Speeches by Kirkham.

“I thank the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) for securing the debate on this really important subject. The covid-19 pandemic was an incredibly difficult time for many people—healthcare and other key workers who served their communities courageously; people who contracted the virus and their loved…”

“Coincidentally, I visited HMP Wandsworth yesterday and was impressed by the progress that it has made in staff retention over the last year or so. The prison has a new unit with support for prisoners with autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and addiction issues, and it seems to be working…”

“As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the Celtic sea, I welcome the floating offshore wind test and demo model awarded a contract for difference in the Celtic sea. It will open up the Celtics sea to investment. There are other test and demo models in the Celtic sea. What can the Secretary of State say ab…”

“In my constituency we have Cornish hedges, which are made of stone, and they make it even more dangerous, particularly as a lot of drivers do not realise that they are stone. They make it even more important for drivers to give horses as much room as possible.”

“Let me first take this opportunity to thank members of the emergency services teams and the utilities, the volunteers and everyone across Cornwall who has looked after their neighbours and responded so brilliantly to a storm that tested the resilience of rural and coastal Britain to the hilt. It exposed vulnerabilities…”

“I thank the Minister for that answer. I was very pleased to hear that he has already spoken to Go South West, which is working to fill the gaps left by our private bus provider’s recently withdrawn services. Those buses were vital for getting students to university and our two large further education colleges, because …”

“14. What recent progress she has made on providing long-term funding settlements to local transport authorities for bus services.”

“I represent a constituency that covers a small city, a town and a large rural area. Much of that rural area is the Roseland peninsula, and it is coastal. When I was researching for my maiden speech, I found that David Penhaligon wrote about the challenges that threatened rural Cornwall 50 years ago, and it was notable …”

“In Cornwall, we do not have big urban centres; we have towns with populations of about 20,000. That is why the UK town of culture competition is one that a large rural area such as Cornwall can get involved in. I am taking it as a good example of the Government’s commitment to, and awareness of, the rural parts of the …”

“I agree that communities must have a say, but they must also benefit, and that is one of the things that the Government will ensure. Another type of security is food security. We had a very difficult decade under the Conservatives. Brexit caused real problems at the border, which our sanitary and phytosanitary EU agree…”

“Could they have used that money, for example, to travel to a bottled water station or would it just have been a credit on their bill?”

“My last question is about the statutory compensation. Now, I may have got this wrong. I was reading the papers earlier, and they said that on 8 December—so after the incident—some of those customers were offered a £50 advance credit. Do you think that is sufficient, given the impact of the outage?”

“But you ended up having to use the fire service because you did not have capacity?”

“It sounds like they did not get water for a period of time, because some of those things could only have happened if they had not had water.”

“What happened to the dialysis centre?”

“We have read about some really quite sad situations—people struggling with dialysis, dialysis not working and medical interventions needed because people were unable to receive dialysis. Incontinent people with bowel cancer were left struggling without water. Some of those care homes, the dialysis centre, the doctors, …”

“Was that planned in advance, though? Did they know that they were going to be doing that? That is an emergency response that needs to be planned, isn’t it?”

“Had that happened in Tunbridge Wells?”

“Something else that the borough council told us was that the centre of town was pretty much left to them. They were providing the toilets and bottled water around the town centre. That is quite a big gap. How did that happen?”

“It is so important that in an incident like this you have a clockwork plan that cannot fail like that?”