Speeches by Holmes.

“I agree with my right hon. Friend. I found it quite concerning earlier that the Chairman of the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), relied on the fact that American counterparts in an Administration that he does not scrutinise backed the deal, so there was no need for the Defence Committee to inte…”

“I can tell the hon. Gentleman. Let me say it very clearly and very slowly, because I know that hon. Members have written their speeches before the debate started: zero. Zero is less than the deal the Minister is choosing. Let me repeat it very slowly for the hon. Gentleman and for Members across the House: the deal was…”

“I will in a second. I just want to emphasise the point so we do not hear it again. There were no negotiations. There was no deal. [Interruption.] The negotiations were stopped. There was no deal on offer, and no money was being offered. I hope that Members will scratch that bit out of their speeches as they go forward.”

“Yes, I absolutely can. I am not a lawyer, but I would say it is crystal clear in the sentence the hon. Gentleman has just read: “mutually beneficial”. What the democratically elected Government of the day decided, through Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, who I said—if the hon. Gentleman was in the debate earlier, he wo…”

“I will in a second. Some, including the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), have said that we want to “return” the islands. I say that is impossible, because it is not possible to return sovereignty to a country that never had sovereignty in the first place. This is a decision and a negotiation under…”

“I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman, because it was clear in the negotiations that took place in the ’60s, when the United Kingdom paid Mauritius, that Mauritius actively accepted that it had no sovereignty claim over the islands, and that stands in international agreements from times gone by. This Bill is a bad d…”

“The hon. Member for Rugby (John Slinger) has omitted some of the quote, because he was proven wrong before. He has failed to say that the former Prime Minister said “mutually beneficial”. Some of the gain that came out of that discussion was the fact that it was not mutually beneficial for this country, and we stopped …”

“My right hon. Friend is concerned about the cost of the deal, but does she also share my concern about the way in which the deal was negotiated? The Prime Minister of Mauritius has said that only the Prime Ministers of our respective countries were in the room; officials were asked to leave the room, so there are no re…”

“I thank the Minister for giving way, and I welcome him to his new position. He keeps saying “could”, “if” and that things “might” have happened. Will he accept that the legal judgments that have been cast down, which he is using as evidence, are not binding? Does he accept that when he talks about our deal—in other wor…”

“The hon. Gentleman says that the Leader of the Opposition could give those peerages, but he will be aware that that is organised through the usual channels, in conjunction with the Prime Minister and members of the governing party. We would be a lot more comfortable talking about the replacement of hereditary peers if …”

“The Minister may remember that at the beginning of the debate, I asked him to bear in mind the circumstances of some of the people who have given their life to this place over the last 25 or 30 years and are not in the best financial health. We are not in “Downton Abbey”—the film had its premiere last night. If he make…”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“I guarantee to the Minister that, as a council estate boy from Lewisham, I am not someone who ever thought that my bloodline would get into the House of Lords—[Interruption.] One day! I want to challenge the Minister about the points he has made about future reform. His party has a majority of 170, and we know that it …”

“I thank the Minister genuinely for giving way again; he is courteous and gentlemanly in doing so. I promise that this will be my last intervention. Could I just ask him about the difference between the problems he is discussing and what the Bill will enact, where a hereditary peer is not given membership of the House o…”

“On that point, I think of peers such as Patrick Courtown, the Opposition Deputy Chief Whip, who has served in the other House since 1975 in a number of ministerial capacities. That is because of where he was born, but there is a risk in seeing Members laugh about rich and privileged hereditary peers. This is not “Downt…”

“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government if she will make a statement on the new policies announced in the Government’s strategy for elections.”

“Yesterday, the Department gave notice of a written ministerial statement on the Government’s new strategy for elections, which is a significant policy document on changes to election law and political finance law—something that affects us all in this House. Instead of the Minister using this democratic Chamber to annou…”

“I gently say to the Minister that she and her Back-Bench colleagues do not have a monopoly on talking about poverty. If she really cared about poverty, she would not have allowed a policy to be brought before this House last week that, before it was changed, would have put 150,000 extra children into poverty. If she ge…”

“Lord knows who the Housing Minister is talking to, because time and again, developers have said that he cannot achieve his target of 1.5 million homes. As he knows, I have severe doubts about his ability to meet such unrealistic housing targets, and I suspect the Opposition will be proven right. However, if he does suc…”

“Recent figures provided by CHAIN report a record 13,231 people sleeping rough in London—a 19% increase in the year since this Government took office, and a 63% increase since Sadiq Khan took office as Mayor of London. What conversations has the Minister had with the Mayor of London to tackle this failure in leadership,…”