Speeches by Hoare.

“That would be helpful to see what the balance is.”

“Do you have a split for what the value is of trade from north to south?”

“My right hon. Friend is right, but if this motion is passed unamended this afternoon, all those papers will be available either to this place or to the ISC, and then we will know. We are all aware of these sorts of things. Somebody will set a hare running at some point and we will say that we think this, that and the o…”

“The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee is right in that respect. I will just quote from a letter from the Cabinet Secretary to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which I chair: “Due diligence is generally carried out by the appointing minister’s department (in this case it was carrie…”

“What is your view on how Northern Irish businesses can better leverage their position on the island of Ireland to support growth? I am thinking particularly, but not exclusively, about the access to two very distinct and lucrative markets.”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. My point relates to the point of order from the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas), which he did not quite finish. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) has in the published register of interests significant monthly payments from X Corp, headquartered in Ca…”

“For clarity, can I check whether those rather encouraging figures of north-south, or inter-island, trade were for specifically the value of the trade from north to south, and not two-way figures?”

“I am grateful to the Minister—he knows that the House knows that he is an honourable gentleman in every sense of that term. The mood of the House is clear, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) has set out, as have others, the role of the ISC, and the expectation…”

“Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?”

“Good morning. Could you set out for the Committee—bullet-point form might be helpful, for clarity—the challenges and opportunities as you see them that the all-island economy presents for those doing business or looking to do business in Northern Ireland?”

“Maybe not in this light. Touché, Minister—damn, my secret is out! It all went very well, you will be delighted to hear, and it was long-term rather than just transactional—with my surname, I have to be careful about that. Do you see part of your role as being the Minister of HMG? I do not mean that in an actual sense. …”

“On the point about granular knowledge, when the Committee undertook a trip to the States as part of this inquiry, we were very struck by the importance of having a mayor—a pinnacle, local point of contact—and, in relation to the semiconductor sector, our attention was drawn to the fact that a much faster and more knowl…”

“And the Hinduja passport, yes. Where I disagree with the Minister is in conflating the updating of the disciplinary procedures of the other place and the bringing forward of legislation—which is allowed—to remove Mandelson’s peerage. I am absolutely certain that, were the Government to bring forward a Bill, which need …”

“The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is right to say that the other place must modernise its disciplinary procedures, but that kicks the Mandelson can down the road. This is not the first time this modern-day Icarus has flown a little too close to the sun, usually over money; we all remember the Geoffrey Robinson m…”

“Minister, you are new to post from a heritage of business rather than politics, so I wanted to ask you a first-base type of question. We know that the world is a highly competitive place for investment, and that lots of emerging countries are looking for inward investment and so on. We have city mayors, the Senedd, the…”

“Is that a regular programme to make sure that the Welsh Government are carrying out the strategy?”

“When was the last time you had a conversation with the First Minister?”

“Picking up on Mr Tufnell’s point, there is a chicken-and-egg problem there. You go out and talk to people who say, “Yes, we’d love to come to the UK.” Then a basic table stake is power, water, qualified and enthusiastic staff and so on. Then you fall at a basic hurdle because there is not enough stuff on the grid to po…”

“If I could just finish with the Minister, I would encourage him. The civil service, Whitehall and everything else have a wonderful way of getting their claws into people from business and moulding them into the perfect Whitehall creature. In fact, however, having that entrepreneurial—I do not use this in a rude sense—b…”

“My final question follows on from the strategy—[Interruption.]”