Speeches by Carling.

“Apologies for my lateness; I was in a Bill Committee meeting.”

“The hon. Gentleman moved an amendment specifically to rule out trade unions. The Bill does not rule them in, in any way. I am slightly concerned that he might be misleading us—inadvertently.”

“I say to Opposition Members that their relentless politicisation of the issue is no doubt making it much harder to find a chair because it will be putting candidates off. As the inquiry gets under way, we must keep up progress on implementing the recommendations of the Jay IICSA inquiry. I raised concerns on Report dur…”

“A constituent has written to me to highlight that they have successfully completed a level 3 BTEC diploma in musical theatre. To go on to university, they need an extended diploma—a third year—but their college will not let them do it because they have not achieved a grade 4 in GCSE maths, which their university course…”

“I have a brief, technical question. I might be mistaken in my reading of the provision, but I seek clarification about the arrangements for local transport plans. On Tuesday, the Committee agreed to clause 6, which amended the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 and the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Cons…”

“On the subject of local partners, could the Minister confirm that the intention here is to include private sector organisations as local partners? I am keen to see mayors make the most of this power, being able to use it to ensure that conversations can take place with, for example, large local employers or anchor comp…”

“The schedule contains comprehensive provisions around the designation of key route network roads, but I am conscious that we have not defined key route networks in statute. I am a little worried, therefore, about the potential for mayors to designate inappropriate roads as key route networks for political purposes. I w…”

“My hon. Friend is giving a powerful account of the inadequacy of SATs. Does he agree that the fact that so many secondary schools retest their pupils when they arrive shows that they do not have trust in SATs either?”

“I wonder whether the Minister has the same experience as I do. When I speak to employers in North West Cambridgeshire, I hear time and again that young people do not have the skills for the workplace and that the education system has not left them with the right mindset and abilities. Is something going direly wrong wi…”

“Before the summer recess, I hosted a “Truth about SATs” parliamentary drop-in with educational reform group More Than a Score. It was a great event, with MPs from all sides of the House sitting down to take some mock SATs exams themselves. Lots of colleagues sat there quite relaxed, chatting to others and evidently fai…”

“With your permission, Sir John, I will make some references to schedule 3 as well as clause 9, just to do it all in the same place. I will start by responding to some of the hon. Lady’s points. She raises some valid concerns. I will just give the perspective of someone who lives in quite a fractious combined authority …”

“We have just heard the Minister speak about having statutory guidance on this issue. Does the hon. Member agree that one way of making this change, rather than through these amendments, would be for the guidance to include some clear indications to the remuneration panels about what roles they should consider comparabl…”

“I have some more thrilling financial commentary, so I hope the Committee will forgive me. First, I welcome what the Minister has just said. Exactly this situation happened in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, where our mayor went on medical leave for some time. His deputy, Councillor Anna Smith, who is a good friend of …”

“I am really lucky in North West Cambridgeshire to represent a whole variety of heritage sites of different sizes, including Burghley House, which I visited recently—a 16th century stately home that welcomes thousands of visitors each year to the house itself and the gardens—and smaller sites such as John Clare Cottage,…”

“Q I have a question for the whole panel, but first I would like to come on to something Mayor Brabin just said. I was really pleased you raised the issue of taxi licensing. We have a border problem around my area of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, where taxis register in certain councils because they have laxer standa…”

“Q Thank you; that is really helpful. On to my main question: in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, our mayor announced that he intends to appoint as his planning commissioner a former leader of Peterborough city council, who is still a councillor, although currently in opposition. We have a democratic problem, where we h…”

“Q We have talked a lot about governance and the need to safeguard how financial procedures work on audit committees. I am interested in the flipside of that—in how we can protect taxpayer money through measures such as those in the devolution White Paper, including local public accounts committees. Could you give us yo…”

“Q That is useful. You talked about potentially having only one that perhaps has quite a big remit across the whole country. Do you think that would have enough time to do the work it would need to do, or is there a kind of midway point where perhaps you have regional committees or some other mechanism? Mark Stocks: I t…”

“Q This is a question for Councillor Chapman-Allen about the balance of powers between councils and strategic authorities in the licensing space. A number of our district and unitary councils, including Peterborough and Huntingdonshire, in the area I represent are grappling with problems of taxi licensing, where taxis a…”

“Sorry. Would you favour adding provisions to the Bill for strategic authorities to take over licensing powers to deal with that issue? Sam Chapman-Allen: None of my 169 members has ever asked for taxi licensing to be removed from a local principal council up to the strategic authority. If that is the Government’s inten…”