Speeches by Rankin.

“I intend to get to the implications of plan 2 loans—both the freeze in the threshold for repayment and the freezing of the interest rates in a falling-interest-rates environment. I think the hon. Gentleman will find in the Budget papers that that raises about as much money as the mansion tax does, for example. I think …”

“I am not sure that I agree 100% with the hon. Member. I suspect that, in this country, we are sending too many people to university, and we should have a higher focus on higher quality courses and courses that add economic value, while investing some of the money saved in apprenticeships. But I take the hon. Member’s p…”

“Having 1 million young people not in work, education or training and 2.8 million people out of work on long-term sickness benefits is both a financial catastrophe and a moral failure. The Prime Minister has rightly said that it is his moral mission to get young people into work, but how does the Minister square that wi…”

“4. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of the autumn Budget 2025 on levels of incentives to work.”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp), and my constituency neighbour, for securing this important debate. Without it, I doubt that I would have the chance to raise in Parliament an issue that is extremely important to …”

“Q10. The Prime Minister has expressed “sincere regret” for appointing David Kogan as Independent Football Regulator. Will he now put on record the full amount that Mr Kogan has donated to his leadership campaign and his party, any hospitality he has received, and whether he declared these interests before appointing hi…”

“Just on Pentland, you are in it at the development phase. You have a decision at FID whether to go into the construction phase. Are you effectively saying that without your development capital, the cost of capital would be higher and/or the risk involved for CIP would be such that it might not proceed, so your job as a…”

“I wanted to return to the jobs point that we discussed a little earlier. I do not blame you too much for this, but this might have been oversold by politicians. Harriet and Dave referred to oil and gas jobs in Aberdeenshire earlier. I think I am right to say there is something in the region of 84,000 jobs in oil and ga…”

“Yes, thank you Madam Chairman. Prior to being a Member of Parliament I was involved in long-term commodities trading and I hold equities from that period of time in Pexapark AG, which is a Swiss advisory company that advises IPPs and funds on its PPA strategies. I also have a small consultancy business called Crocus an…”

“There is a reason development capital is expensive, isn’t there? It is risky.”

“That has changed significantly in the last few years, has it not?”

“With the CFD, obviously the way that works is we socialise the market price risk of energy on to the billpayer. We take the profile risk, cannibalisation risk and credit risk, so the only thing left on the route to market for these large-scale renewables that sits with the developer is the balancing risk. As we build o…”

“You have come in as development capital to help catalyse projects that might not otherwise happen, and one of your missions is to create high-quality jobs. In that instance—let us take Pentland as an example—in your investment, do you try to ensure that any of those clean energy jobs are based in the UK or Scotland? As…”

“The Justice Secretary’s team say that he found out about the accidental release of Algerian sex offender Kaddour-Cherif on Tuesday evening. He contradicted them by saying he only learned of it on Wednesday morning. He said at PMQs that he had been busy shopping for a suit that morning. Did the Lord Chancellor spend any…”

“Old Windsor is a small village in my constituency with an approved premises that has morphed to include high-risk offenders. It causes problems. Does the Minister agree that, first, probation services have responsibility for residents’ behaviour when they are outside that facility and, secondly, the police should have …”

“Earlier this year, the Education Secretary said that white working-class boys “have been betrayed”, yet this summer, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ ran an internship scheme that was open only to people from ethnic minority backgrounds. I am afraid the House of Commons runs a similar scheme, in partnership with the Windsor Fellowshi…”

“The Scotland Office has said that it has engaged with the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council to gather input from Scottish stakeholders. What did the council feed back from those discussions? Some stakeholders we spoke to here, and also in written evidence, called for a dedicated Scottish representative on the counci…”

“On a linked matter, I want to turn to the industrial strategy inquiry that this Committee held. We heard concerns from Scotland’s speciality products, which include whisky, on their absence from the industrial strategy—or they may have been included quite broadly but lacked some specificity to them. Do you feel that Sc…”

“4. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of diversity, equality and inclusion schemes in the public sector.”

“My right hon. Friend is right, as always. The best way to back workers in this country is to back our small businesses, and our hospitality businesses in particular, which provide so many jobs to our constituents.”