Speeches by Tugendhat.

“I am grateful to be called. I welcome the Minister to her place. It is a great job—I enjoyed it, and I have no doubt that she will, too. Though she may have shorter fingernails at the end of the day than she started with, it is worth it for the opportunity to serve with some of the finest people in our Government. The …”

“The real reason for the rise in the steel problem is the energy price—the input price. Has the Minister had any challenging conversations with his colleague the Secretary of State, and will he consider exemptions for the defence industry as well? As he knows, the new Defence Secretary is now trying to balance a very di…”

“The hon. Member is making an extremely powerful speech—I do not find a word I disagree with—and I am very grateful to him for making it. However, this again shows why it would have been rather helpful to have a bit longer on this, because a small amendment around the use of slogans or the wearing of varieties of design…”

“No one, I think, respects Jonathan Hall more than we do. He has done an exceptional job for this country in many different ways. He is a man of the highest integrity and the greatest intellect, and we are very lucky to have him. Given that it seems unlikely that the Home Secretary or the Minister will accept amendments…”

“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a real concern, particularly given what is going on in the Persian gulf at the moment, that when the Iranian Government were last given access to vast amounts of cash about 10 years ago, they used that money to murder Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis and, in fact, anybody else they c…”

“My right hon. Friend, demonstrating why he leads the list of Security Ministers past and present, pre-empts me; I was coming to China. Here I declare various interests. I am a patron of United Against Nuclear Iran, an organisation that campaigns, just as the Government do, and as everybody does, against Iran having nuc…”

“The right hon. Lady has already spoken powerfully about attacks on politicians, and the Prime Minister’s home was recently attacked. One point she has not raised, but hopefully will come to, is the nature of the media engagement that follows attacks. Lies and distortions have been used to suggest all number of differen…”

“The internet outage in Iran knocked out a large percentage—5% or 10%, depending on who we believe—of Scottish separatist sites on social media. Do we genuinely believe that Iran is the only country seeking to weaponise social media? On one account, for example, someone claimed to be a nurse from Glasgow, but was fluent…”

“I assure you that will not be a problem, Mr Twigg, despite my known verbosity. Sadly, the Minister has heard many of my points before. However, I am grateful that she is here, as whatever any of us have said about South East Water, the one thing that unites us is knowing that she is doing her absolute damnedest. She, t…”

“It is pretty extraordinary to see the partisan way in which the Minister has approached every single question. He has been completely incapable of giving this House, or indeed Mr Speaker, the assurance asked for on multiple occasions, and that only leads us to assume that he is hiding the untruth, which he wishes he di…”

“It is pretty extraordinary to see the partisan way in which the Minister has approached every single question. He has been completely incapable of giving this House, or indeed Mr Speaker, the assurance asked for on multiple occasions, and that only leads us to assume that he is hiding the untruth, which he wishes he di…”

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”

“And the councillors.”

“The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Helena Dollimore) asked a good question that the Minister touched on, but I want to press her further. Parts of Mereworth, Platt and Offham in my area were left not only without water, but without the support necessary for those who were most vulnerable, until two fantastic council…”

“I associate myself with the words of the Chair of the Defence Committee on the need to get to 3%. Given that we are one of only two countries in the European continent to run a nuclear programme, does the Secretary of State agree that, if we knock out the nuclear programme, we are actually spending more like 1.7% or 1.…”

“Does my right hon. Friend not agree that we are seeing not only young people let down, but the deeply immoral act of people being kept on welfare? In five or 10 years’ time, people will have been on welfare for so long that they will not have any options. They will effectively have been left slaves of a state that has …”

“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend—forgive me, I should not call him that; he will be embarrassed. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for his point about the steel industry. Understandably, he has chosen to support one particular aspect of the industry, the steelmaker, but at the expense of and to the cost of ev…”

“I am grateful to the Minister for his words; it seems that we rather agree. I agree with him that the problem with the defined-benefits system is that it is addressing—let us be frank—an ageing demographic. There is, however, a challenge: because of those changes and the influence that has had on defined benefits, ther…”

“Not yet.”

“I am grateful to the Minister, because this is actually becoming a debate in the Chamber, which is so rare. The Minister is absolutely right, but the reason why I link the two is that the nature of defined-benefit removing assets from UK equity markets has led to much slower growth in the UK stock exchange. That means …”