Speeches by Rankin.

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

“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…”

“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 …”

“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…”

“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…”

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

“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…”

“I am afraid that I do not have time. That would lift 250,000 businesses out of business rates altogether, and it would provide essential relief to keep businesses afloat and money flowing through the local economy. The proposal is fully costed and follows our new golden economic rule.”

“I absolutely agree. It goes beyond that, because a lot of hospitality jobs are the first jobs that people do. We talk about youth unemployment; we need to get people into the pattern of earning a living, and to enable them to gain the softer skills of serving customers and getting up on time. As we all know, that is so…”

“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.”

“Every MP in this place thinks that they have the best constituency in the United Kingdom, but I am afraid that only one of us can be correct. Perhaps with the exception of Romsey and Southampton North, Madam Deputy Speaker, the best constituency must be Windsor, with its beautiful towns and villages. As well as our gre…”

“The point was well made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) that there are people who benefit from the minimum wage and new rights, but thousands of jobs will never exist as a result of the measures. We have to be cognisant of that in this House. All those measures are incompatible with a t…”

“Both Ascot and Royal Windsor racecourses are incredibly important to my constituency. I have visited both, and I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. On this issue, I urge the Minister to heed warnings from across the House and, more importantly, the industry. I cautiously welcom…”

“You make a compelling case for local journalism and the passion with which you support that and your members must be commended, but can I suggest there are some macro trends at work? You have described this as a kneejerk reaction to one bad year commercially, but Mr Radcliffe at Holyrood described the viewership as dow…”

“I agree with the hon. Member wholeheartedly, and he is making an excellent speech, but I would gently say that lots of us in the shires who face Liberal Democrats in our constituencies get leaflets from his colleagues that oppose building almost anywhere, ever. What would he say about that to some of his colleagues?”

“Will the hon. Member reflect on the fact that one in six people in this country on universal credit are not British citizens? How would he justify that to his constituents?”

“12. How much and what proportion of the funding due to be allocated to Mauritius as part of the agreement concerning the Chagos archipelago will come from her Department’s budget.”

“My hon. Friend is quite right. Although we are at risk of picking apart the Budget in its entirety, I would suggest that giving away our sovereign land and paying for the privilege might not be a great thing to do at any time, but particularly in a fiscally constrained environment. Despite having to have a reasonable a…”