Speeches by Munt.

“I wondered about your experience of the legal services sector generally and the regulatory environment in which they operate.”

“We are celebrating Commonwealth Week. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is absolutely shocking to discover that the Government made the decision to freeze UK state pensions for 430,000 British citizens overseas, of whom 90% are in Commonwealth countries? It is particularly cynical of them to have introduced the leg…”

“You have referred to some of your expertise and experience in that area. Is there anything you would like to highlight in particular?”

“The hon. Lady mentions the Environment Agency, which is causing quite high levels of stress. I should declare an interest: my partner is a farmer, and we had an 80-acre lake for some weeks on the farm. The Environment Agency started thinking about bringing the pumps only after the storms had come. What we need is for t…”

“When the Minister replies, can he be clear about whether it is the Department of Health and Social Care or the Ministry of Justice that has control over this area? There seems to be a bit of a wrestling match going on between the two. I am sure the hon. Lady agrees that responsibility needs to sit in one place, so that…”

“I think it takes an average of 26 years for children to disclose that they were victims of sexual abuse, so it is absolutely critical that the provision on the reasonable suspicion of abuse is included in the Bill, as well as the trigger for the duty to report. In small, high-demand religious organisations, cultural no…”

“If I may, I would like to explore what happens with the Minister. There is mistrust of external agencies, and in a lot of these small, high-demand religious organisations—those that look like cults—people may not realise that they have any capacity or agency to report.”

“Specialist hospitals—by which I mean major trauma centres, trauma units, cardiac centres, burns centres, stroke units and some children’s hospitals—are the main destinations for the most time-critical, seriously injured and ill patients. Those are the same patients that our amazing air ambulance services routinely trea…”

“I welcome the Minister’s statement. What role will Parliaments have in the ongoing oversight and scrutiny of the operation and implementation of the Gibraltar agreement? Will the Government commit to having a vote in both the UK Parliament and the Gibraltarian Parliament?”

“In 2024, my constituent Claire lost her husband—a personal tragedy. Overnight, she became the sole parent to her three-year-old son. [Interruption.] Sorry, this is personal as well. I was going to talk about me, but I am not going to talk about me. She rightly points out that the fixed 18-month limit on bereavement sup…”

“It is good to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg, and I am sorry that I did not have the chance to say that in my earlier intervention. I commend the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) for securing this debate. When I looked at it, I was amazed at how many different topics might come into scope of this…”

“I am particularly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, because it is an area of interest to me. I have been a long-term supporter of Families Need Fathers, although not necessarily Fathers4Justice, which pinged off out of that. I tried to work out exactly how many times judges have allowed child arrang…”

“Talking about positive role models, in preparation for this debate I looked at the number of people in teacher training who were male. Although the numbers are going up, the proportion of men is going marginally down. I had the advantage—as did my children—of having teachers who were positive role models. What does the…”

“Does the Minister believe that men can bring up children really well as well?”

“I absolutely agree. That goes back to the business of data. We need to have the data, and I ask the Minister to look at that issue as well. I have made several points about data and statistics. If we do not know what is going on, we cannot possibly make an intelligent assumption about anything. Another area—to criticis…”

“We need to do more than watch out; that is completely unacceptable. I know so many men who have been the victims of domestic abuse. That is shockingly bad.”

“I know; I know.”

“I am just really interested. That is fine. It is a question for me to look at later. I know you said you were not speaking on behalf of the CJC in any way, but their report proposed an access to justice fund by hammering the profits of lawyers and third-party funders through conditional fee agreements and damages-based…”

“Can I drill down into the Swedish example? There would probably be no need, but do people therefore buy flights without insurance?”

“People have it on travel insurance.”