Speeches by Gale.

“The Secretary of State appears to think it is scaremongering to suggest that, with effect from this weekend, passenger and freight traffic using the channel tunnel and the port of Dover will be disrupted as a result of the European entry and exit system. I do not want the grievance; I want the solution, and I want it b…”

“Before I call Esther McVey to move the motion, and then the Minister to respond, I remind Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate. No such notice has been given. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up the debate, as is the co…”

“I am sure that the whole House will have appreciated the contribution by Strangford’s own answer to Professor Henry Higgins. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered regional accents and social mobility.”

“Order. I assume that the Minister is not suggesting that the debate has been in any way out of order.”

“Order.”

“To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what measures the Government have put in place to ensure that in the coming holiday season, travellers and business freight are not delayed at our ports, our international railway stations and our airports as a result of the imposition of the European entry and exi…”

“This House has the capacity to criticise, but it also has the capacity to be fair. The Minister probably finds himself between a rock and a cliff face in a situation that he did not make himself. That does not absolve the MCA from the criticism that has rightly been levelled at it earlier today. Mine is one of those pe…”

“As the Minister has indicated, over the spring bank holiday there was chaos at Dover, at St Pancras and at the channel tunnel because of the failure of the EES. The French authorities were quite simply not prepared or able to implement the facilities properly. Based on bookings for the coming season, which starts in 10…”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“There are people in the Gallery and in the public out there who want to know that dangerous criminals will not be released at the start of September. That is what they want to hear; we do not want to hear the history. We want an answer from the Minister. He heard the offer from the shadow Secretary of State in reply to…”

“In view of what my hon. Friend has just said, the constituents of Members across the House just want a clear undertaking that dangerous criminals—rapists and others—will not be set free. The Government have obviously dug themselves into a hole and have thrown in the towel this afternoon. We have a limited amount of tim…”

“The hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) referred to the use of solar panels on all sorts of buildings to provide shade, and we could include car parks in that. But what we should not be including is grade 1 agricultural land. Whether the Minister likes it or not, we have lost far too much agricultural land in e…”

“Does the Minister agree that it is iniquitous that at least one of the doctors responsible for the intrusive examination of young women prior to their rape and sexual abuse by Mohammed Fayed is still practising in London? If she does, would she approach the General Medical Council to ask why that is?”

“Mr Speaker, you will recall that on 16 April I raised with the Leader of the House the failure of Capita to administer properly the civil service pension scheme. Ever courteous, he passed that information and my concerns to the Cabinet Office. The deputy director of the Government People Group responded on 30 April, sa…”

“The hon. Gentleman referred to “reinventing the wheel”. There is no possible way that anybody can be really compensated for the loss of a child, a husband or a wife. However, those of us who still bear the scars of the thalidomide scandal are seeing the wheel reinvented again and again. Surely there has to be a system …”

“The Roman forts of Reculver and Richborough, linked by the Wantsum channel and the River Stour in east Kent, are ambitious to secure UNESCO world heritage site status. Those ambitions will be killed stone dead if the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero supports the building of a 90-foot-high converter station o…”

“I apologise for the untimely interruption earlier, Mr Twigg— if I had been in the Chair, I would have been shouting at me. I wanted to open my mobile phone because at half-past 4 this afternoon a lady from Herne Bay texted me to say: “Sewage is being discharged into Herne Bay from a combined sewage overflow”. That is a…”

“I apologise for the untimely interruption earlier, Mr Twigg—if I had been in the Chair, I would have been shouting at me. I wanted to open my mobile phone because at half-past 4 this afternoon a lady from Herne Bay texted me to say: “Sewage is being discharged into Herne Bay from a combined sewage overflow”. That is a …”

“Is “dinosaurs” the word you are looking for?”

“At the risk of editorialising from the Chair, may I say that, on the mere 43rd anniversary of my election to this House, it is a real pleasure to be able to put this motion to the Chamber? Question put and agreed to.”