(5 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberOrder. To accommodate all Members wishing to speak, after the next speech I will reduce the time limit to four minutes.
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberOrder. Just for guidance, may I say that if colleagues can stick to about seven minutes each, we will get everyone in? The Minister has yet to speak.
I am pleased that the Bill has made progress in Committee, building on the Government’s proactive work. As I have said before, I am pleased not only because of my interest in this area—that was why I founded the all-party group on endangered species with Members on both sides of the House—but because, like Opposition Members, many Conservative Members were elected on a manifesto promise to tackle the international wildlife trade and to press for a total ban on ivory sales. That was in the first manifesto I stood on. It is a manifesto promise I intend to keep, and I wish to highlight the last point in that specific wording. While the Minister is to be commended for bringing forward this much-needed Bill, in an unrelentingly positive manner, to protect these strong, smart, gentle endangered animals from murder—that is what it is: some 20,000 elephants are murdered each year for their ivory—we must protect many, many more species.
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberOrder. Just a gentle reminder that if we stick to 10 minutes each, I will not have to impose a time limit. There is another debate to follow this one.
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberI beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 2—Requirement to provide specified facilities at Stanground Lock and Salters Lode Lock.
New clause 3—Requirement to provide specified facilities in March.
New clause 4—Requirement to provide specified facilities and moorings.
New clause 5—Removal of power to charge before specified facilities and moorings provided.
Amendments 1 to 26.
The background to new clause 1 is the principle of quid pro quo, because the petitioners are concerned that new charges and obligations are being brought in without their getting anything in return. Before I expand on that, I should say that all the new clauses and amendments are grouped as one, so we are effectively discussing the Bill as a whole. I think that every part of the Bill is included in one or other of the amendments.
(6 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberOrder. Because there have been a number of interventions, I will have to reduce the time limit to four minutes after the next speaker, Ronnie Cowan.
(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberNo—I am not giving way anymore.
Finally, on jobs, I want to make this point. The Government believe that any commercial undertaking that leases parts of our forests for commercial purposes will want to increase commercial and economic activity. That is the best way to encourage job creation. People will not take forests on just to shut the gate—they would be unable to do so even if they wanted to—and leave it there; they will want to run that area as a commercial, job-creating business.
This debate was based on Opposition claims that range, frankly, from the spurious to the absurd. Not only do the Government not intend, as the Opposition motion suggests, to sell 100% of the forest estate; we could not do so, because we do not even own 58,000 hectares of it. The actual figures are in the document.
The Secretary of State and I have repeatedly stressed—
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Question put accordingly, (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.