Speeches by Smith.

“I am grateful to the Minister for his comments, but does he accept, as a point of principle, that that was not an arbitrary amount of money offered to the church as a top-up for church funds, but was very specifically for noise mitigation purposes? If in 2025 the money promised in 2016 simply cannot deliver that, it is…”

“I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important issue in the House. I want to focus on the impact that inflation has had on the ability of different institutions to deliver the community projects and mitigations that High Speed 2 previously agreed to in Mid Buckinghamshire. The cases are many in number, but I…”

“Yesterday, the owner of the hugely popular Rumsey’s, which is celebrating 21 years on Wendover high street in my constituency, emailed me to say: “We estimate the changes coming in April will add 15% to our staff costs that we simply don’t have. Therefore we have had to sadly make redundancies, put in a recruitment fre…”

“Well, that was no answer to my question whatsoever. It is almost as if Labour Members have not realised that they are in charge and that it is their decisions that are having this impact. Let me tell the Minister something else that Rumsey’s reported to me: “The reduction in business rate relief will leave me no choice…”

“My right hon. Friend makes a superb point, as she always does. Every single small business that I have talked to in my constituency is very concerned about the measures in this—”

“Twenty-four hours later, the Minister still cannot name a small business that supports the Bill. That shows how out of their depth this trade union Government are when it comes to supporting businesses in this land. In the words of the Chancellor, this Bill is “choking off innovation, investment and growth.” To pretend…”

“Well, cut red tape for a start. We see from Lib Dem Members that “The Orange Book” tradition of the Liberal Democrats is well and truly dead; they now position themselves firmly to the left of the Labour party. There is no greater evidence that the growth test does not exist than the Bill, because if such a test did ex…”

“As ever, Madam Deputy Speaker, I take your advice and will speed up. [Interruption.] The Minister urges me to carry on, but of course I would not ignore your advice—never say never again. I make no comment on the value that those activities will add to public sector employers and their productivity. What I will say is …”

“My hon. Friend served assiduously on the Committee, raising many good points, including the one that he just made, which I absolutely agree with. The public will be asking serious questions about this.”

“If the hon. Gentleman wants to try to defend that, I will give him the opportunity.”

“I am making a point about the trade union movement, which I have never been a part of, and certainly never received any money from. I am happy for the hon. Gentleman to look at all my declarations in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.”

“For the avoidance of all doubt and in all transparency, I declare all my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for all to look at. They are all there for anybody to see.”

“My right hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. If we look at the detail of this Bill, it is very clear and obvious that the Government are trying to make it as difficult as possible for people to opt out of the trade union political fund. That is the very point of them changing this legislation.”

“I will make a bit of progress, then I will come to the hon. Lady. An opt-in is the default under consumer protection law and information law. Combined with the 10-year reminder change, it is highly likely that many trade union members will not be aware that their subscriptions are being used in this way or that they ar…”

“The hon. Lady is putting up a smoke-and-mirrors argument to try to cover the fact that the Government are changing the status quo from an opt-in system to an opt-out system. To me, it is just straightforward common sense that people would expect to have to opt in rather than, in this particularly egregious case, being …”

“How on earth does the Minister correlate his statement that he wants to work with the sector with the Government last night giving just 30 minutes’ notice to the NFU—the sector—of this shameful cut to the SFI budget? What does that say about DEFRA’s previous commitment to transparency, co-operation and co-design?”

“Ahead of getting into the detail of the many amendments before us, which the Minister rattled through in just 10 minutes, let me say that overnight we learned that the Government are moving the responsibilities of one quango to another. They are moving the responsibilities of the Payment Systems Regulator to the Financ…”

“I will if, 24 hours on, he can name a small business that supports the Bill.”

“If the hon. Lady will allow me to continue, it will become clear why we take such a position; I will give some concrete examples in a few moments of where the law of unintended consequences will kick in on this provision. A 2022 study by the Higher Education Policy Institute found that quiet no-platforming, where stude…”

“How can I resist the hon. Gentleman?”