Speeches by Khan.

“A little bit of this has already been mentioned. Particularly to Tim, Mark and Anna, I wanted to get a sense from you of what you think the main challenges are in attracting and retaining skilled professionals in the construction sector.”

“This is perhaps a question for Brian and Ian. I just want to get your reflections on a couple of things. What are the main challenges in attracting and retaining skilled professionals to work in the construction sector? Are there any specific roles within construction that have been particularly impacted by labour shor…”

“To unpick those figures that you gave at the start, 50% do not complete and 70% do not go on to get jobs. Could you unpick that a little bit for me and explain why you think that that is the case?”

“Anna, did you have any reflections on that?”

“To what extent do you think the sector is reliant on overseas labour? Have you seen that change in recent years? How is that trend moving?”

“On that point, will the hon. Gentleman give way?”

“The Prime Minister rightly reaffirms our commitment to our national security. While it is regrettable that foreign aid and the soft power that goes with it will, for a time, see a reduction, does he agree that without the necessary hard power to back what we say on the world stage, the impact of our international aid w…”

“I have one final question. As I mentioned earlier, I used to be a councillor in Medway, a unitary authority that only became a unitary authority 23 years ago. There were huge challenges when unitarisation happened around bringing those councils together, the cost implications of that and the impact on services. It is n…”

“I want to start exploring the logistics of this in a little bit more detail. In thinking about how this will work with unitary authorities joining up together, the impact on services is going to be a key part of the consideration. It would be really helpful to understand your thoughts on that and how the actual logisti…”

“I appreciate what the Minister has said; I just wanted to understand a little bit. We might not want to get to the levels that we see in our European counterparts, or perhaps that piece of work has not been looked at, but are there any plans to look at further tax devolving powers at this point or in the near future? I…”

“To touch upon that, compared to perhaps some of our European counterparts, the way that we have fiscal devolution is quite constrained by comparison, which means that there are challenges, particularly for local government. That is something that we, this Committee, have heard from other witnesses in the past. I know t…”

“I appreciate that we have touched on this already, but it would be helpful to understand, given the opportunities we have had with this particular White Paper, why further fiscal devolution and powers to combined authorities has not been part of it.”

“I am Naushabah Khan, the Labour MP for Gillingham and Rainham.”

“Just to follow up on that, this is not going to be cheap. In terms of the financial support that is needed to make sure this happens, what considerations have been given to how that would work?”

“This is just a follow-up to that. From what Lewis was saying, there has been a bit of a lack of clarity about how this works in terms of the second stages. As someone who comes from an area—Medway—that applied to be on the priority programme, was refused and is now trying to look at what the next stage of that looks li…”

“Does my hon. and learned Friend agree, given where we are with social media today, that legislation just has not kept up with the pace of change? We are far behind in being able to deal with and tackle this issue, given how extensive social media usage is. Our pace of change, in terms of legislation, just has not met t…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, because the safety of young people online is possibly one of the most pressing challenges of our time. I have a confession to make: I hate social media, but I feel compelled to use it. It cannot…”

“To picking up on adult social care and SEN services, what has led to the quite drastic increase in recent years in terms of those provisions? Or is that something that has been ramping up for a number of years now and are we just reaching a bit of a pinch point?”

“Off the back of that, a couple of things have been mentioned, as well as suggestions that there are just things that we are perhaps not approaching in the right way as a country. What are some of the solutions to these funding models and how they are operating at the minute in local government? How could we alleviate t…”

“I am Naushabah Khan, Labour MP for Gillingham and Rainham.”