Speeches by Turner.

“Other colleagues may come back on the point that you just made. You mentioned the taxis and private hire licensing review. That review took three years to be completed. A draft Bill was published in 2014. We did not see any progress on that work in the decade that followed. Other examples of slow progress include the r…”

“It is interesting to hear that we might be transitioning to an approach that has a longer design phase before projects are introduced. Another issue with access for all has been the end of one control period and the start of another, which is an issue in common with other parts of the rail capital programme. Last May, …”

“Finally, you mentioned liveries. The InterCity livery and brand has been successfully exported around the world, but, in perhaps a very British fashion, we no longer use it in this country, where it was created. Do you think that that could make a return?”

“I have said it a number of times on the record and in this House before, so it is no evasion to say that I am no fan of the cap at all. As an incrementalist, I would like to see at least some solid progress on lifting that cap, and I hope that we will be in a position to remove it completely.”

“No. I have already taken two interventions and I want to make a bit of progress with my speech, but I might come back to the hon. Member. I hope that the Opposition do publish more detail, because, if they do not, it will be widely suspected in the country and the House that they know that their claims do not withstand…”

“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for becoming the human face of tax collection in this debate. A number of my constituents also work for HMRC, and they have told me that the period of cuts has impeded the agency’s ability to collect corporate taxation and get into the public purse revenues that are rightly due. Is that …”

“I will happily say to the hon. Gentleman that I do not think any of us come to this place wanting to raise taxes. I will just draw attention to one thing in the Labour party manifesto: an important statement that a growing economy needs strong public services. I welcome the record investment in our NHS—the biggest in 2…”

“I will give way to my constituency neighbour.”

“The Minister has just spoken about public services and touched on productivity. At the start of the debate, the shadow Chancellor talked about the importance of timely public sector pay settlements to productivity increases. Having been a union official in the aftermath of the strikes by ambulance workers, I have some …”

“My hon. Friend is right, and we could all point to examples of waste and inefficient spending under the previous Government. That is, of course, part of the context of where we find ourselves today, as are the £9.5 billion of undisclosed spending pressures that were withheld by the Treasury on their watch from the Offi…”

“When Opposition Members talk about defenestration, I do listen—because of their greater expertise in these matters. And, of course, “What’s past is prologue”—the hon. Gentleman tempts me to get on to the Zinoviev letter, but that might be one for another day. However, I have actually made only one brief reference to th…”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, because it brings me to my next point. The Opposition have come to the House today stating that all these difficult matters have been resolved and there is no need for tax increases at all. They say that they have a plan for cutting £47 billion of public expenditure. I h…”

“Opposition motions are usually detailed—as, indeed, is the next motion on the Order Paper, relating to energy—so the brevity of this motion deserves comment. The most important line is, I think, the first: “That this House calls on the Government to control public expenditure”. In the hands of this Opposition, that sho…”

“I would like to draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that I worked for the Minister between 2012 and 2016. It is a question for the Minister, and Sarah, you may wish to comment. We have heard throughout this inquiry that there are generalised skills requirements within the transport sector that are subject to com…”

“Presumably the Department itself also receives a good deal of information about skills requirements and skills shortages; some that are perhaps systematic and some that are anecdotal. How does the information flow between Skills England and the Departments? Are those systems set up at this point, or is it a work in pro…”

“Good morning. I have a follow-on question from the last point around technology and how that is changing the skills requirements. The broad end of the question is: what additional skill shortages are you seeing as a result of technological change? We are also interested in the age aspect. For young people coming into t…”

“Yesterday, the hon. Gentleman said the Conservatives “will repeal those most damaging elements of the Employment Rights Bill”.—[Official Report, 4 November 2025; Vol. 774, c. 776.] Could he inform us which elements of the Bill they will retain?”

“I did not realise that was a genuine offer. I do not have the ctrl+F function in front of me to do a word count, but, again, I would be interested in hearing an answer to the question I posed to the hon. Gentleman. All I will say is that, as his colleague the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) said in Com…”

“T3. Dyspraxia is a common condition, but public awareness levels are still too low. Does the Minister agree that more needs to be done across Government and society to raise awareness of dyspraxia?”

“Is it not also the case that, within that graph, a number of the nations that the Resolution Foundation says have weaker protections actually have higher unemployment rates than our own? There is clearly not the relationship between the two that some in the Opposition have tried to suggest.”