Speeches by Cane.

“I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am an unpaid director of Reach community solar farm. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) on bringing this important Bill to the House, and on all the negotiations she has had to try to secure cross-party…”

“I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Freya and the many other constituents I know have written to all of us should be assured that we are working together across this House. In conclusion, I support the Bill entirely. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds for working hard to get concessions from the Go…”

“I agree entirely that we need to retrain in order to ensure that everyone can benefit from this transition.”

“I congratulate the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) on bringing us this important debate. Ely and East Cambridgeshire has many beautiful listed places of worship. They form part of the fabric of our villages and towns, and of course Ely cathedral watches over Ely and the fens and villages for miles around. T…”

“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) on securing this debate. Like many others, I am horrified by the amount of correspondence I get about this issue. Just this month I was contacted by a constituent with a child who was well supported in school and was looking to do well in their GCS…”

“Picking up the Chair’s question about the long hours they work, has any work been done to look at the safety element? Certainly, where I am, someone puts the ballot boxes in their car and drives sometimes quite a long way on dark rural roads, having already been working for 16 hours. Is that safe?”

“The Elections Act 2022 introduced new requirements for accessibility. How do you think those operated in practice?”

“You are saying you will make the best reasonable adjustments you can, but there may be some individuals who will still struggle.”

“In the same way you can go by a certain date to get your postal vote, is there a mechanism in place where a disabled person knows that they could go to their electoral registration officer and say, “I have this issue; how are you going to support me with it?””

“I am interested in resilience going forward. If I understood what you said earlier, the number of letters going through your system has reduced from 20 billion a year to 6.7 billion. You will have changed your processes and your staffing accordingly. You also said that during the election there are a quarter of a billi…”

“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) for introducing the Bill. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Just after the general election, Ministers made the shock decision that the Sunnica solar farm in Ely and East Cambridgeshire would go ahead, despite th…”

“I entirely agree. We had a similar frustration when looked at revising our local plan, because we wanted to put things in about energy efficiency.”

“I agree, because we were advised that we could not do what we wanted with our local plan, as it would have gone beyond the national planning policy framework. The local community want to do it, so we should be empowered to do it. I entirely support the Bill, because it would make so much sense to everybody if we were t…”

“18. What assessment she has made of the impact of crime on rural communities.”

“Will the Minister meet me to discuss the effect that rural crime, particularly hare coursing and, as we have heard today, theft from farms and sheds, has on residents in Ely and East Cambridgeshire?”

“10. What steps she is taking to increase railway capacity.”

“I thank the Secretary of State for her answer and welcome her to her place. Ely Junction is a major bottleneck in our rail network and the Ely area capacity enhancement scheme is designed to improve that. If the scheme goes ahead, it could deliver over a quarter of a million extra rail passenger journeys and take 98,00…”

“There is a balance, isn’t there, between the electorate becoming fully aware of exactly when the election will be and the impact of that on their other plans, and therefore having time to apply for postal and proxy votes, and making it easier for the administrators, unless you are talking about making the whole electio…”

“Thank you, Chair. The first thing before we discuss the detail of overseas voting is how robust the data that you have is. My understanding is that most local authorities have not published details on the percentage of overseas voters and the split of the countries that they are voting from. Is that correct?”

“Mr Pullinger, you touched on the timing of the election in several answers and in your opening remarks, and that clearly had a significant impact, in your view, on postal voting. Have you considered what the implications would be of going to fixed-term elections and how that might help, or having restricted periods suc…”