Speeches by Leigh.

“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), who speaks with great authority and talks a lot of good sense. I have to say to Labour Members that a change of Prime Minister will solve nothing. We tried that four times, and it did us no good at all. This King’s Speech should have been an…”

“My hon. Friend is very well respected in his area for the fantastic amount of work that he has done in Scunthorpe. He is constantly holding the Government to account, and indeed working with the Government. We have to do this together to protect our steelmaking capacity, for the sake of our industrial wealth. I agree—w…”

“Of course, getting £100,000 a year for owning 100 acres is a wonderful incentive, but is it possible to grow those crops? We are the breadbasket of England. Is it possible to grow wheat and barley where there are solar panels? But I do not want to go on about it; we know the arguments now. As for nationalising British …”

“No, I must make some progress. I do apologise. I should have thought that we could have a compromise on this. We could have a policy that is sensible, gradually moving away from fossil fuels and gradually becoming a more green-energy economy, but we should not simply export our emissions and set arbitrary dates. As thi…”

“Does the Chancellor agree that, post Brexit, Government Departments have much more freedom to buy British? Under the Procurement Act 2023, they can ignore EU directives. Will the Chancellor walk with us into the broad, sunlit uplands of post-Brexit Britain and use the freedoms that we obtained for this country?”

“I want to speak only briefly. I am not particularly party political. I do not like making personal attacks and I am not calling for the Prime Minister to resign. I am not questioning the appointment of Peter Mandelson—this debate is not about whether that was a good decision. I am sure that at the time there was some l…”

“Fly-tipping is very important, but can I refer my hon. Friend to a matter of life and death? As a result of Lords amendment 361 and the amendments to it, somebody who illegally procures a late-term abortion will receive a free pardon. I refer my hon. Friend to Mr Justice Cooke, who said in the Sarah Catt case that Catt…”

“The Prime Minister may recall that on day one of this war, I supported his defensive attitude to it and said that we could not change the regime from the air. We agreed and he has been proved right, but—with apologies to Leon Trotsky—we may not be interested in war, but war is interested in us. We all agree that we hav…”

“Lincolnshire is such a huge county geographically that there is no enthusiasm for abolishing districts. Be that as it may, the Government are determined to override local residents. There is a rumour coming out of the Labour-controlled City of Lincoln council that the Government will go with a Greater Lincoln. That wou…”

“Nationalisation was supposed to put local communities in touch. Grimsby is the largest town in the east of England without a direct train to London. We have been campaigning for one for years, and now the Secretary of State has written to me to say that we are not going to get the train because of accessibility problem…”

“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I refer you to paragraph 22.9 of “Erskine May”, which stresses the primary importance of ministerial responsibility? We have to admit that Prime Ministers have always tried to dodge questions at Prime Minister’s Question Time, and you are not responsible for the answers that they gi…”

“I have listened carefully to this debate, which has been an interesting knockabout. On the question of what we are achieving, I refer the Minister back to the comments of the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), who was the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee when the Conservatives were i…”

“In an attempt to get some consensus here, I commend one part of the Chancellor’s statement, where she said: “We must guarantee that our domestic oil and gas industry can…play a role in our energy system for decades to come”. Is there not a sensible, middle-of-the-way approach here? We should by all means proceed with g…”

“1. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of the number of asylum seekers on levels of recorded crime.”

“The Home Secretary knows perfectly well how much it worries and infuriates people that people can enter this country illegally and commit crimes, and that there is no proper vetting procedure before they are unloosed on society. To reassure our own citizens, will she ensure that everybody who enters this country illega…”

“On an occasion like this, it is right that we should not apportion blame, but try to unite as the House of Commons and say that it is fine to be a critical friend of Israel, but it is not fine to go around fully masked up and call for the destruction of Israel and therefore the Jewish people. I think we should be even …”

“It is obviously outrageous that rape victims have to wait three years—we all accept that, and we have heard moving testimony on that. The problem is that the Institute for Government has found that abolishing jury trials may only get these rape trials on a week earlier. The Labour manifesto promised specialist rape cou…”

“I suspect that the problems of Scunthorpe, where many of my constituents work, are less to do with the anti-protectionist policies of Mrs Thatcher—given that she left office 36 years ago—and more to do with the fact that Scunthorpe is paying the highest energy costs of any steelworks in Europe. That is very important. …”

“10. Whether the Attorney General has advised the Lord Chancellor on the potential impact of the Courts and Tribunals Bill on the rule of law.”

“T3. Will the Secretary of State commend the new nuclear fusion site at West Burton, just two miles from the town of Gainsborough, which, potentially, will unleash unlimited green energy as well as hundreds of millions of pounds of investment and thousands of jobs? Will she confirm that, when it comes to science and inn…”