Speeches by Taylor.

“I welcome many of the measures in the statement, although I echo the request from my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) that we consider decoupling electricity and gas prices; that would make such a difference. In 2023, Sutton council was blocked by the opposition Conservative group from partaking of an EU…”

“Thames Water has failed its customers across the south-east, leaving people with contaminated water, poor service and even sewage flooding homes and streets. Boat races are warned to stay out of the Thames due to E. coli, while the region’s rare chalk streams are being poisoned by chemical imbalances. Local pubs and ca…”

“DEFRA.”

“I will fire the intern who put that word in there.”

“I want to amplify the valuable skills that our colleges are teaching in renewable technologies. I recently visited South Thames college in Wandsworth, where I saw the labs it has set up to teach the installation of heat pumps and other renewable technologies. The main challenge that the college faces is finding staff t…”

“I fully agree. The community-based approaches that I will come to later in my speech recognise that point. I intend today to state the case that a false premise has been advanced; that successive Governments have failed to invest enough in a whole-of-society approach to reducing knife crime and young people are dying a…”

“Introducing blunted knives is a very good example of thinking differently about this crime. The tabloid approach of looking for popular, big and visible solutions, such as banning zombie knives, while important, often ignores the statistics of how crimes are most often committed. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, …”

“I could not agree more. I was interested to hear the hon. Member’s speech the other day about including council enforcement officers in these hubs, too. Having them present in the community and accessible to residents is incredibly important. I am keen to have a conversation with him about the measures that he has achi…”

“I beg to move, That this House has considered knife crime in London. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. Violence behaves like a virus. It spreads among a community and wreaks havoc not just on our streets but on our lives. There is a particularly virulent strain in London: knife crime. It was on…”

“Just to go on to how the reset is being conducted across different policy areas, obviously your role is to bring that into a single point so you can see within the various silos. Hopefully, they are working fairly in an integrated way. How are you working between those Departments, and how are you overseeing that and c…”

“So the co-ordination between the Foreign Office, the practical steps and the decisions on those trade-offs sits on your lap. Nick Thomas-Symonds: Many things sit on my lap, as I think we will discover in the course of the Committee, but it is not only the Foreign Office and not only the Home Office. We work very closel…”

“On the touring musicians, for example, when the calls are made for a scheme to simplify that—a colleague of ours has put in a ten-minute rule Bill to simplify the rules around that—does that come to the Foreign Office? Where would that go to? So you then sit there, and you look at the trade-offs around— Nick Thomas-Sym…”

“That is a separate point. Nick Thomas-Symonds: Or about the position of the bishops. You are right; they are separate points. That said, what do I think about having a diversity of faiths and those of no faith represented in the upper House generally in appointments? I think that is a very important principle that, of …”

“Talking about disgraced peers and the size of the Chamber brings us neatly on to the Bishops’ Bench. I spoke in the Chamber about the importance of examining the presence of the Bishops’ Bench in the House of Lords. You spoke about the sequential nature of reform, which we have revisited here and of which I think we ar…”

“I am just going to try to nail you down a bit on this—I apologise. You referenced the incredibly impactful negotiations that occurred between 2017 and 2019. It was agreed, at that point, that the level of impact of those agreements was such that having votes on them by the Parliament that was elected to represent the c…”

“Obviously, the negotiations that are going to be held are of massive significance. Will you commit to providing the House with a vote to approve the outcome of those negotiations? Nick Thomas-Symonds: At the moment, I do not know what legal form the ultimate position we reach will take. We will also have a series of su…”

“We have discussed being held to account, which we are all big fans of. Nick Thomas-Symonds: I gathered.”

“It was helpful that you brought up the point about how negotiations with our European neighbours are not a zero-sum game and everybody benefits. I just worry, when we look across the Atlantic, that we have a President who sees everything as a zero-sum game, where somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. While we t…”

“I would echo colleagues and encourage you to continue to make statements as regularly as possible, rather than there needing to be urgent questions in the Chamber, because that is a much more constructive way to have that discussion. Nick Thomas-Symonds: I entirely agree, and I very much prefer proactive statements.”

“Okay, fine. I will steam on to the final point, about engaging with Parliament. How is that going to be managed? How are we going to be informed on progress? How will we be informed on how the negotiations are going and, ultimately, the trade-offs that you are making? When are we going to get the chance to celebrate or…”