Speeches by Smith.

“17. What steps she is taking to improve passenger rail performance.”

“My constituents in Manchester are left constantly frustrated by delays and cancellations, not just on the west coast main line, which you know all about, Mr Speaker, but on our east-west routes, and on services all around Manchester. What are the Government doing, alongside partners, to drive improvements in services t…”

“My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and I agree with all the things that she has asked for. Perhaps I can add one more ask of both the EA and the Government, which is for more of a focus on the upstream prevention activity, so we can stop the waters coming down on the Mersey—a number of colleagues here are bas…”

“I warmly welcome the announcement of solar panels at Ladybarn primary school in Withington—it is great news for an excellent school in my patch and good news for the planet. I have also seen good investment in solar panels on hospital buildings in my patch, and we clearly need to scale that up. How can having Great Bri…”

“1. What steps Great British Energy is taking to help public services to use more renewable energy.”

“Q6. Last week I visited the new diagnostic centre at Withington community hospital, and as well as the 85,000 new appointments it is going to create, I was really pleased to see new solar panels and heat pumps being designed into the building. I thank the Prime Minister for his climate leadership and for attending COP.…”

“We now have an excellent, highly qualified individual who has been appointed to chair the football regulator, and we have an excellent Secretary of State who made a mistake for which she has apologised. Even the commissioner said that the breach of the code “was not a knowing breach.” What football fans want is not thi…”

“You talked about the importance of that structure to the way young people develop. Do you worry about the development of young people given that what we had as a structure of our watching in my youth is no longer there, and instead kids can access anything all the time?”

“I think you both talked—Frank certainly did—about the importance of curation in producing quality TV for kids. Assuming that the trend continues towards YouTube and away from broadcast TV, who could fulfil that role of curator? How can we get a framework that has curation in it?”

“Can I ask Greg something? The Children’s Media Foundation clearly believes that children’s TV in the UK is worth protecting. What is it specifically about our TV in the UK that you think is important, and why is it important that it is protected?”

“Can I talk about consistency? Jennifer, you referred earlier to inconsistent advice from officers and how it would be helpful to have unified local authority positions on things. Is there anything that the Government can do with better heritage policies and priorities across government? Is there any inconsistency in th…”

“You have identified the issues and some of the challenges that we are facing and started to talk about some of the solutions. It is a partnership between Government and local authorities and a lot of the responsibility goes to local authorities. How can Government support local authorities better to do this work?”

“If we are devolving power to local regions, as we have in Manchester, would devolving some planning policy and funding help or would that be another layer of bureaucracy?”

“Jennifer and Sarah, do you have anything specifically on planning and listed buildings and what the Government could do?”

“Can I talk about consistency? Jennifer, you referred earlier to inconsistent advice from officers and how it would be helpful to have unified local authority positions on things. Is there anything that the Government can do with better heritage policies and priorities across government? Is there any inconsistency in th…”

“You have identified the issues and some of the challenges that we are facing and started to talk about some of the solutions. It is a partnership between Government and local authorities and a lot of the responsibility goes to local authorities. How can Government support local authorities better to do this work?”

“If we are devolving power to local regions, as we have in Manchester, would devolving some planning policy and funding help or would that be another layer of bureaucracy?”

“Jennifer and Sarah, do you have anything specifically on planning and listed buildings and what the Government could do?”

“Q3. As Palestinians try to rebuild their lives amid the rubble of Gaza, last night once again dozens of innocent people were killed by Israeli airstrikes. What will the UK do, along with our international partners, to hold the Israeli—the Netanyahu—Government to account for their actions, and what more can we do to ens…”

“I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and her visit to Manchester immediately following the attack. In the Jewish community in my constituency in south Manchester, there is a real sense of anxiety and fear, and she is right to identify that. The message that needs to go out today, and that has gone out across Ma…”