Speeches by Foord.

“It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for securing this debate. Education is what we think of when we want to invest in the future. So much of what we discuss in Parliament is about conflict, aid and the present, b…”

“5. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero on support for the green energy sector in Scotland.”

“The roll-out of offshore renewables in Scotland should happen alongside the growth of supply chains there. That is vital if the energy transition is to deliver jobs and investment in Scotland’s oil and gas communities. It is welcome that the Government have allocated £200 million to a clean industry bonus, but that fal…”

“Growing up, it was second nature for us to rinse out our milk bottles and put them out for the milkman to collect the next day. It was a very simple system, and it worked. Then came the rise of single-use plastics, and for a while we convinced ourselves that recycling was enough. We felt that as long as we put our plas…”

“I commend the Chair and the Defence Committee for turning their scrutinising eye to the global combat air programme. The Chair talked about the benefits and risks of new partners, and explained that we need to weigh the benefits against the risks. In previous multilateral fighter jet programmes, there has been an overe…”

“It is welcome to hear that this partnership agreement is a binding treaty. As such, it contrasts with the Budapest memorandum, which was non-binding and not worth the paper it was written on. There is a lot of talk about how Ukraine is on an irreversible path to NATO membership, but it will be difficult to get a consen…”

“I commend the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for securing the debate and for putting himself out there by calling for a sugar and salt reformulation tax. I will add that it is not just through penalties that we will tackle diets in this country; it is also through incentives. Today I want to talk about some incentiv…”

“I do not question the Minister’s difficult inheritance, but the Labour party adviser Dan Neidle suggests that the plan to slap inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1 million should be replaced with a much higher threshold with a clawback mechanism, perhaps for land over £20 million that is sold. That would tackle …”

“2. What discussions he has had with NATO allies on strengthening that alliance.”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“For 75 years, NATO has stood as a bulwark against territorial acquisition, and NATO is stronger when all its members stand against that. What discussions does the Foreign Secretary plan to have with the President-elect of the United States about the status of Denmark, Greenland and Canada? Will the Foreign Secretary re…”

“I appreciate that those are examples, but what makes you suppose that there is demand in those places for those sorts of things? One thing that made me question it is that there is actually very good disinformation training and education in Nordic and Baltic states; they are very far advanced in that area. In fact, do …”

“You estimate that 25% of the overseas students arriving in the UK have been influenced by the British Council. How do you measure that, and what evidence do you have for it?”

“Hospices in Devon were already struggling before the Government’s Budget last autumn, which introduced a hike in employers’ national insurance. To talk first about the national picture, we have heard that a third of funding for hospices tends to come from the state, through the NHS. However, in Devon, it is less than a…”

“Throughout the decades—at least since 1945—the development of defence technology has been bound by international law. I understand that the Defence Committee has taken the view that it will not be informed by law or ethics, but I wonder whether work will be done in future to bring together the House of Lords report fro…”

“Finally, do you have information on the pay gap in relation to diversity?”

“The statistics that I am looking say at that it was 10.9% in ’17-18 and 20.7% in ’23-24.”

“But it seems to have been going in the wrong direction. I wondered how you would account for the gender pay gap having doubled over that five-year period?”

“Until 2019, you published an annual gender pay gap, but I do not think it has been published since then. Why did you stop publishing the gender pay gap at that point?”

“How did that change the output and what the British Council was producing?”