Eric Joyce: To ask the Minister for the Olympics what criteria will be used to judge the success of the London 2012 Paralympics.
Eric Joyce: Can my right hon. Friend estimate the cost of a referendum?
Eric Joyce: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what reports he has received on the suspension of the BBC Kinyarwanda service for Rwanda; and if he will make a statement.
Eric Joyce: Last week, I read a test that those who want to live in the UK and take UK citizenship have to pass. At a meeting of my constituency Labour party, we discussed whether we could answer the questions ourselves. I bought a little book with all the questions from the Portcullis House bookshop. Actually, some of them are not that easy; some are quite tricky. One of the questions asks about the...
Eric Joyce: I am, too; I am sure that that has not been missed. The answer was that Members of Parliament meet their constituents and raise issues in Parliament. There were also a few other subsidiary points about the things that Members of Parliament do. However, the book did not say that we legislate; it mentions nothing about legislation, which strikes me as the oddest thing. I have been here for...
Eric Joyce: My hon. Friend says that I do not have to use it—
Eric Joyce: I note what both of my hon. Friends on the Front Bench are saying, and it is not necessarily the same thing. What I was banging on about was this: in this place, one can do a lot as a Back Bencher, looking at legislation and picking things up instinctively. If something seems as if it is not right, quite often it is not. Often that is just the way it is; we do not get perfect solutions to...
Eric Joyce: The hon. Gentleman may well be correct—I am sure that he is; he has been here longer than me—but if he is, I was not aware, because I do that all the time. All sorts of people are experts in their field, but if we cannot talk to them, we simply cannot get knowledge about a particular situation. If I wanted to know something obscure about traffic regulations or something like that, I...
Eric Joyce: My hon. Friend moved as though he was looking in a particular way, but from here I could see only his finely honed pectorals heaving, which I probably misinterpreted. In any case, in the example of MEPs that the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) mentioned, the corollary of us speaking to local government officials may be MEPs talking to sovereign Government...
Eric Joyce: Perhaps. Let me draw together the strands of that extensive description of HNCs and education in Scotland. There is tremendous scope, if we look carefully at legislation, to see little niggles here and there that we can tidy up. If we tidy them up, sometimes that will have significant effects on constituents. My phase 2 argument is that there seems to be a bit of a dysfunction in Scotland...
Eric Joyce: It is 10 years since the introduction of the minimum wage in the UK. It is not in the history syllabus yet, as far as I am aware, but I recollect that not everybody in this place agreed with it. Will the Prime Minister join me in celebrating something that has helped millions of British working people?
Eric Joyce: When it comes to mobilising enormous resources and making huge interventions that have the power to change the world, nothing compares with the power of government. This week's G20, led by our Prime Minister, will seek to do exactly that, following on from the Gleneagles summit and other major initiatives. Of course, Governments lead by consent and, in general, they must reflect the...
Eric Joyce: Well, in due course. My hon. Friend will know that 2 miles in the Congo can be a long, long way. In a way, we did that classic thing that politicians do. Arriving on the scene in lovely long-wheelbase Land Rovers, we had the potential to change the situation, but we had to make a judgment. In due course we made the judgment that other people in our circumstances would have made, which was...
Eric Joyce: In following on from the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), I am being a bit opportunistic because I just want to make a quick point that I had hoped to make in an intervention. For a short period between a previous job and coming to this place, I worked for the Commission for Racial Equality. Part of my job involved funding race equality...
Eric Joyce: May I draw my hon. Friend's attention to early-day motion 810, which refers to the sad death of Dr. Alison Des Forges? Dr. Des Forges met a number of hon. Members the day before she was killed a couple of weeks ago. She was unquestionably one of the world's leading authorities on the great lakes region. Will my hon. Friend join me and the House in sending her condolences to Dr. Des Forges's...
Eric Joyce: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform when the Secretary of State next plans to meet representatives of the security industry to discuss levels of competition in the sector.
Eric Joyce: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is sometimes surprising how little the vastly oil-wealthy middle eastern states give in that respect?
Eric Joyce: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the publication of the "New Opportunities" White Paper. Does he agree—I have an instinct on this one—that although social mobility is of course a matter of social justice, it is also a matter of simple economic common sense?
Eric Joyce: I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) for making a short speech and giving me the chance to contribute for a few minutes. I simply wish to say a few words about UN resolution 1843 on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to which the UK Government signed up one month ago. It resolves to increase the size of the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo...
Eric Joyce: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
