Speeches by Anderson.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I give huge thanks to the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) for securing this very important debate. The question is: do we need a Minister for men and boys? I would say that ideally we do not, but we already have a Minister for women—in fact, we …”

“The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. Does he not agree with us that British people should be put first?”

“Q10. It was reported on the TV yesterday that the Labour Back Benchers are revolting. Now, that is a matter of opinion, but unlike the Labour Back Benchers and the Prime Minister—[Interruption.] Unlike the Labour Back Benchers and the Prime Minister—[Interruption.]”

“Unlike the Prime Minister of our country, I have never been thrown out of or barred from a pub, and after yesterday’s disastrous announcement to save our pubs, it is no wonder he has cleared off to China, but I have one question for the Deputy Prime Minister. Will he come with me to Ashfield to visit some pubs, speak t…”

“Could one of the Ministers please explain to me and the people of Ashfield why the UK has one of the highest rates of disability in Europe?”

“Now that the Chagos Bill has been dropped from the Order Paper for 19 January, will the Leader of the House please confirm when consideration of the Lords amendments will be scheduled?”

“I think X has to clean its act up—that is simple, and I think we all agree with that. It is interesting that all these Labour MPs complain about X, yet they are all on X every day making silly comments—you could not make it up, Sir Edward. If they had any scruples or backbone they would all come off X, but I suspect th…”

“It is a pleasure to serve once again under your chairship, Sir Edward. Let us be honest: if this petition was likely to trigger a general election, I doubt very much whether some of my former colleagues would be in the room today, because many of them would lose their seats—[Interruption.] We all make mistakes, and whe…”

“Will the hon. Lady give way?”

“Nowhere on the leaflet did it say we were going cut council tax, so the hon. Gentleman should maybe read it again. This Government have stolen money off the workers by not increasing the income tax thresholds—something they promised to do—and they have given that money to the shirkers. By shirkers, I mean that these ar…”

“I am not quite sure. I make about 400 quid a month from being on X. That is not exactly the “gotcha” answer the hon. Gentleman expected to that question, but I make no bones about it: I make money from X, and I pay about 45% tax on the money I make, which goes to the Treasury. Let us not forget another flagship scheme …”

“I thank the hon. Lady. She talks about representation and proportionality in the country and in this place. Is she aware that Reform UK got 4.1 million votes in the last election, but got five MPs, and the Lib Dems got 3.6 or 3.7 million votes and got 71 or 72 MPs?”

“The hon. Gentleman is being most generous with his time and has returned me the favour of an intervention. He talks about listening to the public; the public are very angry about the Chagos deal. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the Opposition parties should use all the possible levers, in this place and the other pl…”

“The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. He talks about pledges that were not made in the manifesto. I can think of three: a Deputy PM had to resign for tax dodging, a Homelessness Minister had to resign for making people homeless, and an anti-corruption Minister had to resign over corruption. Does he t…”

“The hon. Gentleman is most generous with his time. He talked about divisiveness in politics, and he said that schoolchildren are picking up on that. At Quarrydale academy in Ashfield, a year 9 history class was being taught polities. There was a chart on the wall; on one side, it said, “far-right” and “Nazis”, next to …”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is most generous with his time. Could he please explain why he thinks Labour MPs were so against voting for a national inquiry?”

“I will just correct the hon. Gentleman slightly. Nowhere in our national literature did anybody promise to cut council tax anywhere in the country. He may want to correct himself on that. Anyway, I get people apologising for voting Labour. Sometimes the odd lunatic might say they are going to vote for the Green party—t…”

“They got 72 MPs. Yet the Lib Dems are allowed on every single Select Committee and Bill Committee, but Reform UK is not. Is that fair?”

“Thank you, Mrs Harris. Look what they did to Cliff Richard: filmed a raid on his house when he was an innocent man. Look what they did to Princess Diana. Look what they did to Donald Trump, our closest ally. Bob Vylan were on stage shouting, “Death, death to the IDF.” What about the Gaza documentaries? What about the d…”

“I am quite happy to declare that; it is on my Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is £100,000 a year and it is probably more than the hon. Member will ever get paid for appearing on TV, if he gets paid anything at all. I am not paying my licence fee. I have not paid it for around 10 years. I am not paying to s…”