Speeches by Cocking.

“Yes. When you are giving the Committee examples, it is useful for us if they are like-for-like examples, not examples that we know are different anyway because of the number of people paying council tax or what have you. On council tax specifically, do you agree with the referendum cap? If there was no cap, I get that …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) on securing this important debate this afternoon. Some antisocial behaviour problems can be extremely localised down a single street, in a block of flats or between neighbours, ruining the liv…”

“I remind the hon. Member that the last Conservative Government recruited 20,000 police officers across the country and the only force not to meet that target was the Metropolitan police under Labour mayor Sadiq Khan.”

“T7. The Government say that foreign national offenders make up 12% of the prison population. Can the Secretary of State tell me when that number will be zero?”

“The Minister mentions a multi-agency approach. I think the public get frustrated with us when we have meeting after meeting about the same issue. What assurances can she give us that this multi-agency approach will lead to action taken on the ground to solve some of this antisocial behaviour in our communities?”

“Does the hon. Member agree that when police set up patrols to catch people who speed, the news quickly gets on to apps to tell people coming down the road that there is a policeman standing there with a speed gun? Does he think the Government should explore whether to ban apps that do that, so that we can catch people …”

“Peter, you are essentially saying you do not mind it being ringfenced as long as it suits you. If it does not suit you, you do not want it to be ringfenced.”

“You have mentioned lots of things that would get more money from central Government to cities, but do you think rural councils should be compensated? In some instances, in a rural authority, it costs more to collect the bins than it would in your authority, for example.”

“I want to come back to your point, Bill, and ask a different question. You are saying that you applied to go above the council tax threshold by 2.5%, which was accepted. We have done a lot of work on this Committee around unitarization. Your council went unitary. We are always told if you go unitary you save loads of m…”

“Lewis Cocking, MP for Broxbourne. I am still a Hertfordshire county councillor.”

“I draw the attention of Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have a school in my constituency that is very good at helping students with education, health and care plans—so much so that it is struggling with the number of students who have EHCPs. Will the Minister meet me to discuss th…”

“I often say that I would not like to be a teenager growing up today in an environment dominated by social media. It was bad enough that by the time I got to secondary school everyone had a phone, and by the time I left everyone had a smartphone. There is no doubt that the threats to children have been utterly transform…”

“The hon. Lady is making an impassioned speech. Does she agree that in some cases social media has made bullying 24 hours a day, because it means that it can happen at any point, even when a child is no longer at school?”

“You are not answering my question. There are thousands of planning permissions that are granted out there that could be started tomorrow. You have all mentioned that the planning system is a blocker. These are sites that have planning permission.”

“My question has kind of been answered in many different ways, so I will piggy-back on Lee’s. Some of the time it takes to get through the planning system and to discharge those conditions is because developers do not play ball. I have been on a planning committee. I have sat with loads of developers looking at design a…”

“You have all mentioned planning as an issue, so I want to touch on that a bit more. You are all basically saying, “It is too hard to get planning permission. It takes us too long”. In my experience of when I was on a planning committee, the only reason why it takes too long is that the developer tries to put in absolut…”

“I am Lewis Cocking, Broxbourne.”

“I am proud to represent a constituency with so many fantastic small businesses, and employers in Broxbourne are more likely to be small businesses than under the national average. Entrepreneurs in the towns and villages I represent are working hard and taking risks day in, day out, growing our local economy and creatin…”

“My hon. Friend makes an important point. I go out and speak to farmers and small business owners, as he does in his constituency, and I have met not one who thinks the Government are on the right path. I do not know who Labour Members speak to in their constituencies because—”

“What my hon. Friend says from a sedentary position is probably correct. Businesses and farmers in my constituency think that the Government have sold them down the river and led them up the garden path—they are doing things that they did not think they would do when they were trying to get into power. We have not heard…”