Speeches by Norman.

“Thank you very much.”

“Over the past few months, the Labour party has been generous indeed in offering the people of this country regular evidence of its remarkable incompetence, but even by its formidable standards it has excelled itself this week. The Prime Minister said some time ago in terms that he prefers Davos to Westminster, but this…”

“Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”

“I am sure that the Leader of the House and every Member will join me in welcoming the news overnight of a ceasefire in Gaza. Let us hope and pray that it is as effective, comprehensive and long-lasting as possible. Back at home, all one can say is that it has been another extraordinary week for the Government, though p…”

“Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”

“I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate on an immensely important topic, and I am grateful to you, Mr Dowd, for allowing a quick intervention from a shadow Front Bencher on a matter of great constituency interest. She will be aware that I and others have tried to fight this battle for at least four years. …”

“If you take the number of complaints and divide it by the number of service personnel, the number is roughly the same for each of the services.”

“I have one final small question, if I may, just because of what you said. It would be possible, in principle, to take a longitudinal approach and run a regression to look at whether people’s careers were different for those who have complained versus sample peer groups. Do you think that might be an interesting analysi…”

“As a final question, can you talk a little about your experience of whether putting in a complaint, however it is resolved, then has an adverse effect on a human being’s career in the services? That itself could be an enormous disincentive and demotivator, even in the most serious or most justified cases.”

“As you say, there are some that you would consider the worst, even though it is a subjective matter in some cases.”

“Does it vary by what you would consider to be the seriousness of the complaint? Some complaints can be very serious indeed, and some may be very important to the individual but perhaps less significant in other terms.”

“Can you comment a little on the relative performance of the services—both how they incur complaints and how effective they are in resolving them?”

“Thank you, Ombudsman, for coming in today. The complaints that you have to monitor are often extremely serious. Could you talk us through the role you play, just to orient us, and then comment a little bit on some of the particular things that you have encountered that you think are worthy of note?”

“Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”

“Madam Deputy Speaker, may I start by wishing you a very happy new year? I hope that all colleagues in the Chamber had a zestful and restful Christmas. I also pay tribute to those members of the House Service who were honoured in the recent honours list. The new year is always a time for new starts and fresh beginnings;…”

“My right hon. Friend will be aware that there is a family connection with my constituency of Hereford and South Herefordshire. What he says is deeply troubling and distressing on so many different levels, and I would like to ask whether his conclusion is that there is some case in justice to consider this an unsafe ver…”

“Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”

“Mr Speaker, may I associate myself very strongly with the remarks you have just made about hospices? You will recall that St Michael’s hospice was the topic of a recent discussion that we had at the Dispatch Box in business questions. Mr Speaker, I must confess that I feel a slight degree of trepidation and nervousness…”

“Not scaring the horses unnecessarily involves scaring them a bit. The question is this: When we had a Cold War on—many people would say we are entering a new Cold War—defence spending on average was 5% to 7% of GDP. That was not a threat against the homeland in the way that we might have thought of in the Second World …”

“Permanent Secretary, I just want to come back to points that have been made on the equipment plan. You will be fully aware of the importance of disclosure and transparency, and the worries that we have had about diminishing transparency and disclosure. How much do you care about the concern about consent and preparedne…”