Speeches by Martin.

“Is that a commitment under this new legislation that they would be able to continue that treatment?”

“This is just a quick one, picking up directly off that point. Do you think that there are things that we could learn from other countries in terms of the relationship that their Governments have with their veterans but also service personnel? An obvious example is America, where there is all sorts of legislation and su…”

“The Government’s policy is actually achieving the opposite for social care of what the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) suggests. Peter runs a small domiciliary service in my constituency that is going bust. That means 35 people without a job, a loss of £100,000 in taxes every year, and all those p…”

“When I speak to the police in Tunbridge Wells, they often comment that a large court backlog has a real effect on levels of crime. There are more criminals in circulation and, frankly, the system is seen as a bit of a soft touch if cases are never brought to court. May I simply ask the Justice Secretary what is the bac…”

“Would anyone else like to add to that?”

“That is a much better analogy. Thank you very much.”

“I have one final question on something you said about access to EU defence structures. Okay, fine, but if we are going to do much closer procurement, joint procurement, unified procurement, whatever it is, there is a problem if we are outside the single market. By your figures, we constitute 22% of the European defence…”

“If I could just explore that a bit further, ideally you want your defence industrial planning to match the geopolitics of what is going on. I understand you guys cannot comment on the geopolitics, but let us just take as an assumption that one of the paths in the future might be that the Europeans, in which I include t…”

“I am hearing that a series of minilateral relationships will build us to where we want to get to. It is a bit of a nonsense that every single European country has a different rifle, tank or infantry fighting vehicle. Inefficient is the politest way I can put it. In a multipolar world, Europe needs to build unified mili…”

“No, it is absolutely fine. Needs must. What would that look like?”

“Hence standardised kit.”

“To your training idea, everyone would be training on the same equipment. If Italy needed 100 vehicles, we could just take them from anyone.”

“It is 500 million Europeans asking 300 million Americans to defend them from 140 million Russians. It is nonsense.”

“You almost need a Soviet Union-style agreement where you say, “You guys are going to build the tractors. You guys are going to build the light utility vehicles”, for example.”

“We do need that in Europe. That is effectively what you are saying. It is an essential precursor.”

“That is helpful.”

“Does the shadow Chancellor think that the policies of Liz Truss were good for business investment and confidence in the economy?”

“I thought that I would let the shadow Chancellor make a little progress in his speech before intervening on him. It seems odd to hear a speech about the economy from the Conservative party without any mention of Liz Truss. Now we hear mention of trade deals. Let me ask him this very directly: does he think that the pol…”

“I am a little confused—[Interruption.] If the Conservative party wants to take back Tunbridge Wells at the next election, its Members would do well to listen. Will the shadow Foreign Secretary clarify why she is criticising a deal for which the negotiations were started by the Conservative party?”

“I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. This is not hyperbole; these are real stories from real businesses, from people who stay up at night trying to juggle profit and loss, or looking at how they are going to pay their national insurance contributions or their business rates at the end of the month. We do not ha…”