Speeches by Robinson.

“In court processes, you have special advocates. You can have people who can look at these things devoid of any interest—devoid of family interest, state interest and so on. Sandra, is this something you guys have been engaged in—how you can do it, mechanically? It seems to me that if there is going to be an injection o…”

“When do you think it will be concluded?”

“Thank you to the panellists. You may know I am representing the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee today and thank you, Chair, for that inclusion. We have conducted an inquiry on defence spend in Northern Ireland. Babcock and BAE were recognised back in 2017 and the National Shipbuilding Strategy was to follow a modula…”

“One fifth of the UK average in Northern Ireland for defence spend, just to encourage you. John.”

“Oriel, do you roll your eyes whenever a Government put out these grand plans that do not align with your corporate ambition or do you seize them and invest in the regions of the UK?”

“But she is free to speak now, Chair.”

“Thank you. You have mentioned already composites are very important but we led the way in Belfast with the A220 there, the wings facility, so you have been paid £559 million to take the wings facility. What is taking so long for it to be concluded?”

“To move away from my first question about this process, can I ask you about your frustrations? We will take one example recently, the medium-lift helicopter procurement opportunity from MOD. It has a civilian side to it, it has a defence side, it is clearly a defence procurement opportunity. The tender goes out, they s…”

“First it was the pensioners and their winter fuel allowance, then it was the WASPI women and broken promises, and now it is the sick and the vulnerable. We believe in protecting the taxpayer but also in protecting those who need our support the most, yet there was not a word about abuse or about those who are taking mo…”

“I did not think I would have to wait so long to be the first to intervene on my hon. Friend. I congratulate him on securing this debate. He is right to highlight the unifying elements of St Patrick, our patron saint. He mentions that he is a Unionist. Of course, it is the St Patrick’s cross that represents us in our na…”

“A lot of your members did very easily adapt their best-before-date printing, which is outside of the labels but printed on the labels.”

“This is an important conversation. Earlier, Neil, you helpfully highlighted the disproportionality of a lot of the arrangements. It goes back to that initial suggestion that everything was at risk of onward transit and potentially harmful to the single market, if it was moving from GB to NI. Everything then has been wo…”

“Good morning, everyone. Clearly, we are not in the EU single market, but we align to EU single market rules on goods, which is particularly important for logistics. Some of those EU folks who believe we are not in the single market are right. In fairness to all four of you, you come to an occasion like this and, from e…”

“In fairness to colleagues, both issues are going to come up.”

“I assume the answer is no. You are right about the torturous process around declassification or the removal of individual species. There was considerable lobbying by the Woodland Trust, who plant trees throughout the United Kingdom. Ordinarily they would have got their trees for Northern Ireland from Scotland, and that…”

“Are you aware of any other plant that is capable of doing that?”

““The Lord of the Rings” is a good example of a place where trees can uproot themselves, walk across the border and cause trouble over there.”

“The disproportionality point, which you started with and to which I referred, is the sort of thing that I think Lord Murphy needs to hear about, if there are these wider conversations with the EU.”

“I encourage you to do so at this stage.”

“That is quite a simple process.”