Speeches by Aldridge.

“I wanted to clarify something. There are obviously stumbling blocks in accessing the grid. Is National Grid doing what it needs to do to support your industries?”

“Do we need professional standards then?”

“It is not as bad as it was.”

“Startup Coalition has been doing a great job. It came to Weston-super-Mare and did a roundtable on this very issue. It was fantastic. It is in that space. That was awesome. We have talked about specific policy levers, such as tax incentives and R&D support, so you have probably answered some of this question, but which…”

“I mean in terms of having professional standards in the development of AI.”

“Albeit pre Brexit, when Demis Hassabis sold DeepMind to Google, a big selling point of keeping it in London was proximity to European talent. How do we take advantage of some of the options that we have now with a potentially uncertain US environment? You alluded to some people potentially wanting to be here. What do t…”

“When we were in India with the Committee, the vibe was very different. We have got the vibe a bit wrong.”

“The sad situation is that my constituents can rely on Amazon to deliver next day, but that is not what they are seeing from Royal Mail. The price of first-class stamp has tripled from 62p to £1.80 in 10 years. Second class has had a more moderate rise from 65p to 87p. You are due to consult soon on changes to postal pr…”

“I am getting a sense of the real problem of communication and culture. There seems to be a real clash between the data and the perception that you have, and the perception and the reality that we are experiencing as constituency MPs. Something was said earlier about first-class being prioritised in moments of high stre…”

“So there isn’t a ban on overtime.”

“Thank you. That is helpful.”

“Thank you, Mrs Harris; it is an honour to serve under your chairship. I am grateful to the hon. Members for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) and for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt), whose passion for Somerset carnivals and communities I share, for their hard work in securing this debate. I am also grateful to …”

“I just want to pay tribute to a number of lecturers at the universities in Northern Ireland. I used to work for the British Computer Society and the Northern Ireland branch was phenomenal. If the hon. Gentleman has not yet made contact with that branch, to speak to it about its cyber-security work in Northern Ireland, …”

“I held a roundtable in my constituency with the Startup Coalition just two weeks ago. We found that one of the biggest barriers was not an absence of talent or expertise in my town, but a poverty of access to information, advice and guidance. No one had heard of small business start-up loans, the £500 to £25,000 Govern…”

“I think that that is a really important thing for people to understand. It is not dissimilar to the conversation we were having earlier about businesses seeing the political rhetoric and feeling that it translates into practical work around trade agreements. That is really important.”

“There are two controversial areas. There is the UK digital services tax: President Trump used the term “overseas extortion”, which feels like hyperbole to me. The other area is the Online Safety Act, and the push around freedom of speech from the US. How much work is going into each of those areas to hold the British l…”

“Both the UK and the US are working on the digital trade agreement. What are the Government’s objectives for that with the US?”

“It is just that the lack of clarity on some of this is causing confusion with some of the business partners, so it would be useful for everything to join up.”

“Is the tech prosperity deal an effective package, or is it simply repackaged and rebranded business-to-business negotiations? Is it things that were already going to happen anyway between businesses, or is there something substantive in addition?”

“It would be really useful to hear which areas, from your perspective, are not going so well. Which are the areas that we should be doing more work on?”