Speeches by Smith.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) on securing this important debate, and I thank everybody who is here to take part; it is heartening to see what is, to all intents and purposes, cross-party consensus on this lo…”

“I beg to move, That this House has considered Government support for children in adoptive and kinship placements. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mrs Harris, and I thank so many hon. Members for being present in the Chamber. I will keep my speech as short as possible so that they can all get in…”

“The hon. Gentleman takes the words right out of my mouth, and if he stays for the whole debate he will hear me say exactly that. He raises an important point: we are asking people to care for the most vulnerable children, and if we do not give them the tools to do that, they will not apply in the first place. I am plea…”

“The British defence company Babcock employs over 2,000 people from my constituency. The long-awaited strategic defence review is due any day now, so will the Secretary of State set out how the Government will do more to prioritise British defence jobs, and British firms that will not only provide training and employmen…”

“I tabled amendment 102 in good faith, as I thought it might be workable. I want to reflect on what the Minister said at the beginning of his speech. I do not recall ever being offered an opportunity to pass my amendments to Government officials to ensure that they would be workable. Given the scope of what we are debat…”

“I suppose I would just gently push back on the LGR piece again. If it is left to areas that are potentially expanding their boundaries to decide what they think is important, it could still be the urban piece. A council in my area wants some of the rural area, but is on record as saying it doesn’t do rural. If a counci…”

“You haven’t answered the point about ringfencing. If it is not ringfenced, why should a council use that money to provide a socially necessary service and not something else? If we think there are socially necessary services, surely it makes sense to ringfence that funding so that there is no wiggle room for a local au…”

“Surely they are already not achieving those objectives, so don’t we need to give them an incentive?”

“I think we are assuming that these people are going to do what they are supposed to do, rather than spending it on something else.”

“This is just a point on the definition of “socially necessary”, particularly when councils are expanding. Where I am in Devon, the city council will believe that it is in deprived areas where people probably do not have a car that a service could be seen as socially necessary; whereas if it is adopting some rural commu…”

“To follow up what Katy said, I would flag with you the need for passenger ferries as well. A classic example in my constituency is that the bus arrives a few minutes after the ferry departs to the city, which obviously means that people who want to use that join-up, whether on foot, or by bus or car, cannot. I would ju…”

“Passenger ferries should not be forgotten.”

“They can be county dividing as well. Devon and Cornwall has a great one, but you have to get the bus there, and if they don’t marry up, it is pointless.”

“Witnesses told us that DRT services can face financial disadvantages, compared to fixed-route buses, when operating with private hire vehicles that are subject to VAT. Will the Department engage with the Treasury to consider whether VAT rules could be reviewed to ensure a level playing field for DRT services?”

“Moving on to community transport, which I suppose links to DRT as well, we have heard calls from the community transport sector for a more flexible and simplified regulatory framework. Have you considered reforming section 19 and section 22 permits to support this?”

“There is not going to be a central list.”

“I suppose this is going to be quite an interesting debating point when the Bill comes before the House. It all sounds quite subjective to me at the moment. It sounds to me—correct me if I am wrong—as if you are saying that you want local authorities to make all these decisions, but the Department is effectively going t…”

“Yes.”

“I have a really quick question. I think it could come in pretty much anywhere during this conversation, so I will put it in here. Obviously, a whole load of this relies on local authorities and commercial organisations being able to make it viable. What are you feeling about, or how are you planning on tackling, what w…”

“This could probably come in under several of these questions. Obviously, the ambition is laudable in terms of the rural franchising piece. Jersey sounds like a great example. It is an island, so there is a limit to how many routes are going to be necessary, based on where people live. Segueing from that, all of this wo…”