Speeches by Cocking.

“Q Thank you for coming in today to give evidence. You have said that the Bill is going to make smaller stores more viable, and that it will affect your bigger stores. Can you give us a flavour of what that means for your business, and whether it will put you off doing bigger stores and make you concentrate on smaller s…”

“Q The first question was about whether it would put you off doing bigger stores and make you concentrate on smaller stores. Will you give us a flavour of what the Bill means for your business? Paul Gerrard: Thank you. We are very much a convenience business, so the average size of our stores is about 3,000 square feet.…”

“Q In answer to the first question, you said that businesses could save approximately £1,000 or £3,000 depending on size, and then went on to say where they could use that money to make investments in their business or what have you. The businesses I speak to in Broxbourne say that they will have to put that money aside…”

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Broxbourne is not known for its farms, but this year’s boundary changes have seen my agricultural land increase. This tax will also affect thousands of my constituents through the supply chain and buying food at supermarkets. However, I want to concentrate on something we keep hearing f…”

“I support continuing with the first-past-the-post system. When our constituents arrived at their polling station on 4 July, they knew what to expect: if their chosen candidate received more votes than any other, that is who would be elected as their MP. There is elegance to this simplicity. In our democracy, the person…”

“The asylum hotel in Cheshunt in my constituency is already putting pressure on strained public services, including local GP surgeries. The Government’s manifesto committed to closing asylum hotels. Can I ask the Secretary of State when she will honour that promise, or will the list of broken promises to the British peo…”

“Antisocial behaviour affects all our constituencies, including my constituency of Broxbourne. Some antisocial behaviour can be very localised—down a specific street, in a block of flats or between neighbours—and some of the levers to solve that antisocial behaviour lie with housing associations. Will the Minister outli…”

“Businesses in my constituency are really worried and putting off investing and creating jobs because of the Labour party’s Budget, and in particular the increase in regulations and the national insurance increase. How does the Secretary of State plan to get everyone who should be in work back to work if no jobs exist o…”

“But there are no plans by you or the Department to change any existing local plans that are already in place to make them build more houses until their local plans come to an end. I am talking about councils that already have a local plan.”

“But you do think it is important for local councils to make decisions and have input, and for local residents to have a say on planning applications in their area.”

“So there have been no discussions thus far to change—”

“But have there been any discussions about amending those criteria since you have taken office?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the register of interests. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) for securing this important debate. While I agree with him that much more needs to be done to encourage appren…”

“And there have been no discussions within the Department to extend the premise of when call-ins can happen.”

“So you do not think call-ins will go up if it looks like—”

“Can I ask, then, whether you think call-ins will go up over the course of this Parliament, if it looks like you are not going to meet your 1.5 million homes target?”

“If you believe in democracy and local councillors are elected to make decisions on planning applications, do you foresee lots of planning applications being called in when they are recommended for refusal before they have even been heard at the local level by local councils?”

“So why is the Department starting to call in planning applications before they have been heard by local councils?”

“Thank you very much, Minister. Do you believe in local democracy as a principle?”

“On that, you have not mentioned the action you are going to take against developers land banking. You seem to be attacking councils when lots of councils do lots of approvals. Taking you back to your target, there must be a minimum that you have to deliver each year because there must be a maximum that you think that t…”