Speeches by Russell.

“No, I can see that.”

“I am Sarah Russell, the Member for Congleton in Cheshire. My interests are as declared on the register. I am a solicitor—I do have a practising certificate, but I am not currently practising—and a member of some trade unions.”

“You mentioned having cleared your diary, which is phenomenal. From what I initially saw, this job was first advertised in September, 12 months ago. I wondered what timescale you had been expecting the appointment to take. Obviously, you have cleared your diary, but we have not appointed you yet—although you are very im…”

“Ms Butts, you said that there was a £500,000 figure somewhere. Where does that—”

“Okay. At the moment, you are not aware of any specific budget at all. You do have three staff, though.”

“Has anything been said to indicate that there will be any capital budget, and anything beyond the three staff?”

“I understand that. Thank you very much; that was really helpful.”

“5. What steps she is taking to reduce the number of children in poverty in Congleton constituency.”

“I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I am very sad to report that there are no Changing Places toilets in my constituency on the website—not a single one. I believe that, actually, Congleton leisure centre does have a Changing Places toilet, and I believe that Ruby’s Fund also has a very extensive disabled-facilitate…”

“That is fantastic, but could the Minister please think about how we can address this issue for those of us with predominantly rural communities that have smaller towns that are unlikely to have very large buildings?”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He talks about children. There are children in my constituency who came here as very small children and have only ever been in the English education system. Their parents are deeply concerned about what will happen to them going forward, so it would be appropriate for us to lo…”

“I thank the hon. Lady—she is being very collegiate, as she always is. Does she agree that it is incredibly important in our beautiful Cheshire towns that our roads are maintained in good condition? I am thinking in particular of a stretch of road in Alsager, which is lovely and has a fantastic local café, but it is a m…”

“The Minister mentions forests. I want to congratulate Trees for Congleton, which has just planted its 30,000th tree in Congleton. It set out a few years ago to plant one tree for every citizen in the town, and it has achieved that. I think that is quite remarkable.”

“May I take a moment to mention Dobermann Rescue, based in my constituency, which also does fantastic work? I am sure my hon. Friend will join me in commending its work.”

“I thank the hon. Member for introducing this fantastic Bill, which does important things for animal welfare. Sadly, my constituency has a problem with dog-on-dog attacks, which are truly distressing to their owners. The overwhelming majority of dog owners in my constituency are incredibly responsible and keep their dog…”

“I thank the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) for bringing forward this Bill, which is immensely popular with local farmers. I have met with the NFU and its membership repeatedly over months, if not most of the last year, and it is always one of the first things they mention to me. I commend…”

“My constituency has a fantastic group of volunteers and sponsors for Congleton Pride, but they have had to show extraordinary resilience after multiple attacks on their banners for Pride month and our major Pride event. I know that the Leader of the House will want to thank all the volunteers and sponsors who have prov…”

“I thank the Secretary of State for the 10-year plan. Moving quickly on the dentistry contract is extremely important to my constituents, but I want to raise the fact that, at the moment, parents in my constituency are frightened. They are frightened about how long it takes them to get diagnoses for their children, part…”

“I need to apologise to the shadow Minister—I was inaccurate on that last point, so I just want to correct the record.”

“My recollection of the development of the law during that time is that the cap on unfair dismissal awards applied to whistleblowing, which made it much more difficult for me to get adequate compensation for my clients, particularly if they were high earners in the financial services sector.”