Oral Answers to Questions

John Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend; he has campaigned very much on that issue. The Government of course have fulfilled their promise to introduce legislation on the matter, and, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has had productive meetings with representatives from victim and survivor groups. But the most powerful way to address this issue, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, will be if we can all work together to get the Stormont Executive back up and running to deal with the matter themselves.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

There will never be, because there could never be, a more eloquent and articulate Speaker than you, Mr Speaker; we will miss your style and your remarkable, encyclopaedic grasp of detail—and I will miss the literary references by the way, Mr Speaker.

Marcel Proust said the only—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I want to hear about Proust.

[Sir John Hayes]

Marcel Proust said:

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes”.

Hard-working British patriots who voted to leave the European Union with fresh eyes have in their sights the bourgeois liberal elite who are trying to steal Brexit from them. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, as he is broadcast on the wireless and elsewhere and actually meets people in real life too in the coming days and weeks, simply evangelise this plain and straightforward message: back Brexit, back Britain, back Boris?

[The Prime Minister]

There is only one way to take this country forward, and that is to get Brexit done. My right hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for people in his constituency and across the country, and if our Government are returned, as I hope we will be—and I will work very hard to ensure that we are—the people of this country will be seeing record investment in their NHS, they will be seeing improvements in their wages through the biggest expansion of the living wage in memory, and they will be seeing reductions in the cost of living, because it is one nation Conservative policies that can be relied on to take this country forward—and the Labour party would take us backwards.