Speeches by Wilson.

“Low-income families have been hit by being dragged into tax bands that they were not in before and by energy costs, and now the chief executive of Aldi has said that unless the Chancellor reviews her raid on farm inheritance tax, rising food prices will hit those families as well. If she will not listen to the farmers,…”

“Yes.”

“For 20 years, and we will not agree, on your goal of reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and the output of CO2 emissions. Indeed, I suspect that this argument is increasingly being accepted. The banks are now dropping out of the scheme for net zero, oil companies are saying they are going back to concentrating on …”

“I am glad that you mentioned Guyana. While we talk about preserving forests, we cut down a swathe of forest with British money for a road in the middle of the forest. First, we have failed to produce the finance that would have helped to protect forests. Secondly, even domestically, we have not produced the legislation…”

“Secretary of State, you and I have not agreed—”

“One of the assumptions seems to be that we will use the gas grid—which we have, albeit it is being used less because of the falling demand for gas—for a certain period of time and then decommission it. My only experience of this was long ago when I was the chair of the gas committee for Belfast city council. We had our…”

“According to the last figure I saw, the distribution costs and the investment required for the future currently account for nearly 45% of people’s electricity bills. It is difficult to see how you can get around this issue of cost. Might it be a significant barrier to electrification?”

“If we make the assumption that eventually we will decommission the gas grid, given that we are already struggling with the upgrades to bring electricity from diverse sources and from very many renewable sites, and also given the increase in demand from electric cars, heat pumps and everything else, and then industry re…”

“One of the points you have not made in talking about the barriers to electrification is the cost of what needs to be done. The Green Alliance has said that the biggest risk to electrification is the cost of electricity. As you have pointed out, we are going to have to upgrade the grid from wires coming out of a single …”

“The Government have had a lucky break with the coincidence of the OBR’s confession and report on its leak of the Budget details, which has given the Minister an opportunity to use the shame of the OBR to deflect from the real criticism that should lie with the Chancellor, who, weeks before, was using selective informat…”

“May I, on behalf of the whole nation, thank the Chancellor for advance sight of her statement over the last few weeks? I do not know what she hoped to gain by that—she may have hoped to make it more palatable—but I am afraid that the leaks have not made it any more attractive today than when they came out of the Treasu…”

“It may well be very unlikely, but I am expressing a wish that he does that. Some £17 million has been set aside for the cost of the protocol. The protocol and the Windsor framework are costing the Northern Ireland economy dearly, and the money that has been allocated today does not replace the cuts in the trader suppor…”

“Some of that redistributive impact is the result of taxes being taken off people who are on modest incomes for welfare increases. This is a figure that the Chancellor has quoted in the House time and again: one in seven under-25s is now fully reliant on benefits and is not in work. Where is that money coming from? It i…”

“Does the Secretary of State not see the irony of 53,000 people—about 400 from each of the participating countries—flying to Brazil and landing on airfields cut out of the tropical forest to discuss, of all things, the reduction of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere? Of course, they reached the conclusion that to keep our …”

“Many of the Ukrainian refugees in my constituency have welcomed the continuity between the last Government and the current Government in respect of their support for Ukraine. President Zelensky is under great pressure from some within the American Administration to accept an unreasonable deal. Will the Prime Minister a…”

“Anyone listening to this statement should be fearful for the future of energy production in this country. On the one hand, we have a Government who are totally committed to net zero, the elements of which will require huge inputs of critical minerals. On the other hand, the Minister tells us that by 2035 we cannot expe…”

“Confidence in the police is very important, and the Jewish community have every justification for not being confident in the police—whether it is some of the policing we have seen here in London or in the west midlands. Given that the reports in The Sunday Times seem to contradict totally what the police in the west mi…”

“The Minister says that he and the Government have no bias against the people of Scotland, but they certainly have not done very well out of this Government—1,000 jobs being lost a month in the North sea, and now today’s announcement. He attributes it all to a commercial decision. That commercial decision was made in a …”

“Does my hon. Friend agree that the Secretary of State’s promises to the House mean that the Bill would enable some of those people and their supporters to be included on the victims advisory group? Indeed, if the Secretary of State consulted the Justice Minister in Northern Ireland, the leader of the Alliance party, sh…”

“Let me first draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The Foreign Secretary is right: peace is fragile in Gaza. The Israeli Government have agreed the 20-point peace plan and the UN resolution, and—despite what she has said—have allowed more than 20,000 truckloads of aid i…”