Speeches by Sullivan.

“Chair, if I may just follow on from that, I will be very brief. Do you agree that we have to take into account our demographic changes? We have growing elderly populations and issues with transportation. So actually having more town centre accommodation for elderly people and people with disabilities is a good thing an…”

“I was just going to follow up on the point that you made around some planning aspects and compulsory purchase orders. Do you believe that the deliverability of the policy framework and other initiatives is largely hampered due to the lack of resourcing and funding at local government level where a lot of these things h…”

“If I can ask very quickly, where we have seen success in our high streets, what do you think have been the most important factors in that success? What role do you think physical and cultural heritage play in high street improvement and regeneration?”

“If I could just ask Professor White very quickly, what does your work on urban retrofitting suggest about how best to build sustainability goals into regeneration?”

“Much work to shape and maintain our town centres happens at a local level. I am interested to hear what you think national Government can do to help local areas do more on having that breadth that we have spoken about this morning for mixed-use development, promoting town centre living and reusing vacant spaces. Profes…”

“When you were talking about vacant properties there, I was just wondering if using some as almost pop-ups to bridge a transition between online and having a bricks-and-mortar presence in the high street might de-risk that shift and allow online businesses just to try it out.”

“Q5. Some 1.5 million women in the UK live with endometriosis, which is a painful and life-changing condition. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis, I met Jessica Smith and Endo Warriors West Lothian to discuss their campaign for a national endometriosis registry to capture and audit diagnosis,…”

“It is a pleasure, Ms Jardine, to serve under your chairship today, and I thank the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) for presenting these petitions on behalf of the Petitions Committee. It is clear that there is a strength of feeling about fireworks, not only in this place but up and down the country—n…”

“In my contribution, I spoke about the contribution of people from Blackburn to changing what was going on in their community. Will the Minister reassure me that the Government will engage directly with communities, to hear from the very people whose lives are blighted by this antisocial behaviour?”

“My hon. Friend is making an important point on firework control zones. They were sold as a bit of a silver bullet, but unfortunately I heard from fire chiefs and police officers during my time as a councillor that they had been given no additional resources or funding to enforce them. That is surely a must.”

“I do not imagine that any of this will be a surprise to Skills Development Scotland or other Government agencies. Are we starting to see the move towards a framework or plan for skills that are required in the short to medium term and for the long term?”

“Are SMEs facing the same challenges and needing to bring people over, at the moment, to fill gaps?”

“We need to invest in our home-grown talent.”

“I am sure you are having many ongoing discussions with Scottish Government given, as you mentioned, the upcoming elections, but also current international events. Do you get a sense that there is a tension between what is going on in the world and long-held Scottish Government policy positions? Do you have the expectat…”

“We have already touched on the 300 workers from the Philippines that Babcock had to bring over. What role do you see overseas workers playing in Scotland’s defence sector in the coming years?”

“You see a need for some kind of industry view of what is required from the short, medium and long term. That ties in with your point, Andrew, about being able to plan ahead for the workforce, because a lot of these skills are not acquired overnight, so there is going to be a degree of planning there.”

“You have mentioned some of the perhaps failures of the curriculum for excellence in terms of us now having a mismatch between the skills of the young people coming out of school, looking to go into the workforce, and what industry needs at this point in time. You have also touched on engineering, which has been a commo…”

“After 19 years of an SNP Government, does the Secretary of State agree that yesterday’s budget reflects broken public services and decades of economic stagnation? For many families, that means there is just too much month at the end of the money.”

“Thank you. You have answered my next question.”

“There can be no question but that it is for the people of Venezuela to choose its future and for the international community to support democracy and uphold international law. While there is no denying the illegitimacy and brutality of Maduro’s regime, does the Foreign Secretary share my fears that such unilateral acti…”