Speeches by Powell.

“Well, maybe we will be coming up that hill—is that one of Kate Bush’s songs? I do not know; I have just thought of that on the hoof, so it might be wrong. The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue, which gets raised with me a lot, about the balance we need to strike between our goal to be a clean energy superpower, …”

“My hon. Friend has been a great campaigner on this matter as Chair of the Nepal all-party parliamentary group. She will know—and share with us, I am sure—that we greatly value the Gurkhas’ long and distinguished history of service in our armed forces, and we remain committed to supporting the welfare of Gurkha veterans…”

“I could not have put that better myself. What a great tribute my hon. Friend has paid to the Dialogue Express Café in her constituency and to its work in bringing people together, breaking down barriers, creating opportunity for those from the deaf community, celebrating deaf culture and identity and celebrating BSL. I…”

“As I said, the Defence Secretary, the Prime Minister, the rest of the Government and I are deeply uncomfortable about how the situation unfolded. Many of us did not even know about this until this week. The House was kept in the dark, which it should not be at any time. I understand the intention, which was to try to k…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for his thanks. It has been my absolute pleasure to answer all the hundreds of questions that I have answered over the last year, and he raises another important one, too. He is absolutely right that motor neurone disease is an utterly devastating disease that is currently incurable. I wish all t…”

“What I said then was absolutely right; it is what I would say now.”

“These are trade-offs, as we have been saying. There is perhaps a difference to some degree between everyday announcements, news management and amplifying your message, and big important Government documents and big important announcements. Personally I think the House of Commons is a much tougher crowd than a media pre…”

“I could sign them.”

“Great quote! Whoever said that is absolutely right.”

“And by the way, if the Committee wants to recommend to the Government that they change the code, that is obviously entirely a matter for the Committee.”

“Yes, absolutely. And now, he has developed a new process, for future SDRs, whereby they will be published in advance. I think big documents should be published to the House first, but not in such a way that colleagues have not got time to read them, digest them and come up with questions.”

“Me, probably.”

“I’m quite good at pub quizzes. Make it about sport.”

“Yes. There are logistical things to do. But what I want to be really clear about, what would have happened previously and was suggested—not by the Secretary of State—was that the Secretary of State would do that conference somewhere, while a junior Minister gave the statement in the House. Sometimes Mr Speaker will mak…”

“It’s a pleasure.”

“We could have had that afterwards. That is something we constantly stress test and consider—the logistics of that. The reverse of that would be that parliamentary business is not as predictable. Let us say that that day, a press conference with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, at a hospital, near London, had been…”

“The 10-year plan, which was a 169-page document, I think, was published to the House first. It was not a press conference about the whole document itself; it was about plans for the NHS. I don’t not take your point. These are balances to get right, but the plan itself was published to the House. The statement was adver…”

“Not at all.”

“I am sorry if you have had that impression, because I am really happy to be here and to answer these things.”

“That is absolutely not a feeling that I have made known.”