Neil Bibby: ...I speak in support of my Labour colleague Michael Marra’s motion. As Michael Marra said, Scotland’s islanders are right to be angry, dismayed and frustrated, because they simply do not have the ferry service that they need or deserve. They have been failed and they have been let down. Given that fact and the recent and damaging disruption to island businesses in particular, it is only...
Bob Seely: ...more importantly for the UK as a whole, are not flourishing on the mainland but are either less threatened or better off on the Island. We do not have grey squirrels, although one once got on a ferry and the ferry had to be stopped. We do not have escaped mink or escaped deer, but we do have red squirrels, dormice and water voles. I thank Helen Butler of the Isle of Wight Red Squirrel...
Liam McArthur: ...to be grounded, it is obviously in the public interest for answers to be provided as quickly as possible. In the meantime, as we enter the busiest time of the year, Orkney is set to be without ferry provision on a key route for passengers and freight over the coming weeks. Will the minister therefore agree to approve a temporary resumption of four return sailings on the Stromness to...
Margaret Greenwood: Does my hon. Friend share my concern that agency crews are working unsafe roster patterns, being at sea for up to 17 weeks? That has implications for everybody who travels on those ferries.
Ian Murray: ...including a free internet connection and the support to use it”, but in December last year it emerged that fewer than one in 10 had been supplied. The first full teaching strike in Scotland since Margaret Thatcher’s reign is due to the SNP’s incompetence and dereliction of duty on the education sector. To have an eleventh hour pay offer rejected so comprehensively, provoking real...
Margaret Hodge: ...issues, but the question is: can he do that? Let me take one example. Can he explain to me, the House and the country how he can credibly justify calling for the resignation of the boss of P&O Ferries when he faced allegations that he broke the law, while refusing to resign when he himself is guilty of actually the breaking the law that he set?
Willie Rennie: The ferries fiasco is a national embarrassment of the SNP’s making. The ferries are four years late and after today will be five years late, at two and a half times the original budget. Windows were painted on just for the First Minister, cables were too short and a bulbous bow was too small. There has been endless squabbling, and now there is a damning Audit Scotland report. The...
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie: My Lords, our experience in Scotland suggests that Governments are not very good at building ships. There are currently more boats in the Caledonian MacBrayne fleet that entered service when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister than have been launched since the SNP assumed responsibility for Scotland’s ferries. Yesterday only 13 of CalMac’s 29 ferry routes were operating a normal service,...
Mick Whitley: It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) on securing this important debate. She has painted a vivid picture of the grave situation facing Wirral Council and Merseyside, and of the terrible price that people living in both our constituencies are set to pay for the Government’s abject...
Ian Byrne: ...from the rag I will not name. The “Truth” headline made me, at 16 years of age, question my own sanity. I had watched the fans supporting each other, giving mouth-to-mouth on the pitch, ferrying the injured on stretchers—how could this be what the media were saying? Then we had South Yorkshire police initiate the smears and lies that reverberated around the world, backed by the Prime...
Lord Bilimoria: ...women are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and, globally, we are still battling an average 32% gender pay gap. India, where I was born, had a woman Prime Minister in Indira Gandhi well before we had Margaret Thatcher over here. Although we have had two Chancellors of the Exchequer, one after the other, who are British Asians—my friends Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak—India had its first...
Elizabeth Smith: ...pray at the shrine for forgiveness for their sins, and that practice continued for hundreds of years until the dawn of the reformation. The original pilgrimage was popularised and patronised by St Margaret, who was queen of Scotland at the time. Indeed, it is her we have to thank for the most ancient ferry across the River Forth, which enabled worshippers to take their pilgrimages further....
Stephen Kinnock: ..., and they have been intensely relaxed about the impact of those changes on the pride, identity and prosperity of constituencies such as mine and others across Wales and the United Kingdom. First, Margaret Thatcher sold out the miners across south Wales, the English midlands and northern England, offering no state support to those who needed it to retrain in other fields. Then, although...
Kate Forbes: ...to support and invest in sectors such as agriculture, forestry and seafood given that they, perhaps more than others, face the challenges of Brexit. I certainly endorse the committee’s focus on ferry transport and the importance of investing in ferries. I will move on to social security and Bob Doris’s speech. We have transformed, and we are transforming, the landscape for social...
Rachael Maskell: ...constituent Jim MacLeod had alerted him to the barriers that disabled people face. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) again spoke about her experience as her constituents Laurel and Margaret took her on a tour of her constituency to highlight the barriers that visually impaired people face. She also spoke of the essential role of guards on trains. Following all those...
Bob Seely: ...lines, and was inspired by visits to Shanklin and Carisbrooke. The wonderful eccentric Edward Lear tutored Queen Victoria at Osborne, the Bonchurch watercolourists painted near Ventnor, Julia Margaret Cameron, the wonderful feminist, pioneered portrait photography at Dimbola Lodge, and the Pre-Raphaelites hung out in Freshwater. And today we remain a home for many island artists, as well...
Lord Adonis: ...my sincere condolences to the Minister on her new appointment. The noble Baroness has an unenviable task. Brexit is a revolution that devours its children. It has consumed three Prime Ministers: Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron; it is now on to its fourth, Mrs May. In the past year alone, it has decapitated a Chancellor, neutered a Foreign Secretary, and two of the four...
Nicola Sturgeon: ...leave the Government with my thanks, and I have no doubt that they will continue to play a significant role in Scottish politics. I also place on record my thanks to the three departing ministers: Margaret Burgess; Marco Biagi; and Aileen McLeod. Margaret Burgess put her significant professional experience to good effect in laying the groundwork for the new social security powers that are...
Paul Monaghan: ...bitches—this is dog breeding on an industrial scale. Evidence obtained by the SSPCA reveals that pups are being transported from the Republic, through the north of Ireland and into Scotland via ferries at Cairnryan, a point made by the hon. Member for South Antrim (Danny Kinahan). From there, the pups are transported throughout the UK, with little consideration given to welfare by...
Liam McArthur: ...I think that it had done so by the time of the last fair trade debate in which I participated. Then, it was the highest award that it was possible for a school to attain. Since then, it has won the Margaret Demidecka award, which is the United Kingdom award for the best Fairtrade school initiative. Not to be outdone, pupils at Kirkwall grammar school, which is another Fairtrade school in...
