Speeches by McDougall.

“Bassam said something there that, to me, was very interesting—that what you need is brave leadership. It feels often, for us as outsiders, that the leadership that is not committed to peace is much more effective at creating the political realities than the majority in civil society, which Alon described, who are commi…”

“Just so we have it on the record, because we touched on it earlier, why exactly is the annexation of the West Bank, proposed by some, such a bad idea for the prospects of peace in the region?”

“Edward touched on the thrust of my question earlier on, which was about the risks of the prospect of annexation for the peace process. John, you put it succinctly, saying, “It is a very bad idea.” I wanted to ask Amnon and Shahira why annexation is such a terrible idea for the prospects of peace, just so that we as a C…”

“I will be very brief, and I thank the Minister for giving way to a rampant socialist. In the light of the comments from the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, does the Minister agree that just like people in all other sectors, the people who sell our programmes, build our sets and provide catering for our film sets dese…”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“Can I ask one more question to build on that analysis, Rula and Robi? Robi spoke about the need for a period of mourning and to allow the dust to settle a little bit, but the people who are less committed to peace and the ideals that Alon-Lee has just described are still moving at pace. We have seen lots of discussion …”

“Bassam said something there that, to me, was very interesting—that what you need is brave leadership. It feels often, for us as outsiders, that the leadership that is not committed to peace is much more effective at creating the political realities than the majority in civil society, which Alon described, who are commi…”

“As a Member of Parliament who represents a large population of both Muslims and Jews, I certainly endorse that. Alon, you seem to want to come in on this question of the theory of change.”

“Edward touched on the thrust of my question earlier on, which was about the risks of the prospect of annexation for the peace process. John, you put it succinctly, saying, “It is a very bad idea.” I wanted to ask Amnon and Shahira why annexation is such a terrible idea for the prospects of peace, just so that we as a C…”

“The most common problem raised with me by women pensioners is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane) says, the enormous waiting lists. Researchers from Oxford University, Strathclyde University and Edinburgh University have predicted that by the time the SNP leaves office, almost a mill…”

“My constituents, particularly those living in Crookfur, have terrible mobile phone signal. How can the CMA progress the merger between Three and Vodafone, so that we get the investment in transmitters that we need to improve the mobile phone signal in Crookfur and around the country?”

“Putin and his autocratic friends mistake our freedom and openness for weakness, so may I enthusiastically welcome the strength of the response to the Russian activity? The Secretary of State will be aware of the reports in Newsweek in recent days about patents that have been filed in China for specific cable-cutting te…”

“When we had the BBC World Service in front of us, they had a very specific example of where they had withdrawn from a particular bandwidth with their Arabic service and the vacuum had been filled by Russian state broadcasters. You mentioned earlier a hypothetical situation: if we were not in Colombia, would they be bil…”

“When you made the comparison with competitor nations, including friendly and less friendly nations within that list, you defined it in terms of the inputs from the Governments. How do you measure the comparative success of the outputs? The Chinese Government invest 46 times as much as us in their soft power apparatus. …”

“Finally, you have mentioned the advantage that we have with language. We also have the BBC, our cultural outputs, our rule of law and our historical ties with a lot of these countries. Do you think all those advantages make us complacent? Is that why we are not investing as aggressively as other countries are? Do we as…”

“Yes. Mr McDonald, you opened very big-picture—talking about the global battle that is taking place and the context you are operating in, where there is a military, economic, ideological and cultural struggle going on between countries—and yet our conversation today is about taking hundreds of millions of pounds of cost…”

“I associate myself with the Minister’s comments about the contribution that Hongkongers have made to the UK, which is particularly true in East Renfrewshire. The Hongkongers in my constituency will welcome the strong comments from the Minister and the Foreign Secretary. However, we have heard those comments many times …”

“I congratulate the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) on securing the debate. There is a bit of a disease in British politics of reaching back to the second world war to make a point, but when we walk into this Chamber, we walk through an archway of bomb damage, and when we hear the echoes of history, we sho…”

“I warmly welcome the measures that the Home Secretary has set out to pursue perpetrators and to challenge the culture of cover-up, and I also welcome her strong statement that nobody should resist the urge to report child rape for fear of being labelled a racist. Does she share my contempt for those who weaponise the s…”

“Absolutely. As well as listening to the echoes of deeper history, we have to learn lessons from our more recent failures. I met a soldier called Dimitri in a ward for wounded soldiers in Kyiv. He was strengthening his stumps for the day when he could have prosthetics fitted to both his now-missing legs. I asked what hi…”