Speeches by Prinsley.

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is an honour to be able to open this year’s Holocaust memorial debate. In The Sunday Times of the week before last, the Chief Rabbi described the dilemma of the teacher faced with the question of what to do on Holocaust Memorial Day. Given the polarising impact of the events of Octob…”

“I absolutely agree with the right hon. Member: that is exactly the case. He makes the point extremely well, and I thank him for doing so. The banning of a Jewish MP from a local school in Bristol was simply an outrage. We receive messages from families of isolated Jewish pupils in rural East Anglian schools where there…”

“The right hon. Member is making a really powerful speech. Does he agree that there is a strong suspicion that some of the hate marches we have seen on the streets of Britain have been orchestrated by Iranian agents?”

“I thank my hon. Friend for that information, which I was aware of. If I have a little time, let me thank the leader of Plaid Cymru, the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts)—I simply cannot pronounce the name of her constituency. She was correct that we must remember the other genocides, some o…”

“It has been an immense privilege and honour to listen to the many brilliant speeches in the House this afternoon. I thank anybody who said anything kind about me. I have made some notes about what people said—there is no time to go through all of them, but I must mention one or two. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrin…”

“Yes.”

“Is there a country that does this much better than us that we could model our activities on?”

“I am quite confused, having sat here all morning listening, about what we need to do. It seems from what I have heard that we do need to have a digital ID of some sort, and that will improve matters. Politically, the issue we have is the gig economy, and that when people see people working in delivery businesses on the…”

“No, but do you agree with that?”

“What I am hearing is what I already think, which is that migrants should be issued with a fixed digital ID that allows them to access all services, including proof of right to work. It is the way that this comes and goes for people arriving in this country that is so problematic. We will have a big difficulty in sellin…”

“If the Home Office were to join itself with the NHS, things might improve.”

“I am Peter Prinsley, MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket. I am interested in what you just said about the NHS number. Everybody has an NHS number: they are issued with an NHS number when they are born. Anybody who accesses NHS services has an NHS number. So do we not already have a digital ID called the NHS number? W…”

“Do you have an idea of how often this fine of £60,000 is issued? Are thousands of people a year fined £60,000, or is it just an occasional thing?”

“I welcome the Government’s plan to change the law. It was obvious to me and to others that such a change would be needed, and it was one of the matters about which the newly elected doctors spoke to Ministers last year. Imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you have graduated from a medical school, excited at last to be …”

“I think that there will be effects on what people do here, but the political difficulty for the Government is the number of net migrants—how many of them are coming and what routes they are coming by. My impression, from what I am hearing, is that some of these changes, particularly in respect to the families and child…”

“But just because they have a tolerance for poor conditions, it does not mean to say that we should be tolerating poor conditions.”

“I am listening to this with increasing dismay. Would it be reasonable to say that the proposed changes are likely to disadvantage families with children without having any effect on net migration, or on reducing the number of people trying to get here through what are called illegal routes on small boats? Are we, in fa…”

“It feels like changing the rules in the middle of the game.”

“In a situation that, as Dr Sumption said, is probably going to do nothing about the main political problem, which is that there are desperate people coming across on boats.”

“It feels like we are not really going to solve the problem. Dr Sumption, the political problem in the country is that people see these boats coming over, and they see these migrant hotels filling up. Do you think that the changes being proposed are going to affect any of that?”