Speeches by Evans.

“The Minister is doing a fair job, but I have one simple question for him: why is he, not the Prime Minister, in the Chamber answering the House’s questions? The Minister clearly cannot answer them—no disrespect to him. The Prime Minister said that he did not know something, but now he knows something. Where is the Prim…”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.”

“I would hate for the Minister to mislead the House inadvertently, because I raised the examples earlier of Sky News and of my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns), who raised concerns about Mr Mandelson. Even in this debate, we heard evidence of what the Opposition have been doing, including …”

“Will the right hon. Lady give way?”

“The hon. and learned Gentleman is making a fantastic speech. The Prime Minister said that he had “confidence in the ambassador”. He did not say “pending investigation or a suspension”, “I’ll look into it” or “I’ll follow process”, but “I have confidence.” Why does the hon. and learned Gentleman think that the Prime Min…”

“I recently met the chief constable of Leicestershire, and he explained some of the red tape that his force faces. Between April 2024 and March 2025, it used 14,769 “use of force” forms. These are for when people go into handcuffs. Some 6,500 of those were for people who were complicit and were happy to be handcuffed. E…”

“The Minister has repeatedly said that it is not his job to speculate on the CPS. He is right, but it is his job to defend the security of this country and therefore to ask the CPS why it has not brought charges. Has he done that? Has he rung the CPS before he came to the House to speak to it and to understand why it ha…”

“Will the Secretary of State give way?”

“I am grateful. The new Secretary of State has been asked this several times, but we never heard an answer: can he point to a small or medium-sized business that actually supports this Bill?”

“9. What steps she is taking to help reduce levels of bureaucracy for frontline police officers.”

“I thank the hon. Lady for all the work she does with the APPG. I am looking holistically at the different parts of what we are trying to do in this space. I have already outlined all the funding that the previous Government put in, and I will come on to some of the other problems, such as the national insurance rise, b…”

“I thank the hon. Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher). He honours John by securing the debate. All hon. Members who have spoken have honoured respectively the people they held so dear, in the most powerful way possible by turning personal grief into public purpose. I therefore thank them all …”

“May I ask the new Leader of the House for some help? I have been working with the Hinckley school to try and get its science and technology building project sorted. That has been going on for a couple of years and we are at a crucial point with contractors. With the reshuffle, the Minister in charge of that portfolio h…”

“This is about the Prime Minister’s judgment. By Mandelson’s own admission, there is more very embarrassing information coming, so the Prime Minister could have said to the House yesterday, “I will suspend him, pending further investigation,” but he did not; he backed him. Can the Prime Minister be 100% sure that, in ma…”

“One year on from the election, the country has seen a Transport Secretary resign over fraud, an anti-corruption Minister investigated for corruption, a homelessness Minister making tenants homeless, and a Housing Secretary not paying tax on her second house. We also have a Prime Minister who accepted more freebies than…”

“Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 10 September.”

“Will the hon. Member give way?”

“Given the importance of the Chagos islands to our defence, has the hon. Gentleman’s Committee thought about even doing a review into the Chagos islands and what this would look like? That way, such questions could be addressed directly in a decent period of time—we only have four or five hours tonight—and he could spen…”

“On that basis, there were 17 rounds of formal negotiations for the Falkland Islands between ’65 and ’82. What would the outcome be under the hon. Gentleman’s way forward?”

“I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for giving way and using his legal background. It is more secure legally for those 99 years but, more definitively, at that 99-year point, if the Mauritians decide not to have a base there, categorically that is their decision. Therefore, by proxy, it is actually more u…”