"I have listened carefully to what the shadow Secretary of State has said, and he has made some very reasonable points. I would like to ask him two questions. First, it seems that there is little movement, and we can blame a lot of different people, but at the end …..." Mike Penning - View Speech
"I do not quite understand the point the shadow Secretary of State is making. If a council is failing to deliver the services we would expect from it, the Government step in and deliver them, as we have seen in Northamptonshire. We have a situation in the Province where there …..." Mike Penning - View Speech
"It is clear that the hon. Gentleman does not want to talk about this issue, but it is vital, when we are talking about money that will go to schemes to develop the whole argument about victims, that we address the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for …..." Mike Penning - View Speech
"Can I, in all fairness, challenge the Minister on the way he congratulated the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) in relation to direct rule? If direct rule is not the answer today, when will it be and, if it is not the answer soon, why?..." Mike Penning - View Speech
"I say this with all due respect: I enjoyed the passionate speech of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). I may not have agreed with every word, but frankly I agreed with the vast majority, even though I am a passionate believer in devolution.
"Will the right hon. Gentleman give me two seconds? I am in a flow.
I have raised the issue with shadow Front Benchers and my own—I was a Northern Ireland Minister for a considerable period—because we have to address it. Perhaps I will come back to that point after the …..." Mike Penning - View Speech
"I cannot disagree with a single word that my right hon. Friend has said. This cannot continue; we cannot sit in a situation where there is no way of looking properly at how civil servants are spending taxpayers’ money. That is not the principle of this democracy, and it is …..." Mike Penning - View Speech
"I will expand more on this in my speech, but this is a critical point to do with the civil service. We can all criticise civil servants. There are good ones and bad ones. But, particularly in Northern Ireland—I experienced this when I was the Minister—the fear of judicial review …..." Mike Penning - View Speech
"As one of two former Northern Ireland Ministers on the Government Benches, let me say that I know how difficult the ministerial team has found it to get to this position with the Bill. The Bill is far from perfect, and it is very easy for us on the Government …..." Mike Penning - View Speech