Sandy Martin: May I, Mr Speaker, add my congratulations to those already given in respect of your elevation, both metaphorically and physically, to the speakership? Suffolk has a greater than average number of special educational needs and disability assessment cases going to tribunal; poor communication between providers and with parents; a lack of specialist placements; an inadequate resource in the...
Sandy Martin: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct; he has put his finger right on the main point. Two days ago, in response to the news that I had secured this debate, I received an email from a distressed parent. She says: “My son has been out of school for 3 years in December. He was signed off by our consultant paediatrician as medically unfit for mainstream school. He has an Education & Health...
Sandy Martin: I thank the hon. Gentleman and agree that underlying all of this is a lack of resource, but I think the problem is not the formula, but the overall lack of resource. I have met parents whose child had been placed in another county hundreds of miles away. I have met parents whose child is taken to school every day, but then regularly leaves the premises without any sort of supervision to...
Sandy Martin: Thank you, Mr Speaker, for making me feel welcome in the short time I have been here so far. After “The Blue Planet” and other television programmes, after the in-depth investigations by Friends of the Earth and others, after the mass campaigning by schoolchildren all over the world to prevent plastics in our oceans and after the verdict against a major British company for exporting...
Sandy Martin: I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way. Does she not accept that, while phase 2 will need to deal with these more difficult issues, there are hundreds and hundreds of families still living in conditions that are completely unacceptable because actions have not been taken? These actions could be taken prior to phase 2 coming forward. For instance, in St Francis Tower in my own...
Sandy Martin: rose—
Sandy Martin: I was going to make exactly the same point as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts).
Sandy Martin: Members have made many excellent speeches. Unfortunately, time has been far too short for everybody to say everything they wanted, but I want to highlight a few of the points that were made. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) questioned how the Office for Environmental Protection would hold the Government or other public bodies to account, and that sentiment was shared by...
Sandy Martin: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I was delighted to read this report, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and his Select Committee on its production. It is wide-ranging, insightful, accessible, level-headed and challenging —all in just 41 pages of actual text. I actually enjoyed reading it; I apologise to any Members who...
Sandy Martin: I absolutely agree. Far too much of the discourse about waste and the environment has been couched in terms that sound as though they are intended to make people feel guilty. We do not need to make people feel guilty; we need to put in place the regimes that enable them to do the right thing. I very much welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy)...
Sandy Martin: It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) and all the other excellent contributions from Members of this House over the past seven hours. Having a secure place to live is absolutely fundamental to the ability to lead an enjoyable, law-abiding and productive life, yet there is nothing in this Queen’s Speech to deal with the housing crisis....
Sandy Martin: Does the hon. Lady not recognise that the previous Queen’s Speech included the Immigration Bill and the Fisheries Bill, which could easily have been enacted without having to have this Queen’s Speech? Not only that, but an enormous amount of time and effort had already gone into the previous Fisheries Bill, which fell because of the Prorogation of Parliament.
Sandy Martin: I must confess that the Minister took some of the wind out of my sails: I was going to ask him if he agreed with me about the magnificent professionalism and dignity of Tyrone Mings in making his debut. He was a great player for Ipswich Town and he is a great player for Aston Villa and for England. Will the Minister agree to write to each and every one of the England players who were at the...
Sandy Martin: Women’s Aid organisations, such as Lighthouse Women’s Aid in my constituency, are doing good work but have to survive hand to mouth, relying on money from lottery funding. Does my hon. Friend agree that this makes it extremely difficult for them to employ and retain the staff they need, with the experience and training to give proper counselling to women?
Sandy Martin: Whatever the risks to food safety and to agricultural producers and retailers from any errors in the other SIs we have debated, which deal with markets and import and export licences, they are massively enhanced by the risk of errors in any SIs pertaining to pesticides. This SI amends serious errors in the previous SI and gives us no confidence that there are not errors in other SIs dealing...
Sandy Martin: It takes a certain ingenuity to come up with new things to say about some of these statutory instruments, especially as I spoke at length about this one the last time we saw it. On Thursday, I stayed to listen to the Leader of the House and he took great relish in reading out the titles of the statutory instruments in what was a bit of a performance. But this is not a game. The details in...
Sandy Martin: The Attorney General this morning, and then the Prime Minister and now the Leader of the House, have made it absolutely clear that they would like us to call for an immediate general election. So may I ask the Leader of the House the question that I asked the Prime Minister, whose answer, I am afraid, I failed to understand? If we have a general election, what is the point of a Queen’s speech?
Sandy Martin: I must confess that I am somewhat confused, so I am asking the Prime Minister for a bit of guidance here. Quite a large amount of legislation was lost—or would have been lost if Parliament had been prorogued. That included measures that I think could quite easily have got through, the most obvious example being the Domestic Abuse Bill. At the same time, we have a Prime Minister who does not...
Sandy Martin: I am absolutely desperate to have a general election. I want to see a Government who will halt the privatisation of the national health service, who will properly fund our public services, who will stop the wealth of this country being squirreled away in tax havens in the Caribbean and who will care about the majority of people in this country and not just about the very wealthy, but that is...
Sandy Martin: I am sorry, I will not give way. I want to see this Parliament agree on a viable deal that will not destroy the economy of this country. When we have a second vote—a people’s vote, a second referendum or whatever you want to call it—which I think we should have if we are to bring the country back together, I want there to be a viable choice. I do not believe that a no-deal Brexit is a...