Speeches by Martin.

“You are quite happy that Russia is fixed in Ukraine; you are almost saying that that is a good thing, and I agree with you that it is a good thing. But if it is a good thing that Russia is fixed in Ukraine, how is it not a bad thing that we become fixed in Ukraine if we deploy troops there?”

“I would like to pick up the theme of increased settlements and trade, which has been mentioned across the House. Along with the concerns expressed across the House, I have a particular concern that there are currently Israeli settlements that are trading with the UK but passing their goods off as coming from Israel. As…”

“The US has abducted the leader of Venezuela yet the Government cannot say whether that is legal or illegal. Let us try an easier one: if the US were to abduct the premier of Greenland, would that be legal or illegal?”

“Blocked beds cost Pembury hospital £18,000 every night, yet discharge teams have to manually phone care homes to place people there. My constituent Debbie has created a dashboard—it is basically like Skyscanner—to accelerate discharges by matching discharged patients to care beds. It has already received seed funding o…”

“I rise to present this petition regarding accessibility at High Brooms station. This is further to an online petition on the same matter, which has collected 610 signatures. Under the previous Government’s Access for All scheme, plans were drawn up for High Brooms featuring three new lifts and a footbridge. Now that th…”

“I thank the Minister for her remarks, as well as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul), and the Lib Dem spokes- person, my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton). I thank the hon. Members for East Thanet (Ms Billington), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-…”

“I thank my fellow Kent MP for his intervention; I will address many of those points as I make progress. He is right that there is a reason for the statutory deadline for EHCPs, and it would be nice if local authorities could meet it. To return to tribunals, between 2021 and 2024 Kent council spent more than £2 million …”

“My grandmother said that the mark of a civilised society is how it treats its most vulnerable—she was wise. She was very active in politics, but for a different party. [Interruption.] She made a journey that many people have made in recent years. Unfortunately, she is dead now. She would be 110 now if she were alive. T…”

“I beg to move, That this House has considered SEND provision in the South East. It is an honour and pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I will speak specifically about Kent and my Tunbridge Wells constituency; I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members will speak about examples in their constituencie…”

“I will make a comment and then hand back to the Chair. When you talk about European partners, and you list a series of bilateral arrangements, perhaps we need to do larger-scale, more multilateral co-ordination about how we are going to co-ordinate that. All this money is going to flood into the marketplace, and it if …”

“It saves us money, if we get it right.”

“On co-ordination with European allies and other allies, their spending is going up as well. We are going to be buying off many of the same firms. Are we trying to get ahead of that curve, so that we speak with one voice?”

“So you have one investment plan?”

“Are you going to sit on that defence investment advisory group?”

“Can I pick up on one of your points? How do we not make the mistakes we have made before? If we had been sitting in this Committee hearing 10 years ago, we would have said the same things about consistent demand signals to industry. How would you characterise the mistakes that we made previously—around us designing som…”

“Where did you pull airframes from to do the recent middle east crisis?”

“I would like to ask some questions about defence inflation. Mr Carter, I will come straight to you. We—not just the UK but our allies—are entering an era of spending more money on defence. If we do not have increased capacity, the right financial structures and so on, that creates inflation; we have seen that with the …”

“If I could have a quick comeback on that, I call it double counting and you call it double hatting. Are you personally comfortable, Minister, with the degree of double counting, where our forces are assigned to two potential operations or avenues of deployment? Are you comfortable that we can fulfil everything we need …”

“Is there a danger of double counting here? I note that, with Finland joining, we have commitments with Finland. In Estonia, we have a battle group, but actually we are holding the remainder of the brigade in the UK. We also have a commitment to the NATO mission in Kosovo, where we are the reinforcing nation. We have al…”

“Does the Minister think it more or less likely that, as a result of the American airstrikes, Iran will get a nuclear bomb?”