Speeches by Smith.

“My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Having served in Northern Ireland, I have spoken to many veterans I was there with and others who were there before, and there is a scintilla of a real question mark about how they will be treated. The vexatious nature of these complaints will, of course, eventually drag th…”

“It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi). He will recall that I voted for him to hold his position, and I will come for payback later on. It is also very good to see my area neighbour, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), in the Chamber. I will listen with great interes…”

“This business with what is going on over Northern Ireland is not alone, because it builds on a perception and on the gratuitous pursuit of soldiers involved in Afghanistan and Iraq—partly by the Prime Minister in a previous life, but certainly by lawyers knowing full well that what they were pursuing were in fact compl…”

“I will, but briefly, because I do not get any extra time.”

“In the limited time I have, I say to the Secretary of State that this Bill was bad, and it is now a mess. He comes in front of the House to ask for a carry-over when he knows that carry-over motions are only ever to be used for Bills that are pretty well set, but have run out of time to progress. Such motions are not f…”

“It is astonishing. My right hon. Friend is exactly right. I served early on in Northern Ireland, and I lost a very good friend—I apologise for repeating his name—in Robert Nairac. We have never got to the bottom of what happened to him. I thought that the speech from the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) was incre…”

“We will not altogether agree about this issue. We can debate what actually happened, but we will never know, because the Government refused to pursue this matter through the courts. South Africa was a good example of how it could be done. I went out to advise in South Africa at the time, and I genuinely believe that th…”

“Did my right hon. Friend not find it astonishing that in the testimony today the ex-leader of the Foreign Office said that he was made to understand that before they had completed their clearances, Mandelson already had STRAP clearance, which gave him access to the most secure and most dangerous information held by Gov…”

“Lindsay and Craig Foreman are incarcerated in Iran in brutal circumstances, and are being tortured in many ways. They are not my constituents, but their family approached me. May I be clear to the Government, and have them be clear to us in their response? Are the Government saying publicly that they are not spies, but…”

“Everybody has said pretty much everything, but I am going to say some of it again, as is my wont in this Chamber. First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who laid out a powerful case against the Government, particularly against the Prime Minister and his excuses in all this. I think tha…”

“Can I return to the nub of what this is about? The Prime Minister knew, as we all knew, of the representations about who should be the ambassador—in this case, a man who had been sacked twice out of Cabinet but, more than that, a man whose clear links with Chinese companies and whose meetings with Xi were in the public…”

“The test of bad legislation is always whether it contains carte blanche Henry VIII powers—in this case in a thin and flimsy Bill—that grant the Government the right to do anything they like with the legislation, even after it has passed. That made it a dog of a Bill, but now the Government have paused it—or returned it…”

“Parents in my constituency who have been in the SEND system are really fearful that we will have the White Paper and more change will be proposed, when the key element of delivery is local councils. The problem is that the situation is so patchy. Some councils are absolutely appalling—one in my area had an excoriating …”

“Yesterday, sadly, a young boy going to school on Snakes Lane East in my constituency was knocked down. He is receiving excellent treatment, and my thoughts are with his family, but this underlines a problem that we have in my constituency: Broadmead Road bridge, which crosses the central line, has been closed since 202…”

“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is responsible for the rise of antisemitism worldwide and here in the United Kingdom; for inciting extreme Islamist attacks; for attacking dissident Iranians and British citizens; and for fomenting all sorts of hate marches. I have a very simple question. We are now at war with Ira…”

“rose—”

“I sense that this little fracas is something of a tautological tap dance. We are at war, and I do not think Iran cares whether we made the strike on it or not, because it still sees us as a target. We accept that, and that is the danger that our troops are in. However, I want to ask the Minister about something else. I…”

“The Minister is making a powerful case. A man with his record and history coming to this place is to be congratulated, and I am enthused to see him in his place today, as I think we all are. We have talked about the non-appearance of the defence investment plan, but there is another review that has not appeared that ha…”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“We can debate what the armed forces think or do not think, but I always think it best to leave them out of these debates. However, there is an issue here at home, and defence of the realm is defence at home first and foremost. We know that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has threatened us on these shores endlessl…”