Speeches by Hayes.

“The Prime Minister and I disagree on much—the family farm tax, the national insurance jobs tax and the cut in winter fuel payments—but we surely agree that the common good is built on public order. Crossbows in the hands of killers cost lives: they cost the lives of three innocent women last year. The previous Governme…”

“Those of us who have been in government know that when new Ministers come to power—perhaps as innocent and heartfelt as the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell)—often ideas that have been rejected by their predecessors are put before them. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) described, o…”

“Our greatest Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, said that “power has only one duty—to secure the social welfare of the people.” Being held to account cements the legitimacy that Governments derive from their democratic mandate. Beyond parliamentary accountability, over time other checks and balances have e…”

“In working alongside the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) and the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for today’s debate, I met many WASPI women, and have since. They are not unreasonable, and they do not expect every line of their most ambitious desire to be met, but they did expect the Government…”

“I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making a powerful and eloquent case. He is absolutely right that the issue goes beyond even the just case of the WASPI women to something more fundamental: how Governments are held to account and how they willingly deal with that—this is not something that should be ext…”

“I rise for two purposes. The first is to put it on the record that the hon. Lady, alongside others, has made an outstanding contribution to this campaign; she has been a notable figure in this process. The second is to make a suggestion that she might put to the Government: why do the Government not meet a small delega…”

“The hon. Gentleman is coming to his exciting peroration, so I just wanted to say that he is absolutely right about the feckless behaviour of corporate businesses that disregard the interests of their workers, and I share his view of trade unions. However, does he recognise that there is a world of difference between th…”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On 21 May 2024, the former Defence Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), published records of blood and urine tests relating to nuclear test veterans. He said at that time that there were 150. It has now become clear from the corresp…”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the problem in universities. It has particularly found form in no-platforming speakers deemed to be unacceptable or to make people feel uncomfortable because of their views on transsexuals, for example. Kathleen Stock, a distinguished academic and a feminist, was …”

“The hon. Member is right that, if we did not get the unemployed people who could work into work, the circumstances would be as he describes them. We need to get those people into work. Many of them want to work, and many young people—the 1 million NEETs—do not have the skills necessary to work, and they deserve our sup…”

“My hon. Friend is giving a compelling summation of both the debate and the problem. She will know that Trevor Phillips, the Labour politician and columnist, first deconstructed the idea of multiculturalism. His argument was that it perpetuated the notion that cultures could co-exist without anything that bound them tog…”

“This is in anticipation of our trip to Clapham, perhaps. Another economic point that has not been made so far in the debate is that if we allow for the kind of incoming populations that the hon. Gentleman described, we stultify the economy. Instead of investing in technology, in labour saving, or in creating the high-t…”

“The hon. Gentleman is making a measured speech, unlike the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer), but will he chart what he has mentioned in practical terms? Last year, there were 700,000 new GP registrations. No Government, Conservative or Labour, could cope with that scale of growth in demand.”

“Will the hon. Lady give way?”

“The key difference is the type and number of students. The hon. Gentleman and I rarely disagree, and we certainly do not disagree on this subject very much. If someone is studying for a PhD, and they are coming here to work for a considerable time and looking to build a long-term career in academia, I can understand wh…”

“Now that I have been half-kind to the hon. Gentleman, I will give way.”

“I would like to think that the hon. Gentleman, who is my constituency neighbour, spends more time in Lincolnshire than Clapham. I am sure he does. Perhaps, though, we could have an outing on the Clapham omnibus together. When I go about my constituency, and I imagine this is the same in Lichfield and many constituencie…”

“I will deal with those points in order. On the question of population, the ONS is clear that net migration is likely to fuel a rise in the UK population to 72.5 million by 2032. For most of my childhood and adolescence, the population was somewhere around 57 million, 58 million or 59 million. We have never at any point…”

“I give way to the hon. Gentleman, although he looks like a bespectacled economist, so I am slightly nervous.”

“I am extremely grateful for being allowed to contribute to the debate, Dr Huq. I congratulate the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) not only on bringing the subject to the House, but on the measured way he introduced it. It is good to hear someone offering a balanced view on immigration. I have good news for h…”