Speeches by Smith.

“Q Thank you for being with us. Can you give us your view on whether the Bill goes far enough to combat the issues that you campaign on, particularly women’s rights at work? Where would you like to see elements of it amended, either to make it stronger or to get rid of things that might have unintended consequences, and…”

“Q This is a question to all of you, off the back of the last answer. It was suggested during the last evidence session that this Bill does not go far enough. It is evident from the declarations made at the start of the sitting that the relationship between the trade union movement and the Labour party is symbiotic, so …”

“Q You used the term “working people”, which is something that some struggle to define. Can you define “working person”, and does that include someone who runs a business? Are they a working person? Hannah Reed: There are already statutory definitions in legislation of who is a worker. It will generally be workers—in so…”

“Q Before the other witnesses come in, the impact assessment suggests that the Bill will result in a £5 billion cost to business, and we heard this morning at a session with representatives from business that that was actually a lowball estimate. How do you work out that it might lead to increased wages if the cost on b…”

“Q Thank you, Ms Vaz, and good afternoon to the witnesses. In the last session, it was suggested that this Bill might lead to the re-unionisation of the economy. Do you agree with that? Paul Nowak: I think this will be the biggest upgrade to workers’ and trade union rights in a generation. It is very likely that we will…”

“Q Do you have any views on the Bill’s provisions on trade union facility time? Mick Lynch: Not particularly. We make arrangements with our employers—we have private sector employers and public sector employers—through collective agreements. I imagine that we will always create decent arrangements with all our employers…”

“A couple of weeks ago I held a roundtable with some Mid Buckinghamshire farmers on the measures required to mitigate flooding, especially after extreme weather events such as Storm Bert this weekend. At the top of the list was the point that my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) made about dredging a…”

“I am just trying to get answers for our councils. Of course, it was the previous Government who committed £8.3 billion to road repairs, using money from the rightly cancelled sections of High Speed 2. Back in May, when it was in opposition, Labour tried to claim a backlog of more than £16 billion in road repairs, but n…”

“The Leader of the House will have surely seen the thousands of hard-working farmers who came to Whitehall on Tuesday to protest against the cruel family farm tax. While he was at COP29, the Prime Minister tried to defend his policy by quoting BBC Verify, but BBC Verify has now deleted its comment supporting the Governm…”

“I associate myself with the tributes paid to Lord Prescott. Talking of pothole repairs and road resurfacing, the director of the RAC, Steve Gooding, said: “The long-term solution is a long-term funding settlement for councils so they can finally get on top of what has been a perennial problem.” But councils—[Laughter.]…”

“1. Whether he is taking steps to accelerate the roll-out of the shared rural network.”

“In my constituency, only 40, 50 and 60 miles away from this House, villages such as Cuddington are still complete mobile notspots. Will the Minister explain how quickly the Government intend to move on activating the shared rural network, to ensure no rural community is left without a reliable mobile signal?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. As the Minister said, this draft statutory instrument was largely consulted on and prepared by the previous Conservative Government, so clearly the Opposition will not divide the Committee this afternoon. I congratulate the Department for Business and Trade…”

“National Grid’s rationale for rebuilding East Claydon substation is based on speculative applications, not consented real schemes. Will the Minister therefore meet me to find a way to get National Grid more grounded in reality rather than speculation?”

“The Secretary of State mentions rural crime, and I do not underestimate the scale of the challenge. In the last Parliament, with Labour’s support, my private Member’s Bill got Royal Assent. It just needs a statutory instrument to be laid before the House to bring in the definition of “forensic marking”, which the polic…”

“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that British farming does not operate on mega margins. Our farmers do not have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds in the bank. They operate on such tight margins that, even if we play devil’s advocate and accept the Government’s argument—which, for th…”

“There are many issues I could raise in such an important debate on rural affairs, but in their Budget a couple of weeks ago, the Labour Government introduced a new threat on such a scale that it simply must be the topic on which I open my remarks. As I said in last week’s Budget debate, the changes to agricultural prop…”

“Chiltern Railways was absent from the Secretary of State’s statement, but when it comes to rail performance, for my constituents —both those on the Chiltern main line and those on the Aylesbury branch—daily overcrowding is a reality, with passengers often being left on the platform. Given that the previous Government s…”

“As ever, the hon. Gentleman has hit the nail exactly on the head. In its briefing, which I am sure all Members have received, the National Farmers Union points out that the Treasury’s own figures on who will get caught up in the APR changes are fundamentally wrong, because they include a lot of very small-scale areas—p…”

“I congratulate the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) on a powerfully delivered maiden speech and wish him well in this House. I thank him for his kind words about his predecessor, Dr Liam Fox, who was a true champion of this House. The Budget of broken promises came as a hammer blow to communities up and…”