Speeches by Milne.

“I absolutely agree. We should be doing work to improve what we already have; we do not need a radical change. I question whether taking action that would overwhelm licensing units would actually enhance public safety. Can we seriously expect people to wait years for a licence? We run the risk of turbocharging the black…”

“Absolutely: let us apply the laws that we already have, as they are well equipped to do the job. I have been contacted by many constituents about this issue. One constituent, Rob, works as a farm vet, so he is well placed to get an oversight of what is going on. He works with livestock farmers, visits large and small h…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for his suggestion. I am a big game meat fan, so I am certainly ready for that. Moving to a centralised, fully digitised licensing body akin to the DVLA or the DBS, with real-time verification at the point of sale, would directly address weaknesses, improve consistency, reduce fraud and allow pol…”

“We have heard a lot about the coalition years and austerity, to the extent that I began to wonder whether I had misread the title of the debate. Whatever the rights and wrongs of austerity, it was the conventional wisdom at the time. Had we been in coalition with Labour, I think the same thing would have happened, perh…”

“Many of the Vanguard businesses are large, though, and if you are a business of five people, it is a huge impact if one of them requires significant interventions or whatever. How would you respond to that?”

“Talking to small and micro-businesses, in the report there are lots of recommendations and a number of them would put costs on to business. Unsurprisingly, they were not terrifically keen on that aspect. Obviously, they are under a lot of pressure in general. Do we think it is reasonable to put extra costs on business,…”

“You see it, with that evidence coming in along the way, as generating actions that will be taken a whole lot sooner than seven years?”

“We heard evidence from Sir Charlie Mayfield last week and talked through some of the recommendations in his “Keep Britain Working” report. We also heard from representatives of disabled groups and small businesses. People observed a certain tension between the report saying we are facing a crisis—i.e. urgency—yet it su…”

“That is very interesting. Ruth, the same question to you.”

“I have one last quick question. Where do most of your referrals come from? From jobcentres or somewhere else?”

“In any programme like this, the co-operation with local employers is absolutely crucial to success. I know that in my own constituency of Horsham, many of them have disengaged with the local jobcentre because they felt they were getting the wrong sort of candidate put in front of them. How well engaged do you think emp…”

“Thank you. David, how is the integration of local and national health in London?”

“There is a great variety of services across the country, and the idea is to give freedom to allow local delivery, but there is also the national programme. How well do you think the national programmes integrate with local services? Ruth, you were talking earlier about how you did not want to conflict with or cancel ou…”

“Yes.”

“If not that, any other suggestions? That was their top ask.”

“You could recommend it, push for it, lobby for it.”

“I managed a small business in the past, and it can be very difficult to deal with. We asked the businesses, “What would you like if you could have it? What is your first ask?” and they pinpointed a cut in national insurance contributions for taking on disabled or other abled staff. What are the prospects of that? Natio…”

“I very much appreciate the action that the Government have taken to uprate UC—for the first time in its history, as the Minister says—but does he accept that it still will not cover the cost of basic essentials such as food, heating and rent for many of our most put-upon constituents?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I also thank the hon. Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) for shining a light on this important issue. The Liberal Democrats strongly support the principles of devolution and localism so we welcome the Government’s stated ambition to expand place-based e…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) for bringing attention to this important issue. Pressure has been building on postal services for decades. In my former career in advertising, I worked on behalf of the Irish post office, An Po…”