Daniel Zeichner

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), just as it was a great pleasure to visit his beautiful constituency last week. Even though I do not agree with everything he said, he is a true gentleman. I will keep my comments relatively brief, but I echo his tributes, and those of other Members, to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah), and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince), for their excellent speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow and I campaigned for many years in the east of England, which is not the easiest place to win for Labour, and I do not think that either of us would have imagined that he would be here, delivering that brilliant speech. I am so pleased for him—it is a joy. I welcome the Gracious Speech. I know how much work, thought, effort and planning go into it; I also know how many things that others wanted to see in it did not make the cut. Although I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister’s remarks about a national system of food redistribution, which I would welcome, I hope that in future we will see measures to modernise the regulation of the food system to secure the outcomes that we would all like around health, environment and food security. There are a whole range of Bills that I particularly welcome: the clean water Bill, the energy independence Bill, the social housing renewal Bill and the draft taxi licensing Bill. Over the years, I have spent many hours in this Chamber talking about the taxi and private hire trade. I genuinely hope for progress on modernising the legislation, which has become woefully out of date as the world has moved on.