Speeches by Bance.

“I thank the hon. Member for his kind words, and for his intervention. It is absolutely clear that alongside investment in public services, there is investment in infrastructure, in house building, and in making sure that this is a good country in which to grow and scale a business. I am glad of those things. I am also …”

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”

“The hon. Lady makes her point well, and she has made it; there is no need for me to respond. After 14 years of flatlining wages, wages are now growing faster than prices. That is incredibly important. I was so proud to see wages go up by more in the first 10 months of this Government than they went up in the first 10 y…”

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”

“I agree with my hon. Friend. Employers may continue to dismiss, as long as they do so for fair reasons and following a fair process, and good employers already do that. My favourite measures in the Employment Rights Bill—this could be a very long speech, but I will bring it to a close—[Interruption.] I will! I will jus…”

“The hon. Member need have no fear about the extent to which I talk to businesses in my constituency and more widely. I see at least one employer every single week—often not in retail and hospitality, as I represent a manufacturing constituency. I recognise the concerns, but I would say that in this country we need to h…”

“I would not wish to try the hon. Member’s generosity, but it seems to me that I have already been generous in my tribute to the work of the previous Government in continuing to maintain the machinery of the Low Pay Commission—something that this Government have continued—and in continuing to make sure that the national…”

“My hon. Friend reads my mind, as that is the point I was just about to make. I was so sad to see the Leader of the Opposition abandon what was one of the better policies of the last Government: that there should be a fast-rising national minimum wage at all times. I agreed with the last set of Prime Ministers before th…”

“I am sure the hon. Member knows me well enough by now to know that I am not going to indulge in silly games. What I will say is that this Government’s priority is to get the economy growing. It is why we are investing in infrastructure. It is why we are rebuilding our public services. It is why we have put the greatest…”

“I beg the indulgence of the House for a moment to welcome the opening this week on Market Place in central Wednesbury of the new Walden restaurant. The menu looks absolutely delicious, and I very much look forward to sampling it soon. I also want to mention Chris Birch from the Swift Group in Wednesbury, who I met yest…”

“Does the hon. Member agree that the way to solve the crisis in apprenticeships in hair and beauty, as well as the crisis of bogus self-employment in hair and beauty, is to strengthen the single worker status?”

“One of the things I am most proud of—having stood on doorstep after doorstep in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley at the general election, hearing people tell the dreadful stories of how long they and their relatives had been waiting for hospital treatment—is the 45% fall in people waiting more than a year for their opera…”

“While we are being nice to the hon. Gentleman, I think with affection of the times we have sat together on the “Politics Midlands” sofa. For the benefit of the House, will he tell us how many zero-hours workers he has spoken to in preparation for his speech today?”

“I am glad to hear that because it is so very important that across the civil service, across Departments and across ministerial portfolios, people get the message totally clear: the priority is British suppliers, British jobs in the United Kingdom and investment to support that. That is the purpose.”

“It contains a significant amount of public money.”

“On that point, we all want to see British SMEs winning public procurement contracts. I was most perturbed—I wonder whether the Minister may want to comment—to read in the Sunday papers that it looks as though the constructional steel work for Net Zero Teesside is going to go to a Chinese-owned company. This was raised …”

“Building on that, is there a role for central Government in ensuring that mayoral combined authorities literally have the capacity? I am talking about the numbers of staff. We were talking about the tripling of a staff team focused on growth in one of the combined authorities, turning it into a team of 12 people. We ar…”

“We have just had the mayors of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and South Yorkshire in front of us. One of them is the mayor for Cambridge. He spoke about the capacity constraints on his mayoral combined authority in terms of that championing role, that convening role and that role in creating investable propositions. W…”

“In 2023, it was calculated that two thirds of British equity investment occurred in London and the south-east. This Committee heard evidence from Louis Taylor, the CEO of the British Business Bank, who said there had been a hollowing-out of the investor community in the regions. How would you characterise the regional …”

“You know the proper names; I do not.”