Speeches by Kearns.

“Is the hon. Gentleman just going to stand, or will he ask to intervene?”

“I welcome the hon. and gallant Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones) to her place. We need more people in Parliament who have service in their hearts. I also thank her for her good comments about her predecessor and in particular for her comments about Corporal Riley, which I know my hon. Friend the Member fo…”

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?”

“Let me make a point to demonstrate how rushed and ill thought through this policy is. My understanding is that if a child in a nursery has turned five but the other children in the class have not, all the parents in that nursery year will have to pay VAT on their child’s nursery fees. That is how badly this has been th…”

“I thank my honourable friend for giving way. I call her “friend” because we have worked together very closely over the past few years, and I welcome her election—I would have supported her for that role. The difficulty is that the public are not buying it. The Government cannot claim that they need to take this money f…”

“I rise to speak on behalf of the 20,800 pensioners in Rutland, Stamford and the Harborough and South Kesteven villages who will lose their winter fuel payment this winter. This decision affects millions of people who bought into our country’s social contract: you work hard, you pay your taxes and when you grow old, we …”

“My constituent was brave enough to report her husband for the abuse that he put her through. He has just been released from prison on two conditions: he would be tagged and he was not allowed to go into her village. He has not been tagged because the Probation Service says that it does not have enough tags and there is…”

“Would the Minister be kind enough to write to me with the details of that voluntary contribution, so that I understand fully what contribution was made?”

“As this is the first time that I have appeared opposite the new Minister at the Dispatch Box, I wish not only to congratulate him but to welcome him to his place. In a previous life, we served together in the Foreign Office. He is free to disagree, although I discourage him from doing so, but I believe we worked well t…”

“The people of Syria have suffered unimaginable horrors since 2011, first under Bashar al-Assad’s brutal dictatorship and then at the hands of Daesh, al-Qaeda, Iranian-backed militias and the Wagner Group. The Syrian people have endured unforgivable cruelty and suffering, with over 6 million forced abroad as refugees, 7…”

“I think that the right hon. Lady would recognise, however, that President Zelensky cannot be accused of politicising the situation. If the Conservative party were still in power, and if the right hon. Lady had heard President Zelensky say what he did, I would have heard about it every single moment of every single day.…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. and gallant Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) for securing this important debate. I was grateful for his co-operation in the previous Parliament on not only Ukraine but the Balkans, which is an area of particular interest to us…”

“Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Foreign Secretary rightly visited India to discuss a trade agreement between our countries. The Labour party regularly called for human rights to be part of that UK-India trade deal. Will he therefore update the House on whether he secured said agreement during his visit? On human rights, we …”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I seek your guidance? I wish to place on record my severe concerns about the Government’s failure to come formally before the House on their decision to impose VAT on independent schools. Not only have they imposed this policy through a written ministerial statement, but t…”

“Absolutely—in fact, it might mean that I finally make Twitter this evening.”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will turn to a potential solution that I plan to put to the Government on that exact point, but is it not horrifying that my local BBC went out to film on the A1 and, within minutes, they filmed an accident? I want to see the review of central reservations conducted quickly and…”

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for granting this important debate on the A1. [Interruption.] Apparently other Members of the House do not have the courtesy to allow us to debate the importance of this road, but I hope they will clear the Chamber with the decency that this important topic deserves. The A1 is known mor…”

“As my hon. Friend says, that is something we have on the A1 already. I caution him, because I know that, while our constituents call for safety measures, they are often not the biggest fans of slowing speeds. However, as a short-term, interim step until we can get those long-term safety issues resolved, he is absolutel…”

“We all remember Gordon Brown’s raid on pensions. It has taken just three weeks for Labour to revert to type, and it is pensioners who are suffering most. Martin Lewis has already criticised the decision online. On the estimates, the right hon. Lady cannot claim that, when permanent secretaries were signing off these es…”

“Yes, there is no doubt that unfortunately, driver behaviour is normally at the heart of accidents. It is very difficult to identify a genuinely dangerous road. I have sat down and looked at the data with the police, and unfortunately, even though we have some genuinely dangerous roads—my team will not drive on bits of …”