Speeches by Lamb.

“I have learned over the years not to look a gift house in the mouth. This is a positive step forward. No doubt other steps could be taken in future, but this is significant in enabling the system to be far more sustainable than it has been of late. There must always be a role for local expertise and knowledge in planni…”

“Despite the many fine contributions made by Members so far and no doubt many yet to come, planning is quite a dreary subject for many. Indeed, I heard some senior Members of this House privately describe it as such. I can well remember as a young Labour member sitting through constituency party meetings wondering why w…”

“My hon. Friend must be reading ahead. The impact on escalating costs and viability as a result of the delays is hard to overstate. The capacity issues do not stem from laziness or as a covert form of development suppression; they stem from one issue and one issue only: the absence of sufficient numbers of planners in t…”

“T2. What consideration has been given to the introduction of safe leave for employees experiencing domestic abuse?”

“Could I ask what assessment the Government have made of the reliance on external suppliers in all this?”

“I know the comment has been made that this is to enable the system to be made more readily accessible, or at least address a number of concerns currently being raised by electoral administrators. I am sure that you are aware that the Association of Electoral Administrators has already stated that its express preference…”

“With respect, Minister, that is not really what I asked. I acknowledge the short-term work that is being done now, but both you and Mr Ison have acknowledged that this is an area that needs to be addressed; that the reason it is not being addressed right now is to address the short-term fixes; and that it will take lon…”

“What is the Government’s assessment of how well postal voting performed at the general election?”

“Could you outline what those things are that you are looking at?”

“Building on that, 16,000 people were affected notionally but anecdotal evidence suggests it might well have been higher than that, to be honest, talking to some of the electoral administrators. With increasingly narrow results at general elections, we are starting to move into an area where this might affect some of th…”

“Are you considering any mechanisms other than postal voting to enable people to vote?”

“I am not going to ask about future arrangements, then, but just build on the existing arrangements. I should state that I have spent 14 years as a governance committee member at my local authority overseeing this on the ground, so I have some quite strong opinions about the way Government deal with a lot of these thing…”

“I agree with my hon. Friend. I am well aware of the amount of effort that local schools are having to make directly to deal with the consequences of financial deprivation. It is important that we try to ensure that the statistics on free school meals are accurate, because it is a gateway to support. It is also how we m…”

“It has been a while since I looked at the numbers, but my understanding when I last looked was that the level of unclaimed benefits in our system is at least 10 times greater than the total value of benefit fraud. People are choosing not to access the support available by and large because of stigma or a lack of awaren…”

“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. I am very grateful for my good fortune in having the chance to introduce a Bill in my first year as a Member of this House and to seek to address, in part, one of my greatest policy concerns: childhood poverty. The previous Labour Government made reducing child po…”

“I absolutely agree. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. The Government are doing a lot to try to address this issue, but that is not to say that we cannot do more. We hear those stories of stigma, with children pretending to bring food out of their bags so that they do not miss out or so that the…”

“As Members have said, a number of us were in Ukraine at the end of last week, and four days ago we were sat in a bomb shelter in Kyiv as the Ukrainian military worked to clear the sky of drones. Kyiv is a beautiful European city—one of the great cities of Europe—filled with a freedom-loving, well-educated population th…”

“Since April, Crawley’s urgent treatment centre has been temporarily closed overnight because of low staffing levels. What do the Government intend to do to ensure that normal services are resumed for communities such as mine?”

“I don’t believe my point is relevant any more.”

“Under the Mauritian criminal code, anyone who questions the integrity of Mauritian territories, including the Chagos archipelago, is potentially subject to 10 years’ imprisonment. Most British Chagossians have, at one time or another, effectively given that level of disconsideration to the Mauritian Government. What co…”