Speeches by Aquarone.

“Thank you for all your contributions. I want to ask a magic wand question, but I will put some context around it. The magic wand question would be: how would you see resources allocated by Government or local councils to improve bus services? We have heard a lot about the problems or the negative impacts of poor servic…”

“Would you go as far as to say that investing in public transport could reduce the welfare bill?”

“You have already all implied that there is a correlation between transport, poverty and economic inequality. If you have any other comments on that, I would welcome them. I want to ask you specifically about your views on a subset of economic inequality, which is those who are jobseekers. How does a lack of reliable or…”

“I want to speak to amendment 3, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings), which deals specifically with coastal erosion. My constituency plays host to a whole load of energy infrastructure that is vital to our security and our renewable transition. We have the Bacton energy hub, whi…”

“And Bacton in North Norfolk, of course.”

“I think that makes a number of fundamental assumptions about where economic growth can and cannot happen, but I will leave it there.”

“Those are two very interesting but perhaps quite separate arguments. I have some sympathy with constraint as a way of reducing carbon emissions, but to go back to the furrow, if you like, of alternative or maybe quite radical or creative regional expansion, I don’t mean current airports. If you look at where capacity i…”

“Heathrow has a problem. The third runway feels a little like a solution looking for a problem in that regard. Do you think the Government have been honest in looking at the comparative benefits of, say, a third runway at Heathrow versus serious regional airport expansion, or even something specific? If we are talking a…”

“We are talking about the economic case for airport expansion, not the valid economic case for improving bus connectivity, which I totally agree with. Are you saying there is a lot we can do strategically with policy to grow the economy through airport expansion, or are you saying that we just have to service and enable…”

“I am enjoying the debate and feel regretful that I no longer have any disclosable interests in the creative industries. I am grateful to Members for sharing their powerful testimonies. I do have a couple of disclosable interests in relation to tech, and I want to address my comments to some of aspects of that. Over the…”

“I could not agree more. Some of the conclusions that are reached through the procurement of technology services by local councils defy sense and are utterly baffling. I am sure that all of us are guilty of that; I will not go any further than that—”

“All of us are guilty, I am sure, of being part of decisions that sometimes defy sense when it comes to usability. I can speak only on behalf of the citizens who contact me about having to go round in circles, sharing the same stories, digging out new and old reference numbers and wondering why nothing seems to want to …”

“The hon. Member makes an excellent point, for which I am grateful—I will address it in a moment, if I may. X-Road, described as the backbone of e-Estonia, is a secure data-exchange platform that allows smooth and seamless use of data between organisations. It carries out 2.2 billion transactions every year, and is esti…”

“This is absolutely not a pitch to be a member of the Bill Committee, but I would certainly be grateful for the opportunity to implement my views in the design and delivery of Britain’s very own Tiger Leap into the data-driven revolution. Estonia is a crystal-clear example proving that the results of such a transformati…”

“Absolutely. There are so many layers upon which data governance, data infrastructure and data practices must be established, and data retrievability is one of the things that sit between those layers and the application or interface that uses them.”

“I do not doubt that that was an enabling factor, but one reason why being citizen-focused works so well is that it is much easier to build trust and credibility bit by bit by telling people why doing something differently will be better for them. In that way, we do not end up in the horrendous situation of facing yet a…”

“Minister, I am glad you brought up those economic statistics, because that is very much the focus of today’s rather sudden inquiry into these announcements. What do you say to the argument that this is not really about considered economic growth? It is just a nice big construction project that is easy to get funded, an…”

“Yes.”

“Maybe it is chicken and egg, as the Chair referred to earlier. If we were strategically interested in airport expansion for the purposes of economic growth, surely we would not just start with the assumption that, because Heathrow has the greatest restrictions on demand, we should expand that before we even come to loo…”

“I accept what you are saying about the fact that the industry is controlled by private companies more or less, and there is very little perhaps that we can do to direct what they do. Does that not rather undermine the claim that this is a big economic growth opportunity that is within our strategic grasp?”