Speeches by Hinds.

“I commend the hon. Lady for her clear and excellent presentation of this report. Sadly, there is not time for me to list all the very many great heritage assets in East Hampshire. The hon. Lady talked about the importance of heritage to tourism and the possibility of using some underused heritage assets for housing. Do…”

“It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt). I will try to cover four aspects of the NPPF in just short of four minutes. The first is what the NPPF says on intentional unauthorised development. I welcome the move towards stronger wo…”

“I agree. There is no practical limit on what we can learn from one another in the home nations of the United Kingdom. I want to come on to what is known as policy L3, which concerns the minimum density requirements for areas around train stations. I have written about this in my submission to the consultation. I fear t…”

“In support of the Government’s drive for economic growth and export earnings, may we have a debate in Government time on the role and potential of international inbound tourism? We have a lot of strengths in that sector, but we have lost cost competitiveness, and the introduction of an overnight visitor levy would make…”

“And they don’t think it would be unsettling if you were just renegotiating the entire budget? Would that not be unsettling?”

“I do not want to cut across you, Secretary of State, but I do not think that was the question that I was asking. I was asking, on the question of prominence on social media, do you think it would be acceptable to have a potential situation where the BBC and Channel 4 news are promoted, but The Telegraph and The Guardia…”

“Your Green Paper talks about requiring prominence of some definition of media on online platforms. One potential definition is just public service media, but there is also the suggestion that you could define it some other way. You definitely could, but when you get to that half of the sentence with anybody, you realis…”

“Secretary of State, what is permanent about a permanent charter?”

“With respect, Secretary of State, without funding it would not exist, would it? Without funding objectives, there would be no BBC.”

“So, in practical terms, there is no difference.”

“Forgive me, but I think you said: “I can tell you, hand on heart, that we have made no decisions about this.””

“Okay. Does the thing hinge on the difference between the word “tax” and the word “levy”?”

“The first time today.”

“I must confess that I do not recall that decision in the last Government to not use local or national media. I seem to recall something rather 180° opposite—but we will leave that for another day. I wanted to come back to this thing about prominence: how you promote prominence and what gets prominence. You are quite ri…”

“Why did you make the decision about a streamer levy before the Green Paper was printed?”

“Have you had discussions with them about that and their preferred option?”

“How would you respond to the suggestion that, in trying to add up all these things—the traditional kind of TV licence base, plus video on demand, other platforms and adding a fee to streaming subscriptions—what you are trying to do in effect is come up with a formula that includes every household in the country? Would …”

“Do we know for a fact that the prospect of putting a surcharge on people’s subscriptions would not deter that investment, even if the net effect on the revenue of the streaming company was the same?”

“The Government’s proposed carve-up of Hampshire ignores their preset criteria, has no mandate and splits up East Hampshire. The benefits, if there are any, will come way off in the future, whereas the costs and the disruption happen now. Does the Minister think that the advent of a new Prime Minister is a good moment t…”

“Secretary of State, I am going to try to push you for absolute clarity on one point, which has already come up today. In the Green Paper, it was clear and explicit on page 71 that you were discounting the idea of funding the BBC either through general taxation or through a household tax—we might debate the difference b…”