Did you mean fracking speaker:Brendan O'Hara?
Brendan O'Hara: ..., most notably the £2 billion sitting in a London bank two years on from the sale of Chelsea football club? As we look ahead, has the FCDO’s atrocity prevention monitoring body been keeping track of breaches of international law and war crimes being committed by Russia in Ukraine? With a marked increase in the targeting of civilians in Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv and Lviv, are the UK...
Brendan O'Hara: ...for those involved, but it is also the case that 6 million EU citizens in the UK have digital-only immigration status. Given the long experience of the Home Office having a less than perfect track record of file maintenance, will the Government do something now about providing EU citizens with a physical back-up to confirm their immigration status? There is also concern around those to who...
Brendan O'Hara: ...the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what (a) financial and (b) diplomatic support the Government is providing to help keep the peace process in South Sudan on track.
Brendan O'Hara: ...before the PPE Medpro scandal broke, many of us were already trying to work out how the brains behind this “get rich quick” scheme ever believed that a plan in which the Government would fast-track their cronies, their politically connected pals and now, it would appear, their parliamentary colleagues was ever going to end well. I suspect, as I said during the urgent question on 24...
Brendan O'Hara: From the moment we learned about the existence of this VIP lane for the politically connected, it was almost inevitable that it would come to this. This get-rich-quick scheme to fast-track cronies, politically connected pals and colleagues was never going to end well. I suspect that today’s revelations, however shocking, are simply the tip of a very large iceberg—an iceberg that could yet...
Brendan O'Hara: ...that the information is incomprehensible, their casual dismissal of such fears as ridiculous does not bode well for those in the Opposition and outside the Committee who think we are on a one-way track to deregulation and the diminution of workers’ rights.
Brendan O'Hara: ...on a deregulatory race to the bottom; one in which individual citizens will surely lose out to the spivs and the speculators and, no doubt, to the “politically connected”, who will be fast-tracked into making a quick buck at our expense. Because despite the Government’s assurances, which we heard earlier, that the UK will have the opportunity to be bolder and go further than the EU...
Brendan O'Hara: ...will be in a deregulatory race to the bottom, a race in which individual citizens will surely lose out to the spivs and the speculators—and no doubt to the politically connected, who will be fast-tracked into making a quick buck at citizens’ expense. The Government say that the Bill will give the UK the opportunity to be bolder and go further than the EU in securing consumer rights and...
Brendan O'Hara: ...so that the Government’s response to the guaranteed future heatwaves is more co-ordinated and strategic than what we have witnessed on this occasion? Given the melting roads, buckling rail tracks and dissolving runways, what plans are being considered to make our critical infrastructure more resilient to this type of heat? Finally, does the Minister agree with me—and, I suspect, the...
Brendan O'Hara: ...attitude that it could never happen here. But it is happening here, and it is happening here right now. The parliamentary arithmetic means that only Conservative Members can stop this plan in its tracks, and tonight they have a decision to make. As the soon-to-be ex-Prime Minister heads for the exit door, are they really going to acquiesce meekly and allow his final act to be the fatal...
Brendan O'Hara: The difference, quite simply, is that we never fast-tracked our pals, we never operated a get- rich-quick scheme for our pals, and we did not stuff unelected second Chambers full of people who bankrolled our party.
Brendan O'Hara: ...Randox, which paid him £100,000 a year to act as its adviser. We also know that in March 2020, Randox Laboratories was awarded a no-bid Government contract worth £133 million. Despite being fast-tracked and essentially handed this multi-million-pound contract, it appears that Randox was not equipped to perform the task it had been given a shedload of public money to do. As The Times...
Brendan O'Hara: ...at the time, and Owen Paterson, the Conservative MP who was being handsomely paid by Randox to lobby on its behalf. It appears that the company employing a Conservative MP, which was fast- tracked and awarded a no-bid contract worth £133 million, was actually ill-equipped to provide the vital service it had promised to deliver. This absolutely stinks, and unless and until every record of...
Brendan O'Hara: ...it is a war that we are losing. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out just last month that the national determined contributions that have been submitted so far put us on track for 2.7°C. That is not nearly enough. It is impossible to overstate the importance of COP26. Glasgow is possibly our last chance, because the world has not lived up to what it promised in...
Brendan O'Hara: ...the Cabinet Office operating the internal conflict of interest policy actually ask to reach the conclusion that it was perfectly all right for one of the UK’s most senior civil servants to twin-track and work for a private finance company whose owner at that point was swanning about Downing Street, dishing out business cards describing himself as a special adviser to the Prime Minister?...
Brendan O'Hara: May I add my thanks to you, Sir Charles, and to Mr McCabe for chairing these sittings? I also add my thanks to the Clerk of the Committee for keeping us all on track in what were sometimes very tricky situations. I am sure I am not alone in hating a double negative, and trying to vote accordingly, so I thank him. The Minister and I did not agree on much, but she was courteous throughout, and...
Brendan O'Hara: ...in quota for UK boats could come at the price of new trade barriers. That is an inescapable fact; that is what the EU is going for. Let us be honest: United Kingdom Governments do not have the best track record in defending the interests of the fishing industry when it is expedient for them not to do so. In 2016, fishing, aquaculture and fish processing combined generated just short of £1...
Brendan O'Hara: ...£50 million is enough money to pay for 1,200 nurses in Scotland. In his Budget, the Chancellor had the perfect opportunity to do the right thing: stop the roll-out of universal credit dead in its tracks until the well-publicised faults in the system, which are hurting the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, have been fixed properly, once and for all.
Brendan O'Hara: .... It does not have to be this way. We, the people, pumped £45 billion into RBS a decade ago. We own it. The Government therefore can, should they wish, intervene to stop these closures in their tracks. My constituents know, as we all do, that the taxpayer owns 73% of the Royal Bank of Scotland and that the Government can—and, when they choose to, do—get involved. I am sure the...
Brendan O'Hara: Last week, there were reports of increased activity in the number of ships moving unchecked through UK waters having deliberately deactivated their tracking system. On one occasion, a Cypriot ship called in at Algeria and then moored off the coast of Islay in my constituency. With that increased level of suspicious activity and Scotland’s proximity to the high north and Arctic, does the...