Speeches by Western.

“Sarah and David, in terms of how we can address that, what work is being done, recognising the gaps and the £3 trillion worth of construction that could be happening? We might be letting down young people or adult learners who want to get back into construction just because we do not have the training in place.”

“Speaking to my local college, Warwickshire College, which is the sixth largest in the country, I am told it has loads of young people who want to get in to be plumbers, electricians or whatever, but it cannot provide the training because there are not enough tutors. Is that what you see across the country and in all se…”

“How do you assemble that data?”

“Tim Balcon, I am interested to know where you see the really significant gaps in the construction industry, in terms of roles or subsectors trying to get people in and trained?”

“Very briefly, from talking to pubs in my constituency, Warwick and Leamington, they would really welcome minimum pricing for alcohol. Stephen, in Scotland, how does it work for you?”

“Morgan, would you welcome something along those lines?”

“This is putting a lot of pressure on them. What about covid loans? Is that something that you can relate to? Are there issues with outstanding covid loans that you may have taken out or that have been taken out across the sector?”

“It is just those other additional pressures on the sector. The margins may have been reasonable to slim.”

“Lydia, are there any other costs that are really bearing down on the business?”

“Would many of your pubs, do you reckon, have taken out loans, especially for some of the energy hikes that they saw?”

“It would be useful to know specifically whether the Government could do that and when it would choose to do that.”

“So we are looking the other way?”

“I understand, but I guess—going back to Minister Falconer’s point about making an assessment—if there is an opportunity for the Government to make an assessment of what is happening in Gaza, when all of us are denied that because we have no media feed about what is happening, the UK has an opportunity to determine or a…”

“Is that something you could ask the RAF to do?”

“I understand it is not the purpose, but do we, as a Government, have that data through the RAF?”

“I understand, but in the absence of any journalists, or any media, being allowed in Gaza—media reporters are not even allowed to film when they are dropping humanitarian aid into Gaza—there is a complete absence of information. It just strikes me as strange, in that there would be data that is available from surveillan…”

“You may not ask them specifically to do that, but in terms of the information recorded—I am not familiar with how RAF surveillance flights work—I can imagine that they are recording data on an urban landscape across Gaza as they are flying. Then from that data, you would be able to ascertain the amount of damage and th…”

“So with the surveillance flights, we do not actually keep data; we do not record anything about the amount of destruction of any part of Gaza during those flights.”

“I understand. Minister Pollard, do you have an estimate for the number of sorties that have been undertaken by F-35s? What information do the Government have on targeting and the ordnance used by the Israeli F-35?”

“It could be used in the west bank?”