Speeches by Burton-Sampson.

“Thank you for coming in. Andrew, I am going to start with you, if I may. From your perspective, what does community cohesion mean?”

“And why not?”

“Dr Dhaliwal, perhaps you can add your thoughts on that as well? Can you also tell us what the key barriers to community cohesion are, and how we can perhaps overcome them?”

“If you could keep the second point brief, please, that would be great.”

“Thank you very much. I am going to come to Professor Cantle now, but feel free to come back on any of those points. I was quite interested to see your report, the Cantle report, in 2001, which found that some communities in the UK led parallel lives. Could you tell us a little more about what that means?”

“Does my hon. Friend agree that although it is crazy that this was not a mandatory requirement in the first place, it is great to see a further recommendation from the IICSA report now being acted on and hopefully becoming law?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. This Government are taking strong new action to make cuckooing a specific offence, protecting the most vulnerable people whose homes are used by others to commit criminal activity. After the last Tory Government’s dereliction of law and order, a Labour Governme…”

“The former Conservative Member for Chelmsford tabled an amendment on this matter to the Criminal Justice Bill, which Labour supported in opposition, but unfortunately it was not added. Is the hon. Lady now happy that this measure is being added to the Crime and Policing Bill?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I refer Members to my declaration of interests. I will keep this brief. The abuse of shop workers is simply unacceptable. People who are at work and offering an essential service to the public, and who are normally at the lower end of the salary scale, shou…”

“It was actually former Prime Minister Theresa May, when Home Secretary in 2013, who said that the new low-level threshold would “free up resources” and that “Having to pass low-level offences to the Crown Prosecution Service wastes police time.”—[Official Report, 10 June 2013; Vol. 564, c. 75.] I am not sure how shop w…”

“I feel like I am hogging all the questions here, but I am just going to ask this last one to you, Stephen. Could the £1 million annual revenue threshold for equity investment, for example, as required by the British Business Bank, be reduced by 25% for female founders to reflect the gender pay gap differential?”

“Thank you. Debbie, do you have a view on this?”

“Jill, final question for you: to what extent do structural issues such as the gender pay gap restrict women’s ability to raise finance?”

“I know about the challenges SMEs face in getting finance. I am an SME owner, and I am doing a lot of work to look at SME access to finance. There is a greater percentage of women who seem to be entrepreneurs in SMEs as opposed to bigger organisations. Just briefly, Stephen, is there a link to the fact that SMEs in gene…”

“Jill, why do women receive less finance than their male counterparts? Perhaps when you answer that you could also help us understand what more we could be doing to encourage women to access finance or to help women access finance.”

“Thank you all for coming in today. I am going to focus specifically on applying for finance. Why are women less likely to seek access to finance? I will start with you Debbie if that is okay?”

“Thanks, Debbie. I am going to come to you, Stephen, and ask you the same question, but can you also tell me whether you think there is a difference between women accessing loans versus women accessing other forms of investment into their businesses?”

“How do we raise the awareness? Debbie, do you have any ideas?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the fact that breaches of respect orders will result in a criminal offence that is triable either way is enough of a deterrent? The consequences of breaches will be much greater than they are now.”

“We all know that knife crime ruins lives—for the victim, their family and friends, the perpetrator’s family, and even for the perpetrator. My constituent Julie Taylor is the grandmother of a knife crime victim. On 31 January 2020, Liam Taylor was murdered outside a pub in Writtle—a pleasant place that not many would as…”