Speeches by Maynard.

“Thank you for being here today, Mr Patterson. It is a difficult position to be in. I take the point about Wyn Williams, and I think deferring to that is reasonable. The Chair’s point about the scale of Fujitsu—it is £49 billion of market cap. This company can afford to pay a very substantial chunk. This whole problem w…”

“I completely agree—well said. What is so depressing is that the Labour Government have embraced the Conservative’s mistakes over Thames Water, and our water sector more broadly, and then doubled down on them. The Government have been and continue to be hoodwinked by a bunch of hedge-funds whispering about financial Arm…”

“Well done for challenging it and for keeping at it, but you really should not have had to.”

“Just to follow up, what answer do you get back when you ask that question?”

“Glenys, when were you told that your conviction was finally considered eligible to be quashed under the Act?”

“Obviously, we need a plan—we should not just say “tough luck” here, given the trauma and everything else. It would be good to have a clear plan as to what happens. If you are saying this is closing at the end of January, what happens to anybody who comes in late?”

“If the end of January date stands, what would you recommend for somebody who comes in late after that—that they go straight to DBT?”

“It feels as if we are locked in a system that nobody thinks is much good, and there are consequences to that—very real, human consequences. If we all acknowledge that this is not working very well—we can ask the Minister very shortly—what is needed to fix it? Are you telling us that if the Post Office does not think it…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. West Oxfordshire is very much ground zero for Thames Water. We have the Thames itself, the Evenlode and the Windrush. West Oxfordshire district council has done great work in going after Thames Water. We have WASP—Windrush Against Sewage Pollution—and we, as a…”

“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for securing this fantastic debate. I also thank the Members in the room for all the work they have done, and the Minister for her engagement, particularly with the Brain Cancer Justice team. I really appreciate it. My sister Georgie received a glioblastoma …”

“I have the letter of 18 December from the Post Office, which talks about redress update—that is helpful, so thank you for that. We also heard the panel earlier talking through the HSS panel and that process and the time taken to do that. Then, we flipped into the HSS appeals process, where often the payouts are multipl…”

“Thank you. Let’s get to that settlement as quickly as we can.”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In response to a recommendation by the Committee on Standards, I would like to apologise to the House for failing to register several interests within the 28-day period set by the House. They included my receipt of pro bono legal advice to support my intervention, at the High …”

“That is good. We did not know that. I have another question. Could the national wealth fund be better directed to co-invest along private capital into UK growth funds? Looking at that question, the question is, “Who is directing?” I will put it another way. Where is there room for improvement in terms of how the nation…”

“Minister, when does that get us to?”

“Just following up on that, the Lord Mayor and the BVCA have been looking over at the US and the venture capital market over there. They have exempt reporting advisers, which go up to $150 million. If it is going primarily into VC, there is a much lower level of regulation. That is one thing. The other aspect is that yo…”

“Finally, on pension tax relief, you were asking what it would look like and what it would shape. We could apply it to listed companies in the UK with no net loss of tax by applying a higher tax relief to domestic companies and a lower tax relief to foreign ones. Those could net out against each other. You essentially h…”

“It is good to meet you both. Talking about state lending and private lending, I am just curious about the space in the middle in terms of co-operatives or US-style savings and loans. That is very local and very commercial. I am always a little sceptical about how good the state is as a lender. How interesting is that? …”

“As many as 11% of pupils are missing out on the free school meals to which they are entitled. In many cases, they are not registered for reasons such as a fear of stigma or language barriers. In my Witney constituency, that means that around 230 children from the most disadvantaged homes may be missing out on a hot, he…”

“19. What assessment the child poverty unit has made of the potential merits of auto-enrolling eligible children for free school meals.”