Speeches by Brickell.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) for opening the debate. I will focus on the issue of BNO visas; I declare an interest as a member of Labour Friends of Hong Kong. I have 403 constituents in Bolton West who signed the pet…”

“My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. That is exactly the concern that I and many Members on the Government Benches have. Long-standing reform is well overdue. We also heard about the principle of monarchy, and mention was made of constitutional monarchies.”

“In summary, this Bill is about rebuilding trust in politics. It is about ending practices that belong to the 18th century, not the 21st. It is about showing the British people that Parliament works for them, not the privileged few. Let me also say that this Bill is just the beginning, and I am committed to wider reform…”

“I will give way on that final point.”

“The right hon. Member will have heard me mention previously that previous Governments do not bind the hands of future Governments, and that this Bill was a manifesto commitment last year. That leads me on to the amendments that have come back from the other place. Lords amendments 1 and 8, tabled by the noble Lord Park…”

“My hon. Friend makes a very good point; indeed, he talks of one of my all-time favourite comedies. It speaks to the need for drastic reform of the other place, which is long overdue. In a Tory by-election in the other place, another peer asserted that fellow Members should vote for him because he “races on the Solent a…”

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will come to the amendments very shortly. Mention was made of constitutional monarchies. A number of European countries have constitutional monarchies that have a hereditary principle, but none of them has hereditary Members in their Parliaments. Mention was also made of the hereditar…”

“I will start by setting out some context for why the Bill, though small, is so important and why I am delighted to be speaking in its support. I will then address Lords amendments 1, 3 and 8 directly. As has been mentioned in the debate, in 2024, Labour promised to end the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in t…”

“The Father of the House mentions Conservative party policy in the 1920s and 1960s. Maybe he can recall better than me, but I do not believe there was any mention of House of Lords reform in the Conservative party general election manifesto last year. Will he illuminate the House on Conservative policy on reforming the …”

“My constituents in Horwich are gravely concerned about unsuitable family homes being repurposed into houses in multiple occupation with little transparency about who is being housed there and when. To my immense frustration as the local Member of Parliament, I often hear about such proposals on social media, which all …”

“Having spent more than a decade tackling financial crime before I came to this place, I welcome the Minister’s remarks and the strategy on elections, which will protect our hard-won democracy from foreign interference and which also incorporates demands from the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and resp…”

“I thank the Leader of the House for confirming the recess dates for the next 12 months, which my wife has already messaged me about to say thanks. The Leader of the House will be aware that, despite important draft Government legislation banning single-use vapes, vape shops masquerading as candy stores continue to spri…”

“As secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on Germany, may I take this opportunity to welcome Monday’s joint chairing of the Ukrainian Defence Contact Group by the Defence Secretary, alongside his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius? I also congratulate the Government on today’s landmark bilateral treaty between…”

“In response to an urgent question in April, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer) confirmed that the London Sudan conference included a commitment from the UK Government to provide a further £120 million of aid for 2025-26 to …”

“On peacekeeping in particular, the Committee heard evidence that suggested that the way the United Nations goes about its peacekeeping efforts is stuck in the 1970s. At a time when the UN has limited resources to draw on, to what extent are the UK Government working with other member nations to drive greater use of tec…”

“We have heard evidence about the mandates that you mentioned, and about how sclerotic the United Nations can be. Set against that backdrop, we have seen rising bilateral efforts on conflict resolution, driven by states such as China, Turkey and Qatar. We have also seen nascent multilateral organisations emerge over the…”

“This Committee previously heard that there is an increasing drive towards supporting humanitarian relief, as opposed to conflict resolution and peacebuilding, because the latter is, frankly, too difficult to work through in the United Nations. To what extent do you think the UN has got the balance right between those t…”

“The Committee travelled to New York earlier this year to meet the UN Secretary-General to talk about his UN80 Initiative, which looks at modernising and reforming certain aspects of how the United Nations operates. What are your hopes for that workstream that the Secretary-General is leading?”

“My hon. Friend, who has been a fantastic champion on tackling that issue, makes a valid point. The Opposition would have us believe that taxes writ large are a drag on growth, but the truth is more nuanced. What stifles growth is instability. What repels investment is unpredictability. What corrodes trust is a tax syst…”

“I thank the hon. Member for giving way. He is the third consecutive Conservative Member to stand up and speak, but I have yet to hear what proposals his party wants to bring in to raise revenue or what services it wants to cut. In my contribution, I made a conscious effort to set out three constructive proposals for th…”