EU Council

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his consistent championing of the intelligence services, who do such important work to keep our country safe. As I said, we have a free press and it is very important that the press feels it is not pre-censored in what it writes. The approach we have taken is to try to talk to the press and explain how damaging some of these things can be. That is why The Guardian destroyed some of the information on disks it had, although it has now printed further damaging material. I do not want to have to use injunctions, D notices or other, tougher measures; it is much better to appeal to newspapers’ sense of social responsibility. However, if they do not demonstrate some social responsibility, it will be very difficult for the Government to stand back and not to act.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

What is the Prime Minister going to do about the fact that even people with as many as three jobs are unable to make ends meet? Prices in the UK are rising faster than anywhere else in the EU.

[The Prime Minister]

The first thing to do is to keep inflation down. The Bank of England has that responsibility and we have seen better figures in recent weeks. Even more important is to help people with their living standards by making sure that we continue to grow the number of people in work—up by 1 million since the election—and, crucially, that we cut taxes. We are now seeing people earn £10,000 before they pay any income tax. That means someone on a minimum wage working a full-time week is seeing their tax bill cut by two thirds —that is good news for them.