25/06/2019 | 12:16:33 Thank you, Madam President. I'd like to begin by congratulating Mr Mart van de VEN. Having presented budgets myself over the years, it's a thankless task. What you find is that politics is basically about spending other people's money. Political speeches are about not coming up with the money to be spent. We've heard a bit of that this morning. I could tell Mr Hişyar ÖZSOY that I believe the other country apart from the United Kingdom that was opposing the contribution was Italy. Again, it is... 24/06/2019 | 18:43:11 Madam President, Can I begin also by congratulating the Rapporteur. As someone who lives part of the time in Belgium and knows the European Parliament well, I can only say she's a distinguished citizen of that country and I know that her career in the European Parliament would also be of great distinction. We are lucky that she's here to do this report. I think it should be twinned though with Theresa May because it's a very good example of kicking cans down the road until you reach the very... 11/04/2019 | 18:03:37 Let me add my thanks to those already given to the rapporteur for an excellent report on a very difficult situation. We have to give credit to both Greece and Turkey, which have been left with a really difficult job by the rest of Europe. It is worth remembering why this situation came about; it was not by accident. It came about because we decided that we would build democracy in Afghanistan; that we needed to change the government of Iraq, and then stripped civil society there of all its... 11/04/2019 | 16:12:17 May I begin by congratulating the rapporteur on a splendid forensic piece of work? People sometimes wonder why everybody has lost faith in democracy. This report illustrates why. We could stop money laundering in the great electronic world that we live in if we had the willpower to do it, but we do not. Ordinary people look at politicians and ask, “Where is their willpower? Do they really want to stop things?” This is a serious point that we have to address. The report shows the... 24/01/2019 | 11:14:41 Let me begin by congratulating the rapporteur, whose report is a bit more balanced than much of this debate has been. I have said in this Chamber before that you can change your history but you cannot change your geography, and the fact of the matter is that Ukraine is next to the Russian Federation and it is probably going to stay there. The second point I wish to make is that I have been struck throughout my life by the fact that, in order to justify military expenditure, armies always need... 22/01/2019 | 10:48:32 I congratulate Dame Cheryl GILLAN on the report and my colleague Mr John HOWELL on his very adequate presentation of it. I serve on the council of the Venice Commission so I have seen this gradually developing, and it is indeed a good example of co-operation between this Chamber and the Venice Commission. Having said that, it tries to set down some limitations to make referendums better and fairer. To my mind, there is an underlying problem with referendums. I go back to a Prime Minister who...