Speeches by Jopp.

“In Spelthorne we have six secondary schools, only two of which provide A-levels; the rest are middle schools taking pupils only up to GCSE level. There have been plans in the past to increase sixth-form provision in Spelthorne, but they have been in abeyance for two years. Will the Minister please agree to meet me, so …”

“1. What plans she has to reform the provision of sixth-form education.”

“10. What job vacancies in the Prime Minister's Office are being advertised.”

“I personally would be delighted to welcome the new Cabinet Secretary to his role. I thank the Minister for her answer, but in her list I did not hear her say whether the Cabinet Office is hiring a new Prime Minister’s envoy to the nations and regions, to carry out the vital work that was about to be done by Sue Gray wh…”

“Lord Robertson, thank you very much indeed. You referenced the 1998 defence review and the 2.7% of GDP that was spent on defence at the time. That defence review, if memory serves, was very much touted as being foreign policy-led and threat-based. This time you have been tasked with a review that is deliverable and aff…”

“I was struck by General Barrons’ statement that we are not going to fill in holes in defence left, in some cases, since the Cold War. That would suggest that it is not a question of using the 2.5% to backfill those holes in the current EP, for example, and that some things will be left.”

“If your review came upon something that said, “We really ought to be doing this, but that is going to take us beyond the 2.5% envelope,” are you going to note that as a sort of shopping list for the future?”

“A constituent wrote to me recently asking if I could get a hurry-up on his application under the EU settlement scheme. It turns out that he is subject to a deportation order, and that we actually did deport him in 2018, but he managed to get back into the country somehow and to make his application under the EUSS. The …”

“The Minister with responsibility for sport graciously met me to discuss the future of London Irish in my Spelthorne constituency, and she undertook to ensure that the club would get the meeting with Sport England that it so desperately desired. Can the Minister give us an update?”

“The Secretary of State is in consensus-building mode. May I offer him the opportunity to address the 10,975 members of my Spelthorne constituency who will lose their winter fuel payments, or the 100,000 pensioners who will be plunged into poverty? Can he explain to them why they are wrong when they see the Government t…”

“I thank the permanent secretary for that fulsome answer. The £56,000 is going to come down, then; do you have in your mind a particular percentage, say, as a target, and in what sort of timeframe?”

“Chair, may I come in on the really important point that General Magowan made about whether our support to Ukraine becomes force driving in the SDR? We have seen some evidence that the training that we have been providing to Ukrainian forces is falling short because we cannot replicate the combat conditions in Ukraine, …”

“Secretary of State, you said yesterday to the House that the permanent secretary would lead a leaner Department; so, permanent secretary, does leaner mean fewer MOD civil servants? If it does, how many are going to leave and by when?”

“Q7. The Spelthorne Litter Pickers is an outstanding organisation of 1,000 volunteers who do great work up and down my constituency, come rain or shine. Last week, they were awarded the King’s Award for Voluntary Service. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Would the Deputy Prime Minister, the Government and indeed the whole …”

“T4. I recently met a GP who was in the market to hire a new seven to eight session GP to meet demand. Following the Budget and the increase in national insurance contributions for employers, he can now only afford a three to four session GP. What advice does the Secretary of State have for my friend the GP?”

“Will the Armed Forces Commissioner’s powers of investigation extend to being allowed to visit troops deployed on operations, to question them, and to seize documents?”

“Q4. Now that Sue Gray has, remarkably, turned down the opportunity to be the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the nations, will he finally admit that it was an invented job on taxpayers’ money for one of his cronies? If it wasn’t, is he going to hire a new one?”

“People can only go so far out of London into the Spelthorne constituency on their Oyster card; they have to buy a train ticket for the last couple of stops. This anomalous situation means that major employers such as BP and Shepperton Studios send buses up the line to pick up their workers to do a day’s work. The Secre…”

“A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Bronzefield category A women’s prison in my Spelthorne constituency. I saw that prisoners doing work were rewarded with small amounts of money, but the weighting of their pay preferred people who take part in numeracy and literacy over skills, such as working in the bicycle repair s…”

“18. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of education and training provided to prisoners.”