Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Macleod Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

For future reference, Mr MacNeil, you should not be yapping at the Prime Minister like an overexcited puppy dog. It is unseemly. You can do a lot better if you try.

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

Q6. Small businesses and traders are the lifeblood of our economy, with 14 million people employed in them. In Brentford and Isleworth, 825 new businesses have been set up in the past two years. In preparation for small business Saturday on 7 December, will my right hon. Friend join me in urging businesses to become business and enterprise champions in all our secondary schools to foster and inspire another generation of entrepreneurs?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, first of all, about the new businesses setting up in Britain. We have 400,000 more businesses than three years ago. The point she makes about encouraging businesses into schools to inspire young people about enterprise, about small business, and about what that can involve is really, really important. I would urge all MPs to make the most of small business Saturday, but also, in the visits that they make to primary and secondary schools, to push the case for good business access and good business discussions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Macleod Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The whole point of trying to get private capital and management involved in Royal Mail is to make the service better, and to ensure that it can go on doing all the things that we want it to do. Opposition Members—including the Leader of the Opposition—shake their heads, but the fact is that they were going to present plans in the last Parliament, because even they realised that this needs to be done.

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

Will the Prime Minister join me in paying tribute to the service of the Gurkhas and, especially, to my Chiswick constituent, Havildar Lachhiman Gurung, who died on 12 December aged 92? He won the Victoria cross while serving with the Gurkha Rifles in Burma in 1945, where he demonstrated

“outstanding gallantry and extreme devotion to duty, in the face of almost overwhelming odds”.

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the Gurkhas both past and present. Anyone who goes to Afghanistan and sees how many Gurkhas there are not just in the Gurkha Rifles but in some of the logistic regiments, serving our country extremely well, will know that we owe them the greatest debt of gratitude, and we must always make sure that it is paid in full.