Speeches by Thornberry.

“There will not be a regular programme that will be doing it, will there?”

“You might replace “HARDtalk” with another programme that will come out regularly, as often as this, three times a week and three times a day. You will have a programme going out as regularly as that doing long-form interviews, following consultation with your staff.”

“Holding world leaders to account is not going to be done as often by the BBC because of cuts.”

“No, it is because you said that no one listened to it.”

“They were one-offs. They were not from a programme that will be going out regularly.”

“I understand what you are saying, but these are domestic-facing programmes that you are going to put out on the World Service. What I am asking—I will not ask it again, but I will ask it one more time—is whether there will be, in the future, a programme on the World Service that will be international, facing outwards a…”

“I wonder if I could ask your boss this. Do you not think that it is a sad day for the BBC today for you to be losing perhaps the best news presenter and interviewer that the BBC has ever had, and that Mishal Husain is leaving the BBC in order to go to Bloomberg to do a regular programme, internationally, that will be d…”

“Mr Munro, you told Broadcast magazine that the reason that you were closing “HARDtalk” at the end of this financial year was because nobody listened to it. Where did you get that idea from?”

“You have been misquoted by Broadcast magazine.”

“Although, of course, it goes out on the News channel at 12.30 in the morning and 4.30 in the morning, so there may not be a large number of people watching it at that stage in any event.”

“Across the world, it is on the BBC World News channel four times a week and three times a day, where it gets a 70 million audience. On the English language World Service radio, it is on three times a day, three days a week, and gets 100 million people listening.”

“They are big numbers.”

“I have a constituent who was not a member of the armed forces, but a member of the secret service. He lost his job in the 1980s because he was gay. There is no compensation for him at the moment. I suspect it may not be the responsibility of my right hon. Friend, but does he not agree that there should be parity of tre…”

“Across the House we all celebrate the end of this terrible regime, but the very last thing that the Syrian people want, as my right hon. Friend said, is for one tyrant to be replaced by another, but with an Islamic flag. There is another way, but it will not be easy. I am glad to hear that my right hon. Friend has begu…”

“I thank the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for securing today’s incredibly important debate, and the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us the time to debate it. Throughout my time in Parliament, I have seen far too many sad and desperate families protesting outside th…”

“Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it does not matter whether someone is a dual national or not? If they are British, they are British and they are proud to be British. We should simply talk about them being British citizens, and not even bother talking about dual nationals.”

“I thank my hon. Friend for being so clear, but can he say whether the criteria for deciding whether a British national has been arbitrarily detained will be published?”

“While Europeans spend barely the cost of two cups of coffee a week on support for the war in Ukraine, 41% of Russia’s total expenditure is spent on the war. They have had to cut social security and raise taxes to pay for the war effort. While speculation about the future of the war is understandable in the current circ…”

“I read with some alarm the reports about the Georgian elections, including a report by the OSCE on vote buying, multi-voting, Russian disinformation and intimidation. Is the Minister aware that the European Parliament passed a motion last Thursday stating that the elections had been neither free nor fair, and should be…”

“During the Syrian civil war, millions of Syrians moved to Turkey and southern Lebanon, so they have already been displaced once. In Turkey, Erdoğan has been encouraging them to go home to Syria, and in southern Lebanon they have had to move back into Syria to flee from the invasion. Multiple traumas have been suffered …”