think expertise is the strength of the Lords and you want to explain. Normally, when you are trying to fill gaps, there is some sort of …”

“You are now publishing the new appointment citations on gov.uk, but—and it sounds like you have found this problem as well—there doesn’t seem to be a single location where you can find all the citations. Would it be useful to have a single page so that they can all be seen?”

“Some historical citations have been released. Do you think it would be useful to release all of them so that people can get a sense of why people have been appointed historically?”