Speeches by Hoare.

“I appreciate the need to sustain it, but, in your assessment, is it sufficient?”

“Yes, I take your point.”

“Chief Constable, Sir George Hamilton described the allocation of additional security funding when he gave evidence to us as being both “untidy” and “disjointed”. It requires regular business cases being made back to Treasury to ensure funding is continued. The Committee would be interested to hear about your experience…”

“Yes, please.”

“As a former elections policy Minister and member of the defending democracy taskforce, may I thank the Secretary of State for launching this inquiry? I also thank Philip Rycroft for his work; it was a pleasure to give evidence to him during that process. I welcome the spirit in which the Secretary of State has brought …”

“Just in the interests of time, I just want to explore this point. Has there been a time when an application for ASF has been made and 100% of the request has not been awarded? You may need to write to us on this.”

“Are you able to tell us what sort of timeframe that has been going on for?”

“Is that a no?”

“The £474,000 awarded to Dorset council last week as part of the Chancellor’s announcement is welcome, but I must tell her that it really will not touch the sides; more will need to be done to support rural communities. Unwillingly and unwittingly, the Government will be profiteering through a massive hike in VAT and du…”

“Of course—it gives me an extra minute.”

“You could go to Birmingham, Cardiff, Wolverhampton or Coventry. You could go to a whole variety of places to say, “These are the things you should be looking out for. These are the questions you should be asking. These are the signs.” You do not have to start from ground zero.”

“When I woke up this morning and sprang out of bed thinking about my upcoming 57th birthday, I was feeling quite young and sprightly, but having listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Kettering (Rosie Wrighting) I feel particularly ancient and amazed that I have managed to get to my feet to give this speech. The …”

“My right hon. Friend is right. It is important to relitigate this point: we froze fuel duty not merely because we could but because there was a reason so to do. It is why—I say this as a former Local Government Minister—we enhanced and protected and preserved the rural services delivery grant to reflect precisely the a…”

“I wanted to echo what Mr Swann was saying, but to pick up particularly on women from minority ethnic groups in Northern Ireland. There is not a long-standing tradition of their presence in Northern Ireland. It is relatively recent as a result of Syria and other things. As a predecessor Committee, we did quite a bit of …”

“As long as you keep eBay, I agree with you.”

“What I do accept is that the hon. Gentleman is swiftly gaining a reputation in this place as the only Labour Member who would defend a policy of the slaughter of the firstborn. He will defend anything. I seem to remember that he was one of the only Labour Members who stood up and defended Lord Mandelson’s appointment t…”

“I must be suffering from some sort of political amnesia, because I was absolutely convinced that it was a Labour Government that introduced tuition fees in the first place. Maybe the Minister will correct me.”

“I would probably suggest to my hon. Friend that a lie-down with a cold flannel in a darkened room might be a good idea for him if that is what he thinks they are doing. I think that they have broadly given up. Let us just make the point. I do not want to rub Government Members’ noses in it, but with the exception of th…”

“Mine is 440.”

“I am just about to give up and I will not get an extra minute. I like the hon. Gentleman very much and in ordinary circumstances I would, but I will not. We need some urgency on this matter, and I urge some cross-party working to make sure that all our constituents, whether urban or rural, and whether first, second, th…”