Speeches by Reader.

“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, while we do need that reform, we should recognise the brilliant organisations in our communities that are working so hard to support people—particularly, in Northampton, SEND Mummas, West Northants SEND Action Group and SENDS 4 Dad?”

“I agree that those services are critical—we are seeing that at first hand in Northamptonshire; when placements and employment opportunities collapse, when local provision disappears, and when funding dries up, people lose trust in the system. The reality is that, across the country, the support network available to aut…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) for securing this debate, and to her constituents for joining us today in Westminster Hall. I am proud to be a member of the Labour party—it is the party for workers; it recognises the dignit…”

“The Royal & Derngate in Northampton has been named the UK’s most welcoming theatre. Will the Leader of the House join me in commending Jo Gordon, the chief executive; Jesse Jones, our artistic director; and all the team at the Royal & Derngate?”

“The Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for North West Essex, said at the Conservative party conference that she wanted to cut regulation on building, but she was silent on the Government’s consultation on speeding up building. Is this a change of policy? Are the Conservatives now supporting the Government …”

“May I tell the Committee a story? There is good merit in making sure that councillors are trained, but they can be trained and still not listen. A Reform councillor in Northamptonshire chose to join a training session, forgot to turn off his camera and got into the bath naked. If we are to mandate training, we are goin…”

“It is a pleasure to speak about this issue. I thank the Minister, who has been gracious in giving me a lot of time to discuss upward-only rent reviews. I hope to use a couple of minutes to clarify a couple of points in the Minister’s statement that I do not think completely reflect the evidence that we have heard and, …”

“As the Committee will remember, I had just covered Ireland. I will now take Committee members across the world to Australia, where a ban on upward-only rent reviews was relatively successfully deployed, as the Minister rightly said. As with Ireland, it is a very different model to what the Government are proposing. In …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) for doing tireless work to co-ordinate it on behalf of us both. I thank his team as well. I want to start by echo…”

“I have some evidence on this point: under reorganisation, we actually lost Labour councillors. As the council came together, there were more Conservatives post reorganisation than before, so I am not sure about the hon. Gentleman’s evidence base for his suggestion that this is gerrymandering by the Labour party.”

“There has been a lot of conjecture about what could happen. I am from an area that has a unitary, because the Conservatives bankrupted the county council. Has the hon. Gentleman spoken to people who have unitaries in order to fix some of his ideas in some sort of foundation? It is great to hear people’s ideas, but let …”

“Did you just point at me when you said that?”

“Matt, I am going to carry on with you, if that is okay. I will come to the other panellists on engagement with community energy after my question. On 1 October, NESO published revised timelines on grid connection offers, which means that you now have significant delays. The gate 2 notifications may now not be coming un…”

“Did you just point at me when you said that?”

“Matt, do you see community energy as a benefit or a hindrance?”

“If we had a definition of what a community energy project was, there could be a change to your licensing requirement to enable you to deal with them in a different way and one that is perhaps more appropriate to the scale of the organisation. Sarah and Mark, do you see community energy as a benefit or hindrance to deli…”

“Sarah, one of the areas that we heard frustration about is the complexity of engaging with DNOs. What is your organisation doing to help community organisations and community energy projects through that engagement process?”

“Thank you, Matt. I will come on to colleagues on engagement. We have heard that community energy is needed. You probably heard the first panel and even some of our previous sessions, and you have seen the passion in the sector. One of the challenges that groups have mentioned is that their voices are not always heard. …”

“Given that all of the tier 1 major developers have written to me and asked me to pass on to the Chair and to the Minister their big concern about this, do they have confidence, or does NESO need to do more to listen to them?”

“Is the Department aware of the delivery risk on clean power 2030 because of this significant delay, particularly with projects unable to achieve FID now impacting on the potential investability of projects?”