Speeches by Cross.

“I believe it was at the start of this year.”

“I beg to move, That this House has considered Government support for pig farmers. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank Members for coming to the debate. To say that the UK’s pig industry is worried is a gross understatement. The sector has always experienced ups and downs, but the…”

“The King’s Speech obviously contains a lot of Bills that impact Scotland either wholly or in part. What was the involvement of the Scotland Office in the preparation of those Bills, either the detail or the high-level content?”

“Given that there is a Division in the House, I will keep this very short. I thank everyone for participating in the debate. I hope the Minister’s meetings will be constructive. I ask him to go in with an open mind and listen to what the NPA is saying. It is not sounding a false alarm; it is genuinely very worried about…”

“The right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) was elected less than a month ago. He will be Prime Minister on Monday, by which time we will be on an almost 50-day recess. He will be appointing a Cabinet in that time, some of whom will not have to come to this House to answer questions until the middle of October,…”

“13 August is obviously a very important date, because it is when the fair dealing regulations come in. There have been warnings from the sector that that sort of thing will happen and about why it is so important. I ask the Minister for a proper review of these obligations to assess how they are working for the sector,…”

“Did the Scotland Office make representations about having distilleries included in the British industrial competitiveness scheme?”

“Thank you.”

“I will pull out one of those Bills, and it will be no surprise to you that it is going to be the Energy Independence Bill, which contains the ban on new licences, which does not benefit Scotland in any way, shape or form. What representations did you make, did the Scotland Office make, regarding the damage that it is g…”

“Understood. Slightly away from licences, if the Government had used their own metric of going to the OGPM, they still would have obtained the same benefit from an uplift in profits from the Strait of Hormuz and Iran. That is, with respect, slightly irrelevant to the question of licences and the banning of them in the E…”

“We have been speaking about tariffs and we will leave that for now. I am more interested in how whisky is being promoted across the other Departments, which of course is very much in your wheelhouse. It is excluded from the British industrial competitiveness scheme. There are concerns about new labelling coming in that…”

“Sitting adjourned.”

“Statistics that are used, such as that 98% of people are not reliant on it or cash is not used by the vast majority, are all well and good when you look at the UK as a whole, but, when you look at individual rural communities and certain regions in Scotland, those percentages will be significantly reduced. That is very…”

“Do you do that assessment for businesses as well as individuals? Particularly in rural Scotland or areas that are one step removed from a high street, they still come into their high streets to use banking services. SMEs and really small home businesses are very common in rural areas, and the impact on them is huge bec…”

“Internet and broadband in Scotland is not changing quickly. There is no way in a few years’ time that there is going to be sufficient broadband access across the country to make sure everybody has the use that they need. That is not going to happen.”

“Community care, which my hon. Friend has just touched on, is still important, particularly in preventing the need for corridor care. Insch War Memorial hospital, in my constituency, has been earmarked for closure, which is completely wrong. The trustees have done an amazing job in raising money to keep this vital commu…”

“No, I am not talking about banking hubs. From a bank’s point of view, you were talking earlier about how such a high percentage are not using them. If I am honest, it sounds like, “Don’t worry about it; it’s fine”. It is not fine for a lot of the country who are impacted. You are picking this up from this room. In some…”

“I have a final question. If the review comes back and says, again, that in-person services need to be enhanced and protected, would banks continue what seems to be their endless process of closing bank branches?”

“How will that be delivered? For example, you cannot do bereavement support over a phone. You cannot do some of these other services online. You need to have a bank branch. As we have heard earlier, there are areas in Scotland where you have to travel over 100 miles to get to a bank branch. If the review comes back and …”

“The medium term could be three years. You will understand this; we can all understand this. A business needs more than a three-year horizon for planning. Three years is not really protecting; it is giving someone a bit of breathing space. It is not protecting. A three-year commitment is not enough for a business.”