Speeches by Reader.

“I am fortunate to get thorough updates from my police, fire and crime commissioner, Danielle Stone. In the latest update, she told me that she sees real improvements in the Probation Service, but Northampton still has a 40% staff vacancy rate. What is the Department doing to support recruitment and retention of the ski…”

“The Royal & Derngate in Northampton has been named the UK’s most welcoming theatre. Will the Leader of the House join me in commending Jo Gordon, the chief executive; Jesse Jones, our artistic director; and all the team at the Royal & Derngate?”

“The Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for North West Essex, said at the Conservative party conference that she wanted to cut regulation on building, but she was silent on the Government’s consultation on speeding up building. Is this a change of policy? Are the Conservatives now supporting the Government …”

“May I tell the Committee a story? There is good merit in making sure that councillors are trained, but they can be trained and still not listen. A Reform councillor in Northamptonshire chose to join a training session, forgot to turn off his camera and got into the bath naked. If we are to mandate training, we are goin…”

“As the Committee will remember, I had just covered Ireland. I will now take Committee members across the world to Australia, where a ban on upward-only rent reviews was relatively successfully deployed, as the Minister rightly said. As with Ireland, it is a very different model to what the Government are proposing. In …”

“It is a pleasure to speak about this issue. I thank the Minister, who has been gracious in giving me a lot of time to discuss upward-only rent reviews. I hope to use a couple of minutes to clarify a couple of points in the Minister’s statement that I do not think completely reflect the evidence that we have heard and, …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) for doing tireless work to co-ordinate it on behalf of us both. I thank his team as well. I want to start by echo…”

“I have some evidence on this point: under reorganisation, we actually lost Labour councillors. As the council came together, there were more Conservatives post reorganisation than before, so I am not sure about the hon. Gentleman’s evidence base for his suggestion that this is gerrymandering by the Labour party.”

“There has been a lot of conjecture about what could happen. I am from an area that has a unitary, because the Conservatives bankrupted the county council. Has the hon. Gentleman spoken to people who have unitaries in order to fix some of his ideas in some sort of foundation? It is great to hear people’s ideas, but let …”

“Given that all of the tier 1 major developers have written to me and asked me to pass on to the Chair and to the Minister their big concern about this, do they have confidence, or does NESO need to do more to listen to them?”

“Is the Department aware of the delivery risk on clean power 2030 because of this significant delay, particularly with projects unable to achieve FID now impacting on the potential investability of projects?”

“Is the Department aware of the delivery risk on clean power 2030 because of this significant delay, particularly with projects unable to achieve FID now impacting on the potential investability of projects?”

“Matt, do you see community energy as a benefit or a hindrance?”

“If we had a definition of what a community energy project was, there could be a change to your licensing requirement to enable you to deal with them in a different way and one that is perhaps more appropriate to the scale of the organisation. Sarah and Mark, do you see community energy as a benefit or hindrance to deli…”

“Sarah, one of the areas that we heard frustration about is the complexity of engaging with DNOs. What is your organisation doing to help community organisations and community energy projects through that engagement process?”

“Thank you, Matt. I will come on to colleagues on engagement. We have heard that community energy is needed. You probably heard the first panel and even some of our previous sessions, and you have seen the passion in the sector. One of the challenges that groups have mentioned is that their voices are not always heard. …”

“Given that all of the tier 1 major developers have written to me and asked me to pass on to the Chair and to the Minister their big concern about this, do they have confidence, or does NESO need to do more to listen to them?”

“Matt, I am going to carry on with you, if that is okay. I will come to the other panellists on engagement with community energy after my question. On 1 October, NESO published revised timelines on grid connection offers, which means that you now have significant delays. The gate 2 notifications may now not be coming un…”

“Did you just point at me when you said that?”

“We have also had evidence that has warned us that, if we have a case-by-case assessment of all these community energy projects, it is a lot more cumbersome for regulatory authorities and community energy companies to implement. Would you agree with that assessment?”