Speeches by Clifton-Brown.

“I can assure the Minister—and you, Ms McVey—that this will be the last time. What is the equivalence between not making medical markers mandatory, when doing so would not cost anything, and yet going ahead with the consultation to move shotguns from section 2 to section 1, which will cost the industry a significant amo…”

“I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I was coming on to the wider firearms licensing regime. BASC thinks that there are about half a million shotgun certificate holders and about 150,000 firearms certificate holders, so this is a large and costly job for the 43 forces to undertake. There hav…”

“It is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I reiterate my congratulations to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) on securing this important debate. I have campaigned for medical markers for at least 20 years, long before the technology that now exists to do them digitally, which …”

“I will just make this point first. Local police often struggle to have well-trained people in their firearms department. It is quite an onerous task; they have to know a lot about guns to work out whether a gun is the one on the certificate or not, and there are a number of other questions. Centralising the processing …”

“The hon. Member has prompted the second point that I want to make. Doctors and other medics are perfectly happy to do medical checks on people in relation to driving licences. That is an issue of public safety. Why is there inconsistency in doing it for firearms?”

“Throughout this debate, we have talked about proportionality. Everybody who has spoken has agreed that compulsory medical markers would be totally proportionate to try to make the public safer. However, the proposal to move shotguns from section 2 to section 1 is totally disproportionate. The current law was framed as …”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“I am very grateful for the support from my fellow Committee member. She is dead right: it is a sensible idea that the Minister and the Government should seriously consider. This complex process, with a very large number of shotgun and firearms certificates, could be made considerably more efficient—the best forces do t…”

“I missed a really important point in my speech: at the moment, there is no check between the renewing or granting of a shotgun or firearms licence and the re-grant five years later. Does the hon. Member agree that introducing medical markers would, in a sense, introduce a check between grant and renewal if somebody tur…”

“I should perhaps clarify for the House that I chair the all-party parliamentary group on shooting and conservation. I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. Does she agree that one of the critical reasons that medical markers are not yet compulsory—I entirely agree that they ought to be—is that some doctor…”

“I start by declaring an interest as a farmer and as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on shooting and conservation. Rural communities such as those in the Cotswolds feel totally neglected by this Government. We talk about the cost of living, but the cost of rural living is even higher. We have the family fa…”

“I have very little time, and it is clear that my constituency neighbour—uncharacteristically—did not listen to what I said, which was that we should not put solar panels on the best farmland in the country. In my constituency, hospitality contributes an estimated £220 million to the local economy, and we know that busi…”

“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that intervention. As a chartered surveyor who has studied rural properties and farms, I do not think we should be putting wind farms or photovoltaics on the best farmland in this country.”

“The Foreign Secretary has repeated time after time today that she believes in the rules-based system. Therefore, will she argue for that vociferously at the United Nations so that the world knows what British values are? Will she also discuss with the American Administration a realistic plan to make Venezuela a democra…”

“Thank you, Mr Speaker, and a happy new year to you and your staff. Farmers in my constituency will welcome this change to the thresholds for APR and BPR. However, it took 14 months to achieve it and rural communities really do feel discriminated against by some of the measures that this Government are taking against th…”

“The PAC has had a lot of hearings on Ajax, and it seems that one thread goes across it. Let us learn from a particular project of the general: there has been a culture of over-optimism, in General Dynamics and particularly within your organisation, DE&S. CROs and SROs did not know who they were reporting to and were no…”

“We are grateful for your evidence and I am absolutely with Lincoln Jopp—we want you to succeed. It has been a good hearing, except that we have been very weak on numbers. I hear that there is a real problem in the MoD on numbers, in that the SDR, which has a highly ambitious set of equipment that you are expected to pr…”

“We are running out of time, and I have several questions. Let us have short questions with short answers. I want to come back to Derek’s question on delays. We held a hearing on the F-35, the next tranche of which has been delayed. I am urging the National Audit Office to adopt a different way of costing these programm…”

“Like me, the hon. Gentleman represents a constituency in the south-west where hospitality businesses of all sorts will be very heavily hit by this Budget. They have seen rate increases. They have seen increases in alcohol duty, increases in the minimum wage and national insurance increases. Some of them are literally g…”

“You know very well that that NISTA plan is very short on detail. It covers only the very largest projects. That is not a satisfactory answer, if I may say so.”