Speeches by Thompson.

“Since the launch of the British nationals overseas visa route for Hongkongers, more than 209,000 people have been granted a visa, of whom more than 150,000 have arrived in the UK, including in my community in Erewash. I welcome the Government’s continuing support for Hongkongers. What steps is the Immigration Minister …”

“Good morning, Amanda. Thank you for joining us. One of the reasons we felt it so important to bring Google in on this conversation is your leadership in Search and AI, and the increasing use of AI in disseminating information via Search and other means but also—we must be honest—sometimes it is misinformation. How effe…”

“On that last point, how do you evaluate the success of that process?”

“Thanks, Amanda. That leads on well to my next question. On safety interventions and the constant learning process you are going through, how does Google determine which of the measures you are taking are done automatically and which are manual?”

“Thanks, Amanda, that is really useful. I want to focus on Search. My understanding is that Google holds about 90% of the global search market share, with something like 94% of adults using Google Search regularly. That arguably gives Google a near-monopoly of search on the internet. Given the need to democratise inform…”

“That is very reasonable, but as we have seen with another platform over the last year or so, you can get new leadership in these companies, and that can drastically alter the direction of the company. I am not saying this will happen to Google—certainly not—but were something like that to happen to a company like Googl…”

“Finally from me, just to push on that last point, do you think we need legislation to ensure that information remains available to everybody?”

“I am pleased to speak in support of the Bill, unamended, which I believe is crucial to delivering growth and ensuring that we have a highly trained workforce that is fit for the future. As some in the Chamber will know, my job before coming to this place was teaching degree-level apprenticeships in electro-mechanical e…”

“I welcome the statement, and I am very glad that Chaucer infant and nursery school in my constituency signed up to the early adopters scheme. When I had the great privilege of visiting the school recently, Miss Dawley gave me an excellent tour and I had a fantastic discussion with the smart school council about its pri…”

“First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth) for securing this extremely important debate. Put simply, this is an issue I hear about from constituents every single day, as do all my Derbyshire colleagues. In Erewash, SEND families face an uphill battle. Conservative Derbyshire county co…”

“A final question from me. Is there a risk, given the focus on global talent and global talent visas, that that focus comes at the expense of developing home-grown talent?”

“That is fascinating. The second cohort of programme directors, I understand, are more from industrial backgrounds generally, with more industrial experience. Touching on the point we made a few minutes ago about blue skies, do you think that it is going to have an impact on the amount of blue sky research, given that w…”

“How do you think it all builds into the Government’s growth mission?”

“Brilliant, thank you. I have a couple of questions now about ARIA, picking up on that again. In May 2023, your opinion at the time was to leave ARIA alone and let them get on with it. Now that you are the Minister in charge of ARIA, do you still take that view?”

“Fair enough. In that case, how do we judge ARIA’s success and its value for money?”

“I want to pull on a few of the threads of things that we have discussed. Going back to the CEO change at UKRI, Dame Ottoline’s tenure is due to end, I believe, this June. Have you yet made a decision about who her successor will be? As you move from her tenure to the next, what do you want to see continue and what woul…”

“Brilliant. Thank you, Patrick.”

“Great. One more thing from me before I hand back to the Chair. You told the Lords Science and Technology Committee recently that you were in discussion with the Home Office about visas and attracting talent to the UK. Has there been any progress on the visa front?”

“Special educational needs and disabilities families in Erewash and across Derbyshire have been broadly let down by Conservative-run Derbyshire county council, as was profoundly shown in the recent Ofsted report. While I firmly believe that reorganisation of our local services will improve SEND services, news of the dev…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing this debate ahead of National Apprenticeship Week. I am a great advocate of the apprenticeship system. This time last year I was employed at the University of Nottingham, teaching d…”