Desmond Swayne MP: speeches

Speeches

• 21 Jan 2025 · Servicing Government Debt · Hansard source

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  The Chancellor’s increased demand for Government borrowing drives up its price and crowds out investment by productive private enterprises, doesn’t it? [Hon. Members: “No.”]

• 21 Jan 2025 · Servicing Government Debt · Hansard source

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  17. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of the autumn Budget 2024 on levels of debt interest spending.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Community Engagement Principles and Extremism Definition · Hansard source

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  When a crime has the attributes of a terrorist outrage, but the police, in their engagement with the community, proactively announce that it is not initially being treated as such, is that not bound to give rise to public suspicion that the truth is being covered up?

• 16 Jan 2025 · Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme · Hansard source

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  The scheme was designed to address a perverse incentive in the VAT rules that favoured demolition and rebuild at a time when we were unable to change those rules. Post Brexit, we can now do so. Will the Church Commissioners draw that to the attention of those on the Treasury Bench?

• 14 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T2. Why are the Government acting with such dispatch to secure the agreement with Mauritius? What is the rush?

• 13 Jan 2025 · Children’s Social Media Accounts · Hansard source

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  No; all remarks are addressed to the Chair.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Children’s Social Media Accounts · Hansard source

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  Do, but do it to the Chair.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Children’s Social Media Accounts · Hansard source

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  Order.

• 7 Jan 2025 · Northern Gaza · Hansard source

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  The Minister must be aware that there are hon. Members on both sides of the House who were equally as frustrated with the form of the previous Administration as they are with this one. He says that he has brought pressure to bear on the Israeli authorities. When that pressure manifestly fails to deliver, is there a plan?

• 7 Jan 2025 · Pro-democracy Campaigners: Arrests · Hansard source

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  The Chinese Government respect one thing: strength. So long as they continue to perceive that we are cringing, they will treat us with the contempt they believe we deserve, so how many Hong Kong officials have we sanctioned?

• 7 Jan 2025 · Counsellors and Psychotherapists · Hansard source

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  11. Whether his Department plans to improve integration of counsellors and psychotherapists into the mental health workforce.

• 7 Jan 2025 · Counsellors and Psychotherapists · Hansard source

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  Is there a plan to maintain service provision where psychotherapists and counsellors operating in the charity sector have been hit by eye-watering cost increases as a consequence of the national insurance increase?

• 16 Dec 2024 · English Devolution · Hansard source

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  What say will voters in the New Forest have if there are proposals to remove either their district council or their county council?

• 16 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T3. Why did the Office for Budget Responsibility estimate that the Budget would cost 50,000 jobs?

• 3 Dec 2024 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 3 Dec 2024 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 3 Dec 2024 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  The manifesto said that Labour would not increase rates of national insurance contributions. The Minister is perfectly entitled to use the argument, “We never realised that it was this bad, so we have had to change what we said we would do”, but to pretend that Labour has not resiled on its manifesto promise is pure sophistry.

• 2 Dec 2024 · Migration and Border Security · Hansard source

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  What deterrent will the Home Secretary implement for those asylum claimants who have destroyed their papers and purport to come from regimes to which they cannot possibly be returned?

• 2 Dec 2024 · Chagos Islands: UK-US Defence Relationship · Hansard source

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  What is it in particular that the new regime in Mauritius have doubts about? It is that they want more money, isn’t it?

• 2 Dec 2024 · Bangladesh: Attacks on Hindu Community · Hansard source

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  Clearly, it would have been expedient to have had a special envoy for religious freedom in place; it is all very well for the Minister to say that such an appointment is under ministerial consideration. What is the problem? Do the Government not have anyone committed enough or talented enough to do it?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  May I prophesy too?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  To be fair to the Prime Minister, he made it absolutely clear that things would have to get worse. The difficulty is—this is my prophecy, if you like—that there is no prospect of them getting better thereafter.

• 26 Nov 2024 · “Get Britain Working” White Paper · Hansard source

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  To ensure that “if you can work, you must work”, will the Secretary of State familiarise herself with the works of Jeremy Bentham?

• 26 Nov 2024 · Tobacco and Vapes Bill · Hansard source

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  Can the Secretary of State imagine the plight of a shop assistant, some decades hence, when a middle-aged or elderly person presents themselves seeking to buy a packet of cigarettes? Is that shop assistant really expected to demand their bone fides?

• 20 Nov 2024 · Defence Programmes Developments · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State presented the savings as no-brainers—the ships were damaged and obsolete—but in his closing remarks he told us that these would not be the last difficult decisions. He simply cannot have it both ways. It is all about the messaging in the end. What message will be received from this statement in Buenos Aires, Moscow, Peking and Tehran?