Extract from Committee
stage (Lords) of the Criminal Finances Bill
(Lab):...The
Minister is missing the point, although I am sure she is not
doing so deliberately. No bank has been prosecuted. That is the
background to the question I asked. I did not ask about cosy
deals with the Financial Conduct Authority—like those reported
today with Tesco and the one with Rolls-Royce, which I referred
to at Second Reading—to have deferred prosecutions, so that they
pay but do not get prosecuted. I asked about banks being
prosecuted. The one way to stop or curtail this, as the noble
Lord, Lord Deben, said, is to get them where it hurts, not with
cosy deals. These fines are not the result of prosecutions. If
she is implying that, she is wrong, and is close to misleading
the House. I am not asking about deals; I am asking about
prosecutions which take place in court, not through cosy deals
and a fine from the Financial Conduct Authority...
To read the whole debate, CLICK
HERE
Extract from
Westminster Hall debate on the National Spitfire
Project
(Southampton, Itchen)
(Con):...The Spitfire completed its maiden flight from
Eastleigh airport, latterly renamed Southampton airport, on 5
March 1936. With a powerful and instantly recognisable
Rolls-Royce Merlin engine and eight machine guns, it was a
formidable fighting aircraft in its day. So impressed were the
Royal Air Force with the prototype that the Air Ministry ordered
310 Spitfires to be produced at the Woolston factory in
Southampton. By 1940, the factory was at full production,
employing thousands of technicians and engineers to manufacture
the Spitfire. The aircraft had to be built quickly to replace the
many being lost during the battle of Britain, so the factory was
working flat out. The Nazis knew that, and they also knew they
had to stop it. The luftwaffe had been taking catastrophic
losses—they estimated that they had lost nearly 1,200 aircraft
between July and September 1940 due to allied action—so it was
imperative for them to prevent the manufacture of British fighter
aircraft...
