“Chapter 4A
Debate between Greg Smith and Caroline Nokes(1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
After 21 sittings in the Public Bill Committee, the Government are still tabling hundreds of amendments to the Bill. That highlights once again that their false political deadline of 100 days in which to publish the Bill was foolhardy. They should have taken better time.
This is a bad Bill. Although it contains many good and well-intentioned measures, the Government have failed to get the balance right between employees and employers. Although I welcome some of the Minister’s comments—not least on bereavement leave for pregnancy loss, on which we spoke at length and agreed in Committee—I am afraid that the Government have got the balance wrong in the vast majority of the Bill. The amendments in the names of right hon. and hon. Friends in His Majesty’s loyal Opposition seek to highlight how the Bill simply goes too far in too many regards: it will affect our economy, it will affect the number of people who have a job, and it will affect the willingness of employers—the wealth and job creators—to take on new staff, to grow, to put new product lines in place and to keep employing people.
Mrs Russell
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The shadow Minister is in danger of misleading the House. Nothing that he has referred to is a crime. Sexual harassment, as dealt with in this Bill, is a civil matter dealt with by tribunal.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. That was in fact a point of debate, rather than a point of order.
Greg Smith
I will get back to James Murray, the legal director of Doyle Clayton, who has pointed out that this clause could well cause difficulties for universities in offering those platforms to discuss issues where people have differing views. He said:
“If we think about a speaker that has been invited—say it’s a controversial gender critical speaker, like Julie Bindel or Kathleen Stock—someone might somewhat disingenuously say”
that they are an employee of the university and that they find what they say to be deeply harassing. He also said:
“The concern is that this will shift the balance away from free speech and universities will be more risk averse as they won’t want to be held liable for third-party harassment.”
Why do the Government want to run that risk?
There is then the burden on businesses, particularly in the hospitality sector.
Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower
Debate between Greg Smith and Caroline Nokes(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Greg Smith
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Certainly for heavier application vehicles, batteries just would not work. I saw a diagram at one of these companies that shows that if we were to try to make a 747 fly on batteries, the batteries would be bigger than the plane. Therefore, that is not a viable option going forward. Synthetic fuels are entirely man-made. There is no need to grow food to burn or recycle old chip fat, or for raw earth mineral mining for batteries; it is just clean synthetics. My ask to the Government, as they look to a clean energy future—that is the right ambition; where we disagree is on how we get there—is that they truly embrace synthetic fuels and make them mainstream. They need to be scaled, and in order to be scaled, manufacturers need confidence that the Government will permit that.
An important point to finish on is that the carbon at tailpipe when these fuels are burned is the same volume that is then recaptured to make the next lot of fuel. They are net zero. It is one volume of carbon in a perpetual circle. I congratulate the Minister on his appointment, and ask him to take the message back to the Department that we need to embrace synthetic fuels as part of the clean energy revolution that he claims at the Dispatch Box to want to see.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call Torcuil Crichton to make his maiden speech.