Contributions
450 recent contributions in Hansard
HANSARDForeign, Commonwealth and Development OfficeThe Minister may be aware that the Public Accounts Committee held a session on 8 January on the BBC World Service. At that session, we pushed for the BBC to be given a budget for…04 Mar 2026HANSARD Ministry of DefenceMadam Deputy Speaker, I am grateful to catch your eye to speak in this very important debate. I congratulate the Chair of the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Slough (Mr…04 Mar 2026HANSARD Ministry of DefenceThe hon. and gallant Member has great experience in these matters. I think he must have been reading my speech. If he is patient, I think he will get exactly what he wants. The…04 Mar 2026HANSARD Ministry of DefenceThe hon. Gentleman raises an important point. In the reorganisation of the MOD into the Quad that I have talked about, the critical person is the Chief of the Defence Staff,…04 Mar 2026HANSARD Ministry of DefenceIt is shocking, as my hon. Friend says from the Front Bench. As the Chair of the Defence Committee said, not only is it terrible for defence companies wanting to be able to plan…04 Mar 2026HANSARD Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical MarkersIt is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I reiterate my congratulations to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) on securing this important…28 Jan 2026HANSARD Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical MarkersThe hon. Member has prompted the second point that I want to make. Doctors and other medics are perfectly happy to do medical checks on people in relation to driving licences.…28 Jan 2026HANSARD Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical MarkersThroughout this debate, we have talked about proportionality. Everybody who has spoken has agreed that compulsory medical markers would be totally proportionate to try to make the…28 Jan 2026HANSARD Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical MarkersI missed a really important point in my speech: at the moment, there is no check between the renewing or granting of a shotgun or firearms licence and the re-grant five years…28 Jan 2026HANSARD Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical MarkersI am sad to hear that the Minister is not following the logic for making the digital marker compulsory. Without compulsion, the system is weak and public safety is undermined, as…28 Jan 2026HANSARD Education Funding: DistributionWe have already heard this evening about the difficulty of parents getting EHCPs. Even when they have got them—90% of parents who apply do eventually get them, despite the…28 Jan 2026HANSARD Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical MarkersI will just make this point first. Local police often struggle to have well-trained people in their firearms department. It is quite an onerous task; they have to know a lot about…28 Jan 2026HANSARD Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical MarkersI can assure the Minister—and you, Ms McVey—that this will be the last time. What is the equivalence between not making medical markers mandatory, when doing so would not cost…28 Jan 2026HANSARD Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical MarkersWill the Minister give way?28 Jan 2026HANSARD Education Funding: DistributionIs the hon. Lady aware of a device called the statutory override which allows local authorities not to declare a deficit in their accounts although they are still incurring a…28 Jan 2026HANSARD Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical MarkersI should perhaps clarify for the House that I chair the all-party parliamentary group on shooting and conservation. I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. Does she…28 Jan 2026HANSARD Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical MarkersI am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I was coming on to the wider firearms licensing regime. BASC thinks that there are about half a million shotgun…28 Jan 2026HANSARD Firearms Licence Holders: Mandatory Medical MarkersI am very grateful for the support from my fellow Committee member. She is dead right: it is a sensible idea that the Minister and the Government should seriously consider. This…28 Jan 2026HANSARDOther CorrectionA further threat is to the shooting industry. Shooting directly contributes £3.3 billion to the rural economy and £9 billion to the wider economy. Last year we saw a staggering…08 Jan 2026HANSARDOther Correction…A petition opposing the move, organised by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, now has well over 100,000 signatories. I urge the Government to reconsider that…08 Jan 2026