John Nicolson: I congratulate the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing the debate. Our hasty, chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has left the country in despair. Most in danger are women, minorities and, in particular, LGBT people. Often in this place, we consider decisions that we have made in the abstract, without dwelling on the consequences. Today, I would like to report the experiences...
John Nicolson: I would also like to welcome the Secretary of State to her place. I have been glancing at her oeuvre, and now is perhaps not the time to discuss the alarming dumbing down she once identified in the once highbrow artform of panto or, indeed, to ponder her long anti-gay rights voting record. Just as well there are no homosexuals in the arts sector. Instead, let us continue to focus on...
John Nicolson: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. I thank the hon. Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) for securing this debate. I begin by saying a huge thank you to farmers in my constituency. They put in tireless hours and are often very underpaid. Farmers are essential workers; they put food on our tables throughout the pandemic—they did not let us down. Yet, they are...
John Nicolson: Unlike the majority party in Northern Ireland, we opposed Brexit. We thought it was going to be a disaster, and we opposed the Brexit agreement. I know the Democratic Unionist party has suffered considerably electorally since the results of their folly in supporting Brexit have been gauged by the Northern Irish electorate. The UK-Australia trade agreement, when it was signed, was yet another...
John Nicolson: I will make some progress, if I may. The deal as a whole will deliver one 200th of the benefits of the EU over the next 15 years, and is worth only 0.01% of GDP. That causes two problems for farming. The first is the fact that Australian livestock farms will mean that farmers in the UK who operate on a much smaller scale will not be able to compete on price. On the price issue, in the UK we...
John Nicolson: I will pursue my point for a moment. Although the Prime Minister assured us that hormone-induced cattle will not come to the UK, we all remember he also promised at the last election not to increase taxes.
John Nicolson: Let us see. Many of the assurances we were given on Brexit have proved very different in reality. Climate pledges were secretly dropped from the deal. Paris agreement temperature goals never made it into the final deal after pressure from the Australian Government. For 0.01% of GDP and to get a post-Brexit win, global Britain ditched essential climate change goals in the lead-up to the most...
John Nicolson: I will pursue my point. I have already taken two interventions and there is a limit to how many I can take in a speech. The impact of global warming on temperature and weather will be felt most acutely by those in the farming community. The Australian deal sets a worrying precedent for trade deals going forward. If any future deal with the United States throws farmers under the bus as much as...
John Nicolson: Will the hon. Lady give way?
John Nicolson: To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to his participation in the launch of IX Wireless' broadband network in Blackburn in June 2021, whether he was aware at the time of that launch of the (a) financial contributions made by that company to Members of his party, (b) appointment of a Peer from his party as an advisor to that company, and (c) that a...
John Nicolson: Here we go again. Only four years ago, in what turned out to be the Government and Channel 4’s phoney war, the privatising zealots were licking their lips at the thought of a corporate takeover at Channel 4, a much-loved public service broadcaster. After all, bus, water and rail privatisations under the Tories had been such resounding successes, so why not turn to yet another institution...
John Nicolson: To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, when his Department will publish its response to the consultation on the Electronic Communications Code 2017, published on 27 January 2021.
John Nicolson: To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which Minister in his Department is responsible for the consultation of the Electronic Communications Code 2017, published on 27 January 2021.
John Nicolson: To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether the Minister of State for Digital and Culture, the hon. Member for Gosport, has held meetings with stakeholders on the consultation on the Electronic Communications Code 2017, since its publication on 27 January 2021.
John Nicolson: Yesterday, at the Prime Minister’s instigation, 333 Conservative Members of this House, including some of its wealthiest, voted to deprive some of the world’s poorest children of clean water, while education for girls programmes that we guaranteed will be slashed, and polio eradication schemes too. Most people go into politics to make the world a better place, but the Prime Minister seems...
John Nicolson: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether any officials in his Department have (a) been offered and (b) accepted membership to Soho House from January 2021 to date.
John Nicolson: To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will undertake an impact assessment on the financial consequences of any reforms to the Electronic Communications Code on affected (a) farmers, (b) churches, (c) businesses and (d) community organisations.
John Nicolson: To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions he has had with site owners potentially affected by his Department’s proposed reforms to the Electronic Communications Code.
John Nicolson: Let us consider these words: “People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.” So wrote the late, great James Baldwin in his much lauded 1956 novel “Giovanni's Room”, in which the author writes profoundly of the...
John Nicolson: The case for the privatisation of Channel 4 was, of course, debunked by the then Secretary of State last time the issue reared its head. I think her assessment was that it would be too much grief for too little money. Privatisation would see profit put first, a slash in the £500 million that goes annually to independent production companies, a centralisation of headquarters—the antithesis...