Speeches by Freeman.

“I am sorry; I thought we had 90. We have to put funding in the hands of people who have responsibility. Thirdly, I want to create planning liabilities for development companies so that they have a proper incentive—not just a vague instruction—to upgrade the drainage.”

“Thank you, Mrs Hobhouse, for guiding us this afternoon. I thank the Minister, the Opposition spokesman, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), and the—I think—16 colleagues from across the House who have spoken; the rule of 10 normally applies in this place, so there are many others who would…”

“The hon. Lady makes an important point. That is all part of the planning mix and we have to get it right. My last point is about data. When an area floods, we reach for data and ask, “How bad is it? How much worse is it than it used to be?” It is striking that there is not a properly collected dataset. I have a map wit…”

“I beg to move, That this House has considered flooding and planning and developer responsibilities. It is a great pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this issue, and to discuss how we can help the Minister to tackle the tsunami of inland flooding that is…”

“The hon. Lady makes a brilliant point; at the risk of opening the floodgate of interventions too early, I will absolutely come on to her point at pace, so that Members from across the House can pile in.”

“The hon. Member—I am tempted to say my great and hon. Friend, since we have spoken in this Hall together so many times—is absolutely right. My constituency has 130 villages and three towns. At the last boundary review, I lost Wymondham because the rest of my patch has had 10,000 new houses built in the last 10 to 15 ye…”

“That is a very good point, and I do agree—in fact, I will go a lot further than that, if Members will allow me to get to the radical, central elements of my Bill. However, I do agree that that is absolutely something we need to do. Across Mid Norfolk, the 23 villages—I will not list them all—go from Old Buckenham in th…”

“Thank you. I want to ask you about where you see the UK fitting in the European space defence ecosystem; I know we are going to come on to the US. Since I was Minister, we have seen this extraordinary defence surge, the growth of NATO, the Ukraine situation, and that has brought the UK and European partners much closer…”

“It is the flipside of the earlier question. In this European-NATO defence surge, with the Americans making it clear, “Look, we are here for a nuclear umbrella, but you are going to have to do your own conventional operational battlefield defence,” is there a big opportunity for UK expertise in space domain awareness? O…”

“I take from that that you share my view that space domain awareness is a key opportunity for the UK. Our American allies view us as a deep and trusted partner in satcom, encryption, intel and cyber-security, and our European partners are more focused on the industrial supply chain of construction, manufacture and const…”

“For the record, Chair, when I inherited the OneWeb deal, it was very clear to me that it was not popular across Government. None the less, it was a capability that could be of some strategic value. I tried to engineer it so that our golden share could give us industrial benefit as Europe adopted it. I fear that the geo…”

“I have a question for Mr Liddle on IRIS and a question for Mr Harris on space domain awareness. Mr Liddle, I think you heard the question I asked our earlier two witnesses. Given the pace of the rearming across Europe and the coming together of security partnerships across Europe and NATO in the light of Ukraine, do yo…”

“You are both being very polite. I am taking your answers as a pretty cautionary warning that, as Europe and allies are gearing up for defence expenditure, the space sector in the UK is in danger of not giving a clear signal. What do you want Government to do urgently over the next six to 12 months to remedy that?”

“Mr Harris, the same question but from the point of view of investment: are we giving a clear market signal, globally, on where we want people to invest in UK space defence?”

“Good morning to you both. As a veteran of the last meeting of the Space Council, I wanted to ask about the importance of joined-up strategy. I was Minister for the civil space strategy. There was also a defence space strategy and the space industrial plan. Given the pace of defence rearmament, European security and joi…”

“I am here guesting as deputy chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. I guess I should declare an interest. I advise various companies and funds, although there is no specific conflict here. I just wanted to ask about the central question of access to finance. It seems to me after a 30-year career, 15…”

“I should declare that I also agree. Having done 30 years in this space, the decentralisation of skills is key. My questions are to you both. First, in your cluster, ecosystem or place, have you looked at the pace of creation of new jobs over the next five or 10 years? Secondly, have DfE and the local skills unit plugge…”

“It is the same question really. From each of your perspectives, as a catapult and UKRI, how important is it that we recognise that we are in a global race—I say this as a trade envoy in Asia-Pacific—and communicate globally to say, “There are some technology areas that the UK is very powerful and very strong in, so com…”

“As a Minister, I was very proud to have brought the ARIA Bill through Parliament. It is very nice to have you here. I have two questions I really wanted to invite you to answer first and then the others. One is on technologies. Technologies are changing the world, attracting huge investment and creating new industries.…”

“I know we are going to get into the balance of vertical and place in the finance and the R&D sessions. While we have the three place leaders, I wanted to ask about transport. If we are going to do place-making and build clusters, it seems to me that connectivity is completely key. In my part of the world, East Anglia, …”