Debate on the Address
Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Lindsay Hoyle(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I do believe that the previous incumbent of the Chair suggested 15 minutes.
Dame Cheryl Gillan
Thank you so much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have taken rather a lot of interventions.
Dame Cheryl Gillan
In a similar vein, I would like to see regulation and transparency enhanced around companies such as 38 Degrees, which insert themselves between MPs and their constituents, gather data and raise funds for lobbying outwith the rules that govern political parties and yet, in effect, they are acting as an adjunct to political movements with no oversight or accountability.
There are many things to welcome in this Queen’s Speech, particularly on the law and order front. We need to halt this tide of knife crime and the scourge of county lines, both of which have affected my constituency, and we must give our police forces the resources to provide the safety and security that our citizens need to lead peaceful and successful lives.
I should like to finish by mentioning one provision that has delighted me—I am delighted that it has come to prominence—and that is the ambitious national space plan. My husband, Jack Leeming, during his lifelong career as a civil servant, was finally appointed director general of the British National Space Centre, then attached to the Department for Trade and Industry. He had a vision for the role of space in telecommunications, earth observation and remote sensing and was a huge supporter of our space industries and scientific endeavours. He was passionate about the possibilities of space, and my only sadness is that he died earlier this year and did not live to see a Conservative Prime Minister appreciating the opportunities that this sector affords.
This Prime Minister now has many, many challenges. There is no doubt that there is an overwhelming desire to get Brexit done and to reduce the bandwidth that is occupying Government, which, in turn, is impeding the progress that we can make on things that matter to people and have now been covered in the Gracious Speech—health, education, local government and new opportunities for our service and manufacturing industries. I hope that by the end of the week we will have not just a pathway to delivering our exit from the EU, but a firm grip on the destination.
Petitions
Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Lindsay Hoyle
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
I can help with that: no, in both cases. As there is more than half an hour for the debate, it is open for other Members to speak—obviously as long as their speech is relevant.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I am sure that Dame Cheryl is going to ask a very similar question.
Dame Cheryl Gillan
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Mine is an entirely separate point of order. It is based on rumour and press comment recently. It will not have escaped your notice, Mr Deputy Speaker, that, over the past 10 years, on many occasions in this Chamber, I have had the privilege of raising points about HS2, which is a railway project that goes through the middle of my constituency. Over the period of 10 years, I have been saying that the cost of this project will rise dramatically. The press has reported that Mr Cook, the acting chairman, has possibly written to the permanent secretary in the Department for Transport to raise the £30 billion—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
No, no, you cannot—I am on my feet. First, I understand that the Minister is now here, and we can carry on. There is no need to make spurious points of order. I am well aware of HS2. As you well know, as a member of the Panel of Chairs, points of order are meant to be short and succinct. I think that we can both agree that that was not. I think we have finished.
Autism
Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Lindsay Hoyle(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Dame Cheryl Gillan
My hon. Friend gives me a good opportunity to say to all those people who email me and contact me on social media that I cannot deal with all the questions and issues that come into my inbox, but I encourage those people to contact their MPs directly, because it is their own MPs who can help them—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. This is a very important debate. I put a seven-minute limit on speeches to try to give everybody a chance to speak. Given the interventions, I will have to drop the limit for Members lower down the list. I do not think it is fair. Interventions have to be short, and Members should think about whether they need to intervene—especially when they are summing up at the end.
The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government
Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Lindsay Hoyle(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on her speech, with which everybody in the House will agree. I hope she will be encouraged by a statement put out at last week’s plenary session of the Council of Europe by the Political Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, condemning the action and calling on all 47 Council of Europe member states to help with the humanitarian relief effort and to support Burma and Bangladesh. It shows that concern goes much wider than this House and that there is a huge international effort going on.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I remind the House that we need short interventions if everyone is to have a fair chance to speak in this important debate.
High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill
Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Lindsay Hoyle(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Is not the hon. Gentleman rather ignoring the fact that most Members are not affected by this project, so they show very little interest in it at all? If MPs’ constituencies are affected by the project, Members are of course passionately engaged. In fact, that consensus has really gone by default.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Let me say that our time should be devoted to the amendments, and I am bothered that we might stray into other areas that should not be debated. I have allowed a little latitude, but I do not want us to open up into a general debate. Let us keep to the amendments.
Mrs Gillan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and this is what has worried me about this project: it has been a David and Goliath project, and Goliath has won. It has crushed the spirit of so many people, and it is going to affect people who do not yet know how they are going to be affected. I worry for the years of disruption that will come, as I will discuss later.
Amendment 7 will improve the reporting on vocational qualifications, but when it comes to personnel—this is an amendment about personnel—a project such as this should have had continuity and strong leadership. Far from that, there have been three Prime Ministers, five Secretaries of State, four permanent secretaries and three chief executives over the past six years. Young people joining this project to obtain the vocational qualifications that amendment 7 reflects will want assurances that the personnel and training functions are being run by reputable contractors and a reputable organisation.
Questions are being asked about the relationships between the Department, HS2 and contractors such as CH2M. CH2M has already been paid hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in connection with this project and its director has been placed in temporary charge since the very highly paid Simon Kirby departed to Rolls-Royce. It has had so-called Chinese walls during the latest bidding process and now another director of the same company has been appointed as the new permanent CEO on less money than the departing CEO.
We read reports in the Financial Times this morning that the losing bidders on phase two are considering legal action because CH2M could well have been party to information from the CH2M professionals embedded in HS2 on phase one. I ask the Minister to clarify this: he needs to give assurances, or else the pall of suspicion will continue to hang over the top personnel of this project and will affect those young people referred to in amendment 7, whose vocational qualifications are going to be reported on.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The right hon. Lady knows very well that she is stretching not the patience of the Chair, but the terms of the debate in order to allow it to continue. We have to concentrate on the amendments, so we do not want to get into salaries and comparisons in that regard. I am therefore sure the right hon. Lady is coming straight back on to the amendments before us.
Mrs Gillan
I take your admonition, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am trying to use these amendments to make the points that my constituents would expect to be made in the House. They do not understand that we have to try to stick exactly to the final letter, but I do understand that, so I shall attempt to stay in order and not try the patience of the Chair too much.
Lords amendment 11 updates references to environmental regulations, but I am afraid that HS2 continues to be environmentally unsound. The promoters of the project will never be forgiven for the violation of a nationally protected area of outstanding natural beauty, when the technology and capability exist to have tunnelled the whole of that protected area. In fact, the line emerges now from a tunnel near the railway’s highest point.
The derision with which campaigners have been treated is no better reflected than in the words of Lord Snape during the Lords debate. He said that what extra protection was achieved in the Chilterns through tunnelling was
“as a result of demands, including semi-hysterical demands from a then member of the Cabinet, which in the view of many of us who have taken an interest in the project has added unnecessarily to the cost and makes travelling by train less pleasant.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 January 2017; Vol. 777, c. 84.]
High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill
Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Lindsay Hoyle(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker
As you know, it is a matter for the Government how they timetable the business. As you rightly say, you have a view that you wish to express. Unfortunately, we are not in charge of the business. I am sure that everybody who reads Hansard will realise that you have raised this on the Floor of the House, even though it is not a point of order for the Chair.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have raised the issue of the procedures on the hybrid Bill process with the Procedure Committee, but because it is a private process it may be difficult for the Committee to look at those. I very much hope that the Government are going to re-examine the hybrid Bill process, and that view has been echoed in the words of many of my friends, particularly those who have served on the HS2 Bill Committee.
The process is not satisfactory from the perspective of either the House or the people most affected by the project. I very much hope that this will not take too long and you could advise me whether the House eventually could change those procedures, so that large infrastructure projects are not dealt with in such an opaque and difficult manner.
Mr Deputy Speaker
The House can invite the Procedure Committee to look into this matter, as you well know. And you know better than I do how the procedure of this House works, after so many years in this place.
European Union Referendum Bill
Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Lindsay Hoyle(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Hoyle)
Order. We cannot have two people on their feet at the same time. If the right hon. Lady does not want to give way, the right hon. Gentleman will just have to wait a little longer.
High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill
Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Lindsay Hoyle(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Sheerman
The Secretary of State has commented following my intervention. I have talked to people in the big cities, and many of them have not read the six critical evaluations of the impact of HS2, and they certainly have not looked at the impact of high-speed rail on the provincial cities in France. It is sucking the lifeblood out of them and into the metropolitan area around Paris. We have also not been told on what grounds the local people here, who have not been given a referendum—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Gentleman should know better. This is his second or third intervention. Let us try to keep the debate calm and orderly, with short interventions.