Speeches by Russell.

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”

“I certainly agree. We are pleased that the Treasury has initiated a review into the Green Book and we believe it is an opportunity to once and for all address a range of key issues that have undermined successive Governments’ attempts to rebalance our regional economies. We must grasp this opportunity. We believe that …”

“I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate. I absolutely accept that, underlyingly, we need a framework for evaluating projects. I am immensely looking forward to the 10-year infrastructure strategy, which is a real opportunity for the Government to grasp and fundamentally change how we are investing in the nor…”

“Will the hon. Member give way?”

“I beg to move, That this House has considered the Green Book review. It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank all hon. Members who have come today to talk about the Green Book. Our constituents all know that something is very clearly not right and has not been right for a very, very long tim…”

“As I understand it, the whistleblowing provisions in the Employment Rights Bill will let people go to the police or a regulator, but they do not automatically mean that they can go to the media, although they might be able to in some circumstances. If the Minister does not mind my saying so, what he has described is po…”

“There is a defence to that form of discrimination, which is where an employer has taken all reasonable steps to prevent it—and I speak only of reasonable steps, not every single magical thing that could be thought of. In fact, there was a case just last week in the Employment Appeal Tribunal in which an employer did su…”

“rose—”

“On that point, will the hon. Member join me in encouraging the Government to bring into force clause 24 of the new Employment Rights Bill as soon as is humanly possible? It will enable the Government to make provision in respect of dismissals relating to pregnancy other than those covered by redundancy. That was a huge…”

“Typically, the agreement’s wording will contain an exemption for whistleblowing—the Solicitors Regulation Authority says it must—so the chances are that the hon. Gentleman’s constituent can actually talk to him about the details, and he can refer to it under parliamentary privilege. However, most people do not fully un…”

“That culture is totally everywhere—across sectors. There is no specific sector where if we just sorted it out, the others would be all right. There is also the phenomenon of organisations that say publicly that they do not use NDAs, but I have seen their settlement agreements and can tell Members that they absolutely d…”

“Members who have heard me speak on these issues before—I do so a lot—know that I am a solicitor specialising in employment law. I am not currently practising, but I spent 13 years doing employment and particularly discrimination law work. A small amount of it was for small employers, but predominantly it was for employ…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for drawing that to my attention; I am very interested to hear about it. I am pleased to report that the overwhelming majority of takeaways in my constituency remain physical premises that also operate as restaurants, but I am aware that that is not necessarily the case in the whole of my local a…”

“Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to extend the time limit for challenging “reasonable grounds” decisions? That limit has been reduced to 30 days, which is not long enough to get help from a legal aid lawyer, given the lack of legal aid funding.”

“I thank the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) for securing the debate; I know she is a great champion for these issues. The Global Slavery Index estimates that 122,000 people are living in conditions of slavery in the UK, and over 19,000 victims were referred to the national referral me…”

“In terms of the ability to do those things, the many years of cuts to local authority budgets—amounting to about 30% of local authority budgets over the last 14 years—are highly relevant. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is also a question here about directors’ duties? If those organisations go insolvent, no ma…”

“I want to talk about some of the new build housing in my constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper)—a very able colleague—and I have had difficulties with the same set of developers, so I will hand over to him to talk about the difficulties we have had with the housing in Spen View and Ast…”

“I understand that in that announcement there was £180 million for Cheshire East council, but council leaders were told it would be weighted towards the back end of the seven years. They feel strongly that it was made-up money that was always predicated on borrowing, and that there was never any real intention to give t…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. In my constituency, we have had a large amount of housing growth in the last few years, and we expect to have much more. My constituents are not nimbys; they absolutely recognise that it is a huge problem that young people cannot afford to leave home in ou…”

“I have seen instances like that within my own social circle. It is not unusual and a lot of the people involved appear to be people who would have engaged with the bank. I know banks have some safeguards around this sort of thing now, but they are inadequate and people are often left in terrible financial situations. I…”