"I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and all the all-party parliamentary groups that are responsible for securing this debate today. What a great warrior my right hon. Friend has been on …..." Pat McFadden - View Speech
"Thank you for your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for proposing the debate and to the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and the APPG on fair business banking for their work on the issue.
"There is a potential tension here between competition and safety. The rules were brought in to insulate the taxpayer, but, at the same time, the Bank of England, the Treasury and the Government—everybody—subscribe to the idea of more competition in the UK banking sector, so I believe this discussion will …..." Pat McFadden - View Speech
"It is a pleasure to respond to today’s debate on behalf of the Opposition. Although the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is not in his place, I begin by congratulating him on becoming a father for the first time. He would not tell us his age, …..." Pat McFadden - View Speech
"If the hon. Member reads the OBR report, he will find that it says very clearly that the effect of the pandemic is smaller in the long run than the effect of the low growth over which his party has presided for more than a decade.
"That is precisely the point I am making. The long-term growth trend makes a huge difference to the Government’s choices and their power to fund public services.
In the face of that, what was remarkable about yesterday’s Budget was the total absence of any plan for economic growth, and nowhere …..." Pat McFadden - View Speech
"It is a pleasure to respond to this debate, and I thank all hon. and right hon. Members for the contributions they have made. I may not be able to mention them all.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) talked about the challenges small businesses face. …..." Pat McFadden - View Speech
"I am happy to talk about our proposals and the hint we got on what the eventual outcome might be.
We tabled this proposal because we want to support Britain’s businesses as they try to recover from the pandemic. Many physical retailers could not trade at all during the pandemic. …..." Pat McFadden - View Speech
"I cannot; I have to watch the clock. We put forward a plan both for the short term and the long term, but this is not just about business rates, is it? This is about the broader relationship between politics and business. The Opposition want a partnership with business to …..." Pat McFadden - View Speech
"I will not. And the Conservative party willingly gave that up by putting ideology in its place. When the Prime Minister said “f*** business”, some of us thought it was a quip. We did not expect to see it followed through by briefings on and off the record that business …..." Pat McFadden - View Speech