Speeches by Jardine.

“Like everyone else in this House, I am sure, I feel enormous relief at the fact that a ceasefire has been achieved, but that can be nothing compared with the relief felt by those Israeli families who thought they would never see their loved ones again and those thousands of children in Gaza who were able to sleep last …”

“T8. Further to the earlier comments about driving test centres, the problem is serious in my constituency. All five of the closest centres have waiting times of 24 weeks —six months—and people are now looking to other parts of Scotland for tests. I appreciate what the Minister said about employing extra people, but can…”

“To what extent do you think that the Scottish Act facilitated the Contact Scotland BSL service? Have the UK Government considered a similar Britain-wide service?”

“Rebecca, you have already mentioned Scotland, as Sarah said, but I wonder how the 2022 Act and its impact compare with the British Sign Language Act (Scotland) 2015 and its effect in Scotland.”

“Craig?”

“Does anyone else want to comment?”

“How confident are you that it would be available again in an emergency situation? Is that enough? Should it not be available all the time, as it is in Scotland?”

“So it was available during covid-19 in England and Wales, but not now?”

“I am pleased to have the Minister’s confirmation that, despite yesterday’s egregious actions by Israel, Qatar will continue its commitment to pursue the peace that we all long for in the middle east. To that end, the Government have said that they would commit to recognising a state of Palestine before the United Natio…”

“Over the summer, a constituent who is a mortgage adviser came to me with concerns about so-called conditional selling by estate agents, where prospective home buyers feel pressurised to take the estate agent’s in-house mortgage rather than risk losing out on a house. This practice breaches the Estate Agents Act 1979. I…”

“I come to Parliament this week fresh from the Edinburgh festival—on which note I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I was there not as a performer, but because every year I am tempted across the border into neighbouring constituencies b…”

“Those families also tell me that bigger businesses, like Edinburgh zoo and fantastic tourist businesses, which the national insurance changes have added—”

“No, actually—I think the hon. Member has said enough today. Those businesses are suffering and they have been for years. Hon. Members know how important they are not just to my constituency, to Edinburgh or to Scotland, but to the United Kingdom, because of the jobs that they create and the people they employ. That lit…”

“The hon. Gentleman is beginning to sound a bit like a parrot.”

“No, I will not give way. We hear the hon. Gentleman. I will repeat the phrase for him again: tourism tax. Yes, we know that Edinburgh is taxing tourists, but it is doing that to support its hospitality business, which has been under threat for a decade. We need to look at the burden that our businesses are carrying: th…”

“14. What steps she is taking to increase the uptake of pension credit.”

“Earlier this year, a constituent of mine in Edinburgh West contacted me about the delay she had faced in getting the pension credit she was entitled to. She applied in September last year and was told that she would receive it in November, but it was March before she got her pension credit awarded. The delay meant that…”

“I welcome the Home Secretary’s confirmation in her statement of the expedited visas for students, particularly those from Gaza. I wrote to both the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary this summer to appeal for exactly this move, and I know how welcome it will be to those students. The Home Secretary talks about a …”

“I hope the Minister will join me in thanking all the hard-working hospitality staff who are about to have a very busy summer, particularly in Edinburgh West, where they are about to be immersed in the Edinburgh international festival, to which the Minister and the Secretary of State—all the Ministers, in fact—are, of c…”

“19. What steps he is taking to support the hospitality sector.”