Speeches by Bell.

“Will the hon. Lady give way?”

“I did not say anything of the sort. I said that we are not going to have a £10 million mansion in Westminster paying less tax than a terraced house in Blackpool, and that has been brought to an end by this Budget. I have heard the worries of some Opposition Members about the surcharge, and I want to assure the House th…”

“I will come to the hon. Lady in a second, because she and the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) told us that the Liberal Democrats wanted wealth taxes, while continuing their record run of opposing every single wealth tax put in front of them, and conveniently forgetting that the Liberal Democrats tried and fail…”

“I am afraid that I do not have time to give way. The last Government cancelled face-to-face assessments for health benefits; this Government are bringing them back. The last Government also oversaw a scandal that has received far too little attention. They allowed people who came to Britain for just a few years—people …”

“What I know is that youth apprenticeships fell by 40% under the Conservative party. That is what failure looks like. I am coming on to some of those matters. We do not want to grow this economy by simply borrowing more, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) rightly pointed out before he turned, a…”

“Your ending.”

“It will fall every year!”

“He may not have been paid at all. His focus at the beginning of his remarks on growth and one of its key enablers, investment, was right. If we stepped back and forced ourselves to ask, “What is the one thing the British economy needs more of?”, it would be public and private investment. As several hon. Members have sa…”

“I am not sure that I fully understood, so I am not going to commit to agreeing. Remember that the capital gains on shares in equity ISAs—investment ISAs—receive tax relief in their entirety, so the tax is not the problem in terms of people’s rates of return; the returns would have been very real indeed over, for exampl…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I will indeed leave several minutes for the winding-up speech. Like everyone else, I begin by congratulating the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on securing this debate, particularly on the Budget eve; it is very kind of him to make my diary relax…”

“I am. I will just gently say that many people, when discussing the reasons for that, point to a policy of Brexit delivered without any ideas about how it should be delivered in a smaller, home market and without any plans for the future. I would probably pause on that before I started offering anyone views on anything …”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Occupational Pension Schemes (Collective Money Purchase Schemes) (Extension to Unconnected Multiple Employer Schemes and Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2025. That should encourage enthusiasm from everyone. The primary purpose of the draft regulations is …”

“I thank the hon. Members for Wyre Forest and for Horsham for their consensual approach and the clarity of their support for what is a development of CDC schemes that has had good cross-party support. Communications are very important. The truth is that they are important in all pension schemes—particularly within CDC s…”

“I can reassure the hon. Member that we are scrapping the attitude of the Conservative party, which blocked any building from happening anywhere in this country year after year. Houses were blocked. Railways were blocked. Anything that involved any difficult choices was blocked by a party that gave up governing long bef…”

“No, not at all.”

“What this Government have done to steady the markets is to kick the Conservatives out of office and leave them in opposition for years to come.”

“The previous Labour Government cut child poverty significantly, and so will this one.”

“My hon. Friend is always a powerful advocate, both for the fast-growing companies in his constituency and for the right pension policy for the UK as a whole, as we saw when he sat on the Pension Schemes Public Bill Committee. Sterling 20 is a new, investor-led partnership between the UK’s 20 largest pension funds and i…”

“I thank the hon. Member for his question. I agree with where he started, but unfortunately he then went on to praise some of the work done under the last Government, when we did not see the investment that he talks about coming through and reaching entrepreneurs, who he rightly says we should do more to support. That i…”

“The LGPS actually has a strong track record of local investment of exactly the kind that my hon. Friend mentions, including in social housing, and we want to build on that record. The Pension Schemes Bill will introduce requirements for local government pension scheme pools to work with strategic authorities, including…”