Speeches by Morello.

“I share my hon. Friend’s frustration but would like to say what a luxury it is to be so far down the line with an Access for All bid. Despite having £100,000 pledged by Dorset council and local developers to support step-free access, Dorchester South station is still waiting to hear whether it will even be considered f…”

“The hon. Member is making a fantastic speech, and I agree with everything that he is saying. West Dorset is blessed with 11 fantastic small vineyards. For most of them, the primary route to market is through local shops and rural pubs. Does he agree that unless we raise the threshold to create equality in the marketpla…”

“T2. Due to the rural nature of West Dorset, SEND children face difficulty accessing education. I have casework of a young girl with a stroke whose transport was withdrawn two days beforehand. Will the Minister work with other Departments to solve the problem of SEND children accessing education in rural areas?”

“I wonder whether the root of the solution is for local authorities and schools to have mandatory minimum purchases from local producers, thereby giving local farmers a supply chain into the local area and providing fresh food for children.”

“T2. In her speech this morning, the Chancellor said that she must make necessary choices ahead of the Budget. Will those choices once again come at the expense of rural communities such as West Dorset, or will she commit to reviewing the funding model to ensure that rurality is a funding metric, alongside deprivation, …”

“I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of planned reductions in Official Development Assistance on international development. It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate, and my co-sponsors from across the Hous…”

“I thank the hon. Member, who is my colleague on the Foreign Affairs Committee. His background and expertise in this area is unrivalled, and I agree 100% with his sentiment; it is money badly spent when we do not invest in conflict prevention. The decision to cut our official development assistance from 0.7% to 0.3% of …”

“I agree 100%. What is so wonderful about Britain is how, time and again, communities step into the void left by Government spending, but we cannot rely entirely on the charity and good will of others. The UK’s contribution to global health, education and nutrition, which are the foundations of our stability, is being e…”

“I agree 100% with my hon. Friend. Purely on a value-for-money basis, it is wiser to spend money where people are, to prevent them from getting on the road, than to try to house them here. Migration and global instability do not begin at our borders. They begin when climate change destroys livelihoods, when wars displac…”

“I agree 100% with the hon. Member. The more we work with our partners, the more we can deliver. We are living in an interconnected society; there is no way we can do this alone. We must work with others, and we must show leadership in that space. If aid spending remained at 0.5%, it would have reached £15.4 billion by …”

“In that case, I will not thank everyone individually for their contributions. Thank you, Sir Desmond, for so wisely chairing the debate. I thank the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), for her continuing leadership in this area. I will use my one remaining minute to make the point to the shadow Minister, the ri…”

“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He mentioned the importance of investing in funds to protect our security. He will know better than anyone that malign-influence powers such as Russia and China are eager to step into the void that we leave when we withdraw our aid. Does he agree that if …”

“On business rates, coastal communities such as West Dorset are heavily reliant on hospitality for providing jobs—over 6,000 locally—and it is vital to our tourism economy. The George in West Bay has seen its business rates go from £8,000 to £27,000, which basically ends any chance of its making a profit in the foreseea…”

“To link up the two points that have been made by Fleur and Aphra, you have a system based on self-declaration and you are dealing with somebody with a track record of not declaring. To Fleur’s point, in that situation, faced with somebody with a track record of not being 100% transparent on their conflicts of interest,…”

“The problem that I am dealing with and, I suspect, a lot of people out there are struggling with is the idea that the emails constituted materially different information that would have resulted in Lord Mandelson not being appointed. I certainly look at this, and hopefully any rational person would, and say: you have s…”

“Even if we are talking in the general, the specific in this case is that the Prime Minister did receive a report that highlighted that relationship, and it was up to him to make a decision based on the information as he read it.”

“And that still makes you qualified for this appointment. But maintaining the relationship afterwards suddenly makes you unsuitable for the appointment. All this could have been avoided if at any point anyone had turned around and said, “Do you know what? Actually, let’s not appoint somebody who has a really close, know…”

“Just so we are clear, the due diligence report that was produced by the Cabinet Office goes to the appointing Minister, which in this case is the Prime Minister. So the Prime Minister received that report, which should have contained all the information pertaining to Lord Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, …”

“Just to clarify this point, you say that you have multiple people who have been brought in externally as appointments. Out of all these appointments, how many of them have a public track record of not declaring conflicts of interest? If that is a systemic problem, you have a problem in the system. If this is a one-off,…”

“I appreciate you are talking in the general, but to the specifics, your own letter says that the due diligence report included reference to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And you also confirmed that the report goes to the appointing Minister, who in this case is the Prime Minister.”