(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberTo mark Windrush Day, today sees the unveiling of a national monument at Waterloo station that acknowledges the Windrush generation’s outstanding contribution to British society and will also be a permanent place of reflection.
As part of Armed Forces Week, I was delighted to host a reception yesterday in Downing Street. Members across the House are immensely proud of our armed forces and we thank them and their families for their service to our country.
I know the House will welcome the deal that we have signed with Moderna, which will see it build new facilities in the UK, including around £1 billion of new investment in research and development.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House I shall have further such meetings later today. I will be travelling thereafter to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Rwanda, and I will then be attending the G7 leaders summit and the NATO summit, Mr Speaker, so a full budget of news for you there.
May I associate myself with the Prime Minister’s comments in relation to the armed forces and other comments?
Has the Prime Minister ever considered the appointment of his current spouse to a Government post or to any organisation in one of the royal households? Be honest, Prime Minister—yes or no?
I know why Labour Members want to talk about non-existent jobs in the media—because they do not want to talk about what is going on in the real world. I am proud to say that we now have 620,000 more people in payroll employment than before the pandemic began, which would never have been possible if we had listened to the Leader of the Opposition.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to champion this type of approach, which makes a real difference to people’s lives and people suffering from mental health issues, helping them to find a route back into work. That is why we are commissioning more initiatives through funds such as the life chances fund, helping those people in society who face the biggest barriers to have happy and productive lives.
Can I join the Prime Minister in his comments about Windrush, and pay tribute to everyone who is serving and has served in our armed forces? Can I also pay tribute to everyone standing for election tomorrow and in particular the plucky Conservative candidate for Wakefield? He is standing, even though his own colleagues think he is so useless that they held a vote of no confidence in him. Does the Prime Minister hold any personal interest in seeing if the public will vote for a Tory who even his own side do not think is up to it?
I have absolutely no doubt that the people of this country, and the people of Wakefield and of Tiverton and Honiton, would much rather vote for a solid Conservative Government than a Labour party and its enablers and acolytes in the Liberal Democrats—the karma chameleons of British politics—when the leader of the Labour party has not even got the gumption to speak out against the rail strikes that have caused so much damage to the people in the north of this country and up and down the country. There is unbelievable silence from the leader of the Labour party.
The Prime Minister has obviously not been to Wakefield recently. He has crashed the economy and he has put everybody’s tax up. The last Tory he sent up to Wakefield was convicted of a sexual assault. That is not much of a pitch, Prime Minister. Talking of people not up to the job, while the Transport Secretary spends his time working on his spreadsheet tracking the Prime Minister’s unpopularity, thousands of families have had their holiday flights cancelled, it takes forever to renew a driving licence or passport and now we have the biggest rail strike in 30 years. If the Prime Minister is genuine—[Interruption.]
If the Prime Minister is genuine about preventing strikes, will he tell this House how many meetings he or his Transport Secretary have had with rail workers this week to actually stop the strikes?
This is the Government who love the railways and who invest in the railways. We are putting £96 billion into the integrated railway plan. I am proud to have built Crossrail, by the way, and we are going to build Northern Powerhouse Rail, but we have got to modernise our railways. It is a disgrace, when we are planning to make sure that we do not have ticket offices that sell fewer than one ticket every hour, that yesterday the right hon. and learned Gentleman had 25 Labour MPs out on the picket line, defying instructions—[Interruption.]
Order. I want to hear the Prime Minister’s answer, even if some Members do not. I think they ought to show some respect to the Prime Minister.
There were 25 Labour MPs and the shadow deputy leader out on the picket line, backing the strikers, while we back the strivers.
I am surprised the Prime Minister is giving me advice about my team. If I do need advice, let us say, about a £100,000 job at the Foreign Office, I will ask him for a recommendation.
There you have it, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister of this country and his Transport Secretary have not attended a single meeting, held a conversation or lifted a finger to stop these strikes. But I did note that on Monday they found time to go to a lavish ball, where the Prime Minister sold a meeting with himself for £120,000 to a donor. If there is money coming his way, he is there. When it comes to the country, he is nowhere to be seen. Rather than blame everyone else, why does he not do his job, get round the table and get the trains running?
We are making sure that we do everything we can to prevent these strikes. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, it is up to the railway companies to negotiate—that is their job. We spent £16 billion looking after the railways throughout the pandemic. That has cost every household £600. We know why he takes the line he does; we know why he will not condemn the strikes; and we know why, even now, he does not have the gumption to call out his MPs who are going out to support the pickets. The reason his authority is on the line in this matter is that the Opposition take £10 million from the unions. That is the fee that he is receiving for the case he is failing to make.
The Prime Minister cannot help himself. There is a huge problem facing the country, and all he is interested in doing is blaming everyone else. Can he not hear the country screaming at him, “Get on with your job!”? While he blames everyone and anyone, working people are paying the price. This week, his Chief Secretary to the Treasury said that there is a “society-wide responsibility” for people to take a pay cut. At the same time, his chief of staff, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), is trying to change the law to get bankers’ bonuses increased. So come one, only one of them can be right: is it his Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who says that every worker needs a pay cut, or is it his chief of staff, who says that every banker needs a pay rise?
Actually, under this Government, 5 million public sector workers are getting a pay rise. We have increased the living wage by £1,000 and we have increased universal credit so that people get £1,000 more. Thanks to the fiscal firepower that we have, we are putting £1,200 more into every one of the 8 million most vulnerable households in the country. That is what we can do because of the tough decisions that we have taken. But meantime, what we are also trying to do is cut the cost of transport, which is a big part of people’s weekly outgoings, by reforming our railways. That is what we are trying to do, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman is standing with the strikers and lifting the cost of transport for everybody. That is the reality.
The Prime Minister’s chief of staff says that removing the cap on bankers’ bonuses is
“reflective of the new approach”.
Pay rises for city bankers, pay cuts for district nurses—that is the new approach. I did not see that on any leaflets in Wakefield. But this has not come from nowhere, because according to the Financial Times, on 7 June last year, the Prime Minister was directly lobbied for the cap to be lifted. Rather than help working people, he has rolled over on bankers’ bonuses, has he not?
What we are actually doing, thanks to the decisions we have taken, is putting more money into the pockets of people up and down the country—£1,200 more for the 8 million most vulnerable households. The reason we can do that is because we took the tough decisions necessary to come out of the pandemic faster than any other European country. That is why we have unemployment at or near record lows. None of that would have been possible if we had listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. We have more people now in payrolled employment than we had before the pandemic began. That is what the British people know, and that is what this Government will continue to deliver.
Fifteen tax rises, high tax, low wages, low growth—that sums the Prime Minister’s Government up. Working people are paying more tax under this Government, and now they are told to take a pay cut. He is having meetings about increasing bankers’ bonuses, but he cannot find time for a single meeting to end the strikes crippling the country.
It is Armed Forces Week. Under this Prime Minister, those serving our country are facing a real-terms pay cut. Why are his Government more focused on increasing bankers’—[Interruption.]
It is Armed Forces Week. Under this Prime Minister, those serving our country are facing a real-terms pay cut. Why are his Government more focused on increasing bankers’ pay than the pay of those who are running the country?
How absolutely satirical that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should talk about our support for the armed forces when we have increased our funding for our armed forces by a record sum since the end of the cold war, and when eight of the shadow Front Bench team—eight of the shadow Front Bench—actually want to get rid of our nuclear deterrent, including the shadow Foreign Secretary. [Interruption.] Yes, it is true. We are helping people up and down the country: £1,200 will be coming into the bank accounts of the 8 million most vulnerable households. The cut in national insurance will be coming into their bank accounts as a result of the steps my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has taken. But what we are also doing is reforming our systems so that we cut costs for people up and down the country; reforming our energy markets, building a new nuclear reactor every year rather than one every 10 years; getting people off welfare into work—half a million people off welfare into work—because we have cut the time people are waiting on benefits; and cutting the costs of transport for working people by delivering reforms. We are doing that while they are out on the picket line, literally holding hands with Arthur Scargill. That’s them: it is worse than under Jeremy Corbyn. This is a Government who are taking this country forward; they would take it back to the 1970s.
My hon. Friend knows exactly of what he speaks, and we are doing just that. We are reforming train driver training to make entry into the sector simpler, while continuing, of course, to make sure that we meet vital safety requirements.
May I associate myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister and the leader of the Labour party as we mark Armed Services Week? We thank all our service personnel for the services that they give.
On Windrush Day, we celebrate all those who have made Scotland and the UK their home. My party backs calls for a major commemoration for the 75th anniversary next year so we can properly mark the valued contribution that those who came here have made.
This morning, it was revealed that UK inflation is now at a 40-year high. Families right across these islands are seeing their incomes squeezed as prices rise, bills soar, and Tory cuts and tax hikes hammer home. After 12 years in government, the Tories have left the UK economy in the doldrums and pushed millions of people into poverty, so can I ask the Prime Minister: does he think his Government bear any blame for the fact that the United Kingdom is doing so much worse than our European neighbours?
Actually, as I think the whole House knows and the whole country knows, we have a global inflationary problem, but this Government have the fiscal firepower to deal with it. That is, I think, of benefit to the whole of the United Kingdom, including Scotland, as we have seen throughout the pandemic, and I think it is a matter of fact that taxes are actually highest of all in Scotland.
Well, actually, that is not true. Of course, the Prime Minister can make all the excuses he likes, but the fact is that the UK economy is lagging behind on his watch. If he looks at France, inflation is less than 6% there. This morning’s report from the Resolution Foundation and the London School of Economics is the latest in a string of devastating reports on the outlook for the UK economy. The report could not be clearer. The Tory Government’s disastrous Brexit is driving wages down, pushing inflation up and will make us poorer over the next decade, but instead of reversing course, the Prime Minister is recklessly threatening a trade war at the worst possible time. Will he finally come to his senses and negotiate an economic agreement with the EU, or is he going to wilfully—wilfully—push the UK into recession?
Nobody wants a trade war, nor is there any need for one. I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman is underestimating what this country is currently achieving—not just the Moderna investment, but record venture capital investment in this country, which has now overtaken China as a venue for venture capital investment, to say nothing of what we are getting in tech, and of course the benefits of that are being felt throughout the whole of the United Kingdom.
I thank my hon. Friend for an excellent piece of lobbying. Certainly, the Department for Transport is working with Transport Scotland on the possible extension of the Borders railway to Carlisle. On the A1, a decision is to be made later this year.
It has emerged that there is a backlog of 23,000 applications under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, with just two of 3,000 applications for refuge by Afghans who worked for Britain having been processed since April. At the same time, since December, staff working on the ARAP scheme have been slashed by a quarter. This is an incredible betrayal of the Afghan people who put their lives on the line to work for our country. I still have casework, including many people from the Chevening Alumni, for example, who have been promised support since September, so can I send those cases to the Prime Minister? Will he put more resources into the scheme? Will he lift the cap on the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme so that we can finally do our best for the people of Afghanistan?
I am afraid that the hon. Member is underestimating what the country is already doing for the people of Afghanistan. On Armed Forces Day, we should celebrate Op Pitting, which brought 15,000 out. Of course, I am happy to look at the cases that she wants to raise, and we will do our best for them and for their families, but the House should be in no doubt of the generous welcome that we continue to give to people from Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Hong Kong. We have a record to be very proud of.
Order. Can I just say that other Members do want to get in and, the longer the question, the fewer of them will get in? Your friendships will dwindle if you carry on like that.
I can tell my hon. Friend very briefly that it is 13,576 more police officers, with 200 more in Cheshire. They are also cutting neighbourhood crime—already by 31%—and our streets are getting safer as a result.
If the hon. Gentleman will just wait for the Justice Secretary’s statement, which follows shortly, I think he will find that he is in error in what he said.
My hon. Friend is probably the best Member for Rother Valley we have ever had. I thank him very much and we are going to continue our agenda of levelling up across the whole country, through all the difficulties this country has faced, which will get young people across the country, including in Rother Valley, into good jobs for generations to come. That is our ambition.
If the hon. Lady wants to support the working people of this country, I suggest she gets off the picket line, has a word with her party leader and supports the travelling public of this country, who want to see a reduction in their transport costs, which this Government are delivering.
We can all be proud of the way we have reduced CO2 emissions in this country, but plainly it makes no sense to be importing coal, particularly for metallurgical purposes, when we have our own domestic resources.
That is probably the first sensible question from the Opposition Benches, and I can tell the hon. Lady that we do actively support gigafactories because I believe they can be a huge advantage for the UK economy. That is why I am proud to see one now in Blyth, and we are working with the authorities in the west midlands, in Coventry, to make sure we also get a successful result there.
I know how much my hon. Friend cares for the students in his constituency and I can tell him that no exams have been cancelled as a result of the strikes so far. We expect schools and colleges to have contingency arrangements in place to manage disruption. If students arrive late, schools should allow them to take the paper, and exam boards will determine if that paper can be marked based on how late the student has arrived. I am also told that if a student misses an exam completely, the school can apply for their grades to be calculated from the other assessments they have completed in that subject. I hope that is helpful to my hon. Friend.
The Prime Minister will be aware of the problems that arose in Paris at the European cup final. Does he agree that both the French and UEFA authorities’ attempts to blame Liverpool fans for the failure to keep order at the stadium has been comprehensively disproved, and will he ensure that the French failure to police the event is roundly condemned?
I think the whole House will have seen how those initial accounts of what took place were completely debunked and proved to be incorrect in respect of the Liverpool fans, and I think it was right that the French authorities and, I think, UEFA issued a full apology for what had happened.
I think my right hon. Friend should wait for my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister to say a little about that in just a moment, but I can tell him that when it comes to the Rwanda policy that we are pursuing, that policy has not been ruled unlawful by any UK court or, so far, by any international court, and we will continue with that policy.
The father-in-law of my constituent Ibrahim is a former Supreme Court judge in Afghanistan. He successfully prosecuted and put behind bars hundreds of terrorists associated with the Taliban, al-Qaeda and ISIS. Seven months after he submitted his ARAP application, there has still been no progress, and he is living in hiding. His only option is a perilous journey to Pakistan, where, if his visa is refused, he will be deported back into the hands of the Taliban. Will the Prime Minister meet me and the former judge’s family to see how we can save the life of a man who I have no doubt has helped to save hundreds of British lives?
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that case. It does sound extremely meritorious. I will make sure that she has a meeting with the Ministry of Defence, which runs ARAP, and that we do our best to expedite that application as fast as we can.
As soon as parliamentary time allows, we will introduce legislation to change the inflationary index used in the calculation of the annual pitch fees to the consumer prices index. I am told that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has undertaken research on the impacts on residents and site owners of a change in the 10% commission that is currently paid on the sale of a park home.
I am sure the Prime Minister is as thrilled as I am that you, Mr Speaker, signed the Wellbeing of Women menopause workplace pledge last week to show support for women in this place. Will the Prime Minister follow that example and ensure that women in England have better access to treatment by introducing a single annual payment for hormone replacement therapy now, rather than making them wait until April 2023, a full 18 months after the payment was first promised?
I thank the hon. Lady very much for raising a very important issue that is understood keenly in all parts of the House. I know that my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary is accelerating the work of the HRT taskforce to give people up and down the country the reassurance and the treatment that they need.
I was incredibly grateful to the Prime Minister for coming to Watford to launch my initiative to train 1,000 mental health first aiders in awareness more than a year and a half ago. Since then, it has been delivered successfully by Watford and West Herts chamber of commerce and many amazing volunteers. I know that the Prime Minister understands the importance of mental health and wellbeing, but, sadly, bullying can have a long-lasting effect on it. Today, the Diana Award is raising awareness of bullying in schools and online with its “Don’t Face It Alone” campaign. Will the Prime Minister please join me in encouraging any young person experiencing bullying to speak up and speak out?
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his own campaign on this issue. I think everyone understands that bullying is an appalling experience, and something that we should not tolerate in our society. I am delighted to see so many colleagues—so many hon. Members—wearing their blue ribbons today. We should all speak out against bullying, but we should also make sure that we give everyone the courage to speak out against it.
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberAs this will be the final PMQs of this Session, I wanted to remind the House of what we have achieved. More than 20 Acts of Parliament have been passed, including our National Insurance Contributions Act 2022, which will increase the thresholds from July and be worth an average of £330 a year—the largest single personal tax cut for a decade—and our Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 to respond to Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine. We hope by the end of the Session to have passed our Nationality and Borders Bill, to take control of our immigration system; our Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, to make our streets safer; and our Health and Care Bill, to reduce bureaucracy and help to cut the covid backlogs. Only today, new figures show that already, since 2019, we have recruited over 13,500 additional police—well ahead of our 12,000 target. Those police are already on our streets, making our communities safer. We are focusing on delivering the people’s priorities, and there is plenty more to come in the Queen’s Speech on 10 May.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
As a proud maritime nation, the United Kingdom has long relied on its coastal communities to help to deliver national prosperity, but today too many of them face shared challenges and disproportionately high levels of deprivation. Does my right hon. Friend therefore agree that to ensure that beautiful constituencies such as mine—Hastings and Rye—can properly unleash their full potential, a specific and targeted Government strategy focusing on coastal communities is needed; and will he meet me to discuss this?
Yes indeed, and if my hon. Friend looks at the levelling-up White Paper she will find that it is clearly directed at enhancing and improving the lives of people in our coastal communities, tilting resource and attention to those fantastic communities. I will make sure that she gets a meeting with the relevant Minister as soon as possible.
I know the Prime Minister has whipped his Back Benchers to scream and shout, and that is fine, but I hope he has also sent a clear message that there is no place for sexism and misogyny or for looking down on people because of where they come from, in his party, in this House, or in modern Britain.
Next year, the UK is set for the slowest growth and the highest inflation in the G7. Why is the Prime Minister failing to manage the economy?
First, in response to what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said about sexism and misogyny, let me say that I exchanged messages with the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) over the weekend, and I will repeat what I said to her. There can be absolutely no place for such behaviour or such expression in this House, and we should treat each other with the respect that each other deserves.
On the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s point about the economy, yes of course it is true that there is a crisis of inflation around the world, but this Government are tackling it in all the ways you would expect, Mr Speaker. We are helping people with the cost of their energy—putting in far more than Labour would—and we have a British energy security strategy to undo the mistakes made by previous Labour Governments. Above all, we made sure that we had the fastest growth in the G7 last year, which would not have been possible if we had listened to him—frankly, had we listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, we would not have come out of lockdown in July last year. Never forget that no Labour Government have left office with unemployment lower than when they came in.
The Prime Minister sounds like the Comical Ali of the cost of living crisis. He pretends the economy is booming and where there are problems they are global, but in the real world our growth is set to be slower than every G20 country except one—Russia—and our inflation is going to be double that in the rest of the G7. Does he think that denying the facts staring him in the face makes things better or worse for working people?
The facts are, as the International Monetary Fund has said, that the UK came out of covid faster than anybody else. That is why we had the fastest growth in the G7 last year. That would not have happened if we had listened to Captain Hindsight. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman studies its forecasts, he will see that we will return to being the fastest by 2024 and the fastest in 2025. That is what the IMF forecast says—read it. He asks about working people. This is the Government, this is the party that supports working people, unlike Labour, with the biggest increase—[Interruption.] Yes, I will tell them what is going up: the living wage is going up by record amounts, employment is going up by record amounts. Five hundred thousand more people—[Interruption.] They do not want to hear it. Let me give them the figures: 500,000 more people in paid employment now than there were before the pandemic began and youth unemployment at or near record lows. Under Labour, just to remind everybody, youth unemployment rose by 45%.
These must be the Oxford Union debating skills we have been hearing so much about: failing to answer the question, rambling incoherently, throwing in garbled metaphors. Powerful stuff, Prime Minister. Here is the problem: it is not just his words that are complacent; it is his actions as well. The cost of living crisis was blindingly obvious months ago, but he said that worries about inflation were unfounded and he backed a tax-hiking Budget. Does he think that his choice to be the only leader in the G7 to raise taxes during a cost of living crisis has made things better or worse for working people?
As I have just explained to the House, and will repeat once more, this Government and our Chancellor cut taxes on working people. The national insurance contribution went down by an average of £330. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman is talking about the health and care levy—maybe that is what he is droning on about—that is what is enabling us to pay for 50,000 more nurses and to pay for clearing the covid backlog. How tragic, how pitiful that the party of Bevan should now be opposed to that investment in the NHS.
The Prime Minister is an ostrich, perfectly happy keeping his head in the sand. Working people are worried about paying their bills. They are spending less and cutting back. That is bad for business and bad for growth. Working people are looking for help, but this week millions will look at their payslip and see a tax rise with his fingerprints all over it. Does he think that his 15th tax rise has made things better or worse for working people?
What we are doing for working people is not only lifting the living wage by a record amount and helping people on universal credit with a £1,000 tax cut, but cutting national insurance contributions and lifting the threshold so that, on average, people pay £330 less. What we are also doing is taking our country and our economy forward, investing in our NHS, which is a priority for the people of this country—unlike for the Labour party—and ensuring that we have record creation of jobs. That is what matters: high-wage, high-skill jobs. Half a million more—[Interruption.] Labour Members do not care about jobs; we do. We believe in high-wage, high-skill jobs and that is the answer for the economy.
It is as if the Prime Minister is only just waking up to the cost of living crisis. And his big idea: fewer MOTs—it actually makes the cones hotline sound visionary and inspirational.
North sea oil producers are making so much unexpected profit that they call themselves a “cash machine”. That cash could be used to keep energy bills down. Instead, the Prime Minister chooses to protect their profits, let household bills rocket and slap taxes on working people who are earning a living. Does he think that that choice has made things better or worse for working people?
What we are doing is making things better for working people than his plans would by a mile. We are putting in more to support people with their energy costs than he would with his new tax on business. We are putting in £9.1 billion, with an immediate £150 cut in people’s council tax. Labour’s thing raises only £6.6 billion, and it clobbers the very businesses that we need to invest in energy to bring the prices down for people across this country. Clean, green energy—the wind farms, the hydrogen that this country needs. What this Government are also doing is reversing the tragic, historic mistake of the Labour party in refusing to invest in nuclear. We are going to have a nuclear reactor every year, not a nuclear reactor every decade, which is what we got under Labour.
So the Conservatives are the party of excess oil and gas profits and we are the party of working people. This Tory Government have had their head in the sand throughout the cost of living crisis. First, they let prices get out of control and then they denied it was happening. They failed to do anything about it and then they made it worse with higher taxes. Because of the Prime Minister’s choices, we are set to have the slowest growth and the highest inflation in the G7.
A vote for Labour next week is a vote for a very different set of choices. We would ask oil and gas companies to pay their fair share and reduce energy costs. We would not hammer working people with the worst possible tax at the worst possible time. We would insulate homes to get bills down. And we would close the tax avoidance schemes that have helped the Prime Minister’s Chancellor—where is he?—to reduce his family’s tax bill while putting everyone else’s up. That is a proper plan for the economy, so why does the Prime Minister not get on with it and finally make choices that make things better, not worse, for working people?
I have listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman over many weeks and many years, and this guy is doomed to be a permanent spectator. We have a plan to fix the NHS and fix social care; the Opposition have no plan. We have a plan to fix our borders with our deal with Rwanda; they have no plan. We have a plan to take our economy forward; they have no plan.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about the elections in a few days’ time. Let me remind him that everywhere we look at a Labour administration, it is a bankrupt shambles. Labour-run Hammersmith Council spent £27,000 on EU flags three years after the referendum. Labour-run Nottingham Council—bankrupt because of its investment in some communist energy plan, of the kind that he now favours; he should apologise for it. Labour-run Croydon—bankrupt because of its dodgy property deals. And never forget Labour-run Britain in 2010—bankrupt because of what the Labour Government did, and they said that they had “no money” left.
If the right hon. and learned Gentleman looks at council tax—he boasts that he lives in Islington or Camden, or somewhere like that—he should contrast neighbouring Westminster, which has the lowest council tax in the country and better services, too. That is the difference between Labour and Conservative across the country. Vote Conservative on 5 May.
My hon. Friend is entirely right: those are the issues on which people will be voting. As I said, they will be voting for better value, better services and lower council tax, and I hope they will be voting Conservative.
May I associate myself with the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition about the absolutely disgusting misogyny and sexism witnessed by the deputy leader of the Labour party? What has happened over the past few days should shame us all.
This morning, the Trussell Trust confirmed that 830,000 children across the UK are being left to depend on emergency food parcels. Instead of convening a Tory talking shop at Cabinet, the Prime Minister should be acting to help those children and help families through the cost of living emergency. If he is genuinely looking for ideas to tackle this Tory-made crisis, he would be wiser to look beyond his Cabinet colleagues, who, of course, know that he will not be there for very much longer.
As a parting gift, here is an idea for the Prime Minister. The Scottish Government have introduced, and now doubled, the game-changing Scottish child payment of at least £1,040 a year, helping those families who are being hit the hardest. Is the Prime Minister prepared to match that payment across the UK to help families through this emergency?
Of course it is important to do everything we can to help families in a tough time. That is why we have massively increased the funds available to local councils to support families facing particular hardship. The holiday activities fund, now running at £200 million, is there as well. We will do everything we can to support families throughout this period when we are dealing with the aftershocks of the covid pandemic. If I may say so—the right hon. Gentleman may not appreciate my pointing it out, but it is true—I think that this is another example of the vital strength of our economic union, and of the importance of support from the UK Treasury, which is what he gets.
My goodness! We have children facing poverty, and the Scottish Government are responding with the child payment—by the way, it will increase again later this year—but we get nothing but empty words from the Prime Minister. We heard plenty of desperate pre-election waffle, but I will take it as a no: there is no support for hard-pressed families. It is clearer by the day that the Prime Minister’s supposed plan to fight the Tory-made cost of living crisis is not only non-fiscal, but non-existent.
I will try again. Here are three other ideas for the Prime Minister that would help families with their soaring costs right now: scrapping his national insurance tax hike, reversing the Tory cuts to universal credit and matching Scotland’s 6% benefits rise instead of imposing a real-terms cut. Those are three things that would make a difference to millions of people. Has the Prime Minister come to terms with the reality that if he fails to act now, the voters will send him and his sleaze-ridden party a message by voting SNP next Thursday?
We are helping families up and down the country with the universal credit taper. The right hon. Gentleman asks about universal credit; we are tapering it so that working people get another £1,000 in their pocket. We are helping families in the way that I have described, and I remind the House that under this Government there are now far fewer children in workless households than there were before this Government came in. That is because we believe in championing work, championing employment and helping people into high-wage, high-skill jobs. That is what counts—and as for our respective political longevities, I would not like to bet on him outlasting me.
My hon. Friend is running a great campaign, and she is absolutely right: the Government are indeed providing funds to improve autism and learning disability services, but it is also important for people to receive the diagnoses and assessments that they need within 12 weeks, and the measures in our Health and Care Bill will improve local accountability for those services.
The Road Haulage Association has confirmed that the cost of moving goods from this part of the United Kingdom to Northern Ireland has risen by 27% in the first year of the operation of the protocol. The Irish sea border is harming our economy and undermining political stability in Northern Ireland. Next week, the people of Northern Ireland will go to the polls to elect an Assembly. What hope can the Prime Minister give them that the protocol will be removed and Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market will be restored?
I think the whole House will want to support the balance and symmetry of the Good Friday agreement. That is what really matters, and it is a great legacy for all of us. It is vital for the protocol—or the arrangements that we have in Northern Ireland—to command the support of all sides, and that is what this Government will undertake to ensure.
My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion for Mansfield and, indeed, the wider area. I am delighted that Mansfield was awarded £12 million as part of the towns fund. I cannot endorse any specific project, but the next round is coming up shortly and will be announced in the autumn.
Of course sexual harassment is intolerable, and it is quite right that Members should now have a procedure whereby they can bring it to the attention of the House authorities. I think that that is a good thing, and of course sexual harassment is grounds for dismissal.
I have known my hon. Friend for many years, and this is typical of his creativity. We will be looking at exactly how we could make that kind of measure work. I think it is important for us to proceed with care and get it right, and I will ensure that my hon. Friend has a meeting with the relevant Minister in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport as soon as possible.
I thank the hon. Lady very much; she is absolutely right to speak up for those who are shielding and who are anxious. We are doing everything we can to protect and reassure them. On Evusheld, we are evaluating it at the moment, but I will ensure that she has a meeting as soon as possible with the Department of Health.
Do I agree with my hon. Friend? There is not a syllable with which any sensible person in this country could possibly dissent.
I thank the hon. Gentleman very much. There is clearly an economic cost to the protocol. That is also now turning into a political problem, and an imbalance in sentiment about it. We need to rectify that balance for the sake of the Good Friday agreement, on which this country depends.
My hon. Friend is completely right about Eastleigh Borough Council and the debts it has run up. I cannot even see the leader of the Liberal Democrats in his place here. He is not even delivering value for money for his own constituents.
What we have done in just the last few months is put in £22 million to help people with the cost of living. I want to pay tribute to those businesses that are now trying to protect consumers from the impact of the global inflation crisis. The fact is that many, many businesses now have the cash reserves not to take prices, as they put it, but to shield consumers from the impact, and I hope that they do so.
I thank my right hon. Friend for what he and his Select Committee have been doing in this area to tighten the screw on Putin’s regime. UK companies have already shown that they think very carefully about investments and doing business with Putin’s Russia. As my right hon. Friend knows, we banned all new outward investment in Russia, but I am very happy to have a meeting as soon as possible to make sure these further ideas are transmitted to the Government.
I believe the Home Office has already made a statement about it. If there is any further comment to make, it will make a statement.
My hon. Friend is an avid champion for his constituents. He might have missed what I said earlier, but there are now 13,576 more police on the streets of this country as a result of the actions taken by this Government. There are also tougher sentences, which were opposed by the party opposite. We are cracking down on drugs gangs, whereas the Labour party is soft on drugs. I think the Leader of the Opposition said he would decriminalise drugs and that he did not want people found with class A drugs to face prison sentences—I think I heard him say that.
Of course, we are also cracking down on cross-channel gangs that risk the lives of migrants in the English channel. We are cracking down on them and, as far as I know, the Labour party would scrap the economic and migration partnership with Rwanda. We have a plan; they do not.
Some 4.5 million people pay for their gas and electricity through a prepayment meter. They are already paying more for their energy than direct debit customers, and the number of people who are disconnecting themselves because they have run out of money for the meter is increasing. What is the Prime Minister going to do to ensure that all our constituents have a right to light and warmth?
We are working with Ofgem and all the companies to ensure that we protect people at this difficult time. We are also making sure that we support people, and not just through the cold weather payment and the winter fuel payment. By giving £0.5 billion more to councils, we are making sure that we look after the types of people to whom the right hon. Gentleman refers, who are finding it particularly tough. We will do everything we can to shield the people of this country as we get through the aftershocks of covid and deal with a global inflation problem.
Within the past hour or so, it has been reported that some 287 Members of this House have been sanctioned by the Russian state. I am sure nobody here is rushing to change their summer holiday plans, but perhaps the Prime Minister will assure us that he will continue his excellent relationship with President Zelensky and continue to provide the Ukrainian people and military with the support they need.
It is no disrespect to those who have not been sanctioned when I say that all those 287 should regard it as a badge of honour. What we will do is keep up our robust and principled support for the Ukrainian people and for their right to protect their lives and families, and to defend themselves. That is what this country is doing and it has the overwhelming support of the whole House.
Today, a court has found that the Government acted unlawfully when their policies led to the discharge of untested patients from hospitals to care homes at the start of the pandemic. The court also found no evidence that the former Health Secretary addressed the issue of the risk to care home residents of such transmission, despite the Government insisting at the time that a “protective ring” had been thrown around care homes.
The Government have once again been found to have broken the law. Will the Prime Minister apologise to the families of the thousands and thousands of people who died in care homes in the first half of 2020? Will he also apologise to care workers for the shameful comment that he made in July 2020, when he said that
“too many care homes didn’t…follow…procedures in the way that they could have”?
Of course, I want to renew my apologies and sympathies to all those who lost loved ones during the pandemic—people who lost loved ones in care homes. I want to remind the House of what an incredibly difficult time that was and how difficult that decision was. We did not know very much about the disease. The point I was trying to make, to which the hon. Lady refers, is that the thing we did not know in particular was that covid could be transmitted asymptomatically in the way that it was. I wish we had known more about that at the time. As for the ruling she mentions, we will study it and of course respond further in due course.
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. As you have just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt), the Interfax news agency announced less than an hour ago, in Moscow, that the foreign ministry of the Russian Government will now sanction 287 Members and former Members of the House of Commons—from both sides of this House. I am proud to say that both you and I are on that list. Are you able to give any advice to right hon. and hon. Members of the House of Commons regarding this?
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberAs my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland remarked to the House earlier this morning, this Sunday marks a tragic day in our history, one of the darkest days of the troubles: the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. I echo his call to learn from the past, to reconcile and to build a shared, peaceful and prosperous future.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
I associate myself with the Prime Minister’s remarks on Bloody Sunday.
Did the Prime Minister agree to the Chancellor of the Exchequer writing off £4.3 billion of fraud? That is £154 from every household in the country that went directly into the pockets of fraudsters.
No, of course not. We do not support fraudsters or those who steal from the public purse, but what I can tell the hon. Lady is that everybody in this country should be very proud of the huge effort that was made by Lord Agnew and others to secure ventilators and personal protective equipment. At the time, Captain Hindsight and others were calling for us to go faster.
Yes, of course. I thank my hon. Friend, and I am pleased that so many of the volunteers and staff at George Eliot Hospital have been recognised in the Queen’s new year honours list. I have seen the medal that the hospital is proposing, and I think it is lovely. As I have told the House before, we are establishing a UK commission on covid commemoration to consider how we can commemorate everything that we have all been through, and the commission will also consider how we can recognise the courage of frontline workers.
We now come to the Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer.
I join the Prime Minister in his comments in relation to Bloody Sunday.
The ministerial code says that:
“Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation”.
Does the Prime Minister believe that applies to him?
Of course, but let me tell the House that I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman is inviting a question about an investigation on which, as you know, Mr Speaker, I cannot comment, and on which he, as a lawyer, will know that I cannot comment. What I am focused on is delivering the fastest recovery from covid of any European economy, the fastest booster roll-out, and 400,000 more people on the payrolls now than there were before the pandemic began. We are launching a policy tomorrow. The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about people being out of work—in my case, I understand why he wants it. We are launching a plan tomorrow to get half a million people off welfare and into work. It is a fantastic idea, and I hope he supports it.
I think the Prime Minister said yes, he agrees that the code does apply to him. Therefore, if he misled Parliament, he must resign.
On 1 December, the Prime Minister told this House from the Dispatch Box, in relation to parties during lockdown, that
“all guidance was followed completely in No. 10.”—[Official Report, 1 December 2021; Vol. 704, c. 909.]
He looks quizzical, but he said it. On 8 December, the Prime Minister told this House that
“I have been repeatedly assured since these allegations emerged that there was no party”.—[Official Report, 8 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 372.]
Since he acknowledges that the ministerial code applies to him, will he now resign?
No. But since the right hon. and learned Gentleman asks about covid restrictions, let me just remind the House and, indeed, the country that he has been relentlessly opportunistic throughout. He has flip-flopped from one side to the other. He would have kept us in lockdown in the summer. He would have taken us back into lockdown at Christmas. It is precisely because we did not listen to Captain Hindsight that we have the fastest-growing economy in the G7, and we have got all the big calls right.
This is the guy who said that, in hindsight, he now appreciates it was a party. We have discovered the real Captain Hindsight, have we not? Let me spell out the—[Interruption.] They shout now, but they are going to have to go out and defend some of this nonsense. Let me spell out the significance of yesterday’s developments. Sue Gray reported the matter to the police, having found evidence of behaviour that is potentially a criminal offence. Prime Minister, if you do not understand the significance of what happened yesterday, I really do despair. The police, having got that material from Sue Gray, subjected it to a test to decide whether to investigate. That test was whether it was the “most serious and flagrant” type of breach in the rules. The police spelled out what they meant by that: that those involved knew, or ought to have known, that what they were doing was an offence and that there was “little ambiguity” about the
“absence of any reasonable defence”.
Does the Prime Minister—[Interruption.]
Having got the material from Sue Gray, the police had to take a decision as to whether what they had before them were the “most serious and flagrant” types of breaches of the rules—[Interruption.] If Members want to laugh at that, they can laugh. The police spelled out what they meant. They decided, from the material that they already had, that those involved knew, or ought to have known, that what they were doing was an offence, and that there was “little ambiguity” around the
“absence of any reasonable defence”.
Does the Prime Minister really not understand the damage his behaviour is doing to our country?
I hope the right hon. and learned Gentleman understands that, although the issue he raises is important, there is simply no way—as he knows, as a lawyer—that I can comment on the investigation that is currently taking place. He talks about the most serious issue before the public and the world today. It is almost as though he was in ignorance of the fact that we have a crisis on the borders of Ukraine. I can tell him that in the Cabinet Room of this country, the UK Government are bringing the west together. Led by this Government and this Prime Minister and our Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary, we are bringing the west together to have the toughest possible package of sanctions to deter President Putin from what I think would be a reckless and catastrophic invasion. That is what this Government are doing. We are getting on with the job, and I think he needs to raise his game, frankly.
The Prime Minister’s continual defence is, “Wait for the Sue Gray report.” On 8 December, he told this House:
“I will place a copy of the…report in the Library of the House of Commons.”—[Official Report, 8 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 374.]
His spokesperson has repeatedly stated that that means the full report—not parts of the report, not a summary of the report and not an edited copy—so can the Prime Minister confirm that he will publish the full Sue Gray report as he receives it?
What I can tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman is that we have to leave the report to the independent investigator, as he knows. When I receive it, of course I will do exactly what I said. In the meantime, the people of this country want to hear what we are doing to tackle the issues that matter to all of us: fixing the cost of living; helping people across the country by lifting the living wage; helping people with their fuel costs, as this Government are doing; and cutting the tax of people on universal credit by £1,000. The party opposite is committed to abolishing universal credit. That is their policy.
Cutting the tax? [Laughter.]
The police say the evidence meets the test. Frankly, the public have made up their minds. They know the Prime Minister is not fit for the job. That is what really matters here. Throughout this scandal, the Tories have done immense damage to public trust. When the leader of the Scottish Conservatives said that the Prime Minister should resign, the Leader of the House called him “a lightweight”—English Conservatives publicly undermining the Union by treating Scotland with utter disdain. How much damage are the Prime Minister and his Cabinet prepared to do to save his skin?
Well, I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman was offering yet more general criticism of what has been going on in Downing Street, so let me just remind the House of what has been going on in Downing Street. We have been prioritising the covid backlogs, investing massively in 9 million more scans, so that people get the treatment that they need and that they have been waiting for, and making sure that we have 44,000 more people in our—[Interruption.] They say it is rubbish, but they did not vote for it; they do not support it. We have 44,000 more people in our NHS now than in 2020, and we are fixing social care, which Governments have neglected for decades, with Labour doing absolutely nothing. They have no plan at all to fix the NHS or to fix social care. Vote Labour, wait longer.
The reality is that we now have the shameful spectacle of a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom being subject to a police investigation, unable to lead the country and incapable of doing the right thing. Every day his Cabinet fail to speak out, they become more and more complicit. What is utterly damning, despite the huff and puff, is that this is all happening when petrol prices, the weekly shop and energy bills are going through the roof. Three months ago, Labour suggested cutting VAT from energy bills. Still the Government have failed to act. Instead of getting on with their jobs, they are wheeled out to save his. Whatever he says in his statement later today or tomorrow will not change the facts. Is this not a Prime Minister and a Government who have shown nothing but contempt for the decency, honesty and respect that define this country?
No, we love this country and we are doing everything in our power to help this country. Of course he wants me out of the way. He does, and—I will not deny it—for all sorts of reasons many people may want me out of the way, but the reason he wants me out of the way is that he knows that this Government can be trusted to deliver, and we did. We delivered on Brexit. He voted 48 times to take this country back into the European Union. We delivered the fastest vaccine roll-out in Europe, and we will deliver on our plan to unite and level up across the whole of the UK.
Crime down 10%, job vacancies at a record high, colossal investment—we are delivering, and Labour has no plan. Tech investment in this country is three times that in France, and twice as much as Germany. We have a vision for this country as the most prosperous and successful economy in Europe, because we are going to unite and level up. The problem with the Labour party today is that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is lawyer, not a leader. That is the truth—
Order. I cannot hear what the Prime Minister has to say. He is the Prime Minister from the Government side, so I am surprised that that side does not want to listen to him, because I do.
Mr Speaker, I only wanted to add the point that we have taken the tough decisions, we have got the big calls right and we are, and in particular I am, getting on with the job.
I thank my hon. Friend very much, and what pleasure it gives me to address the Member for Clwyd South, where I tried unsuccessfully so many years ago. I am delighted that a Conservative Government are now investing so massively in levelling up in Clwyd South and across the whole of Wales.
We now come to the leader of the Scottish National party, Ian Blackford.
Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I associate myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister about Bloody Sunday?
I am sure that you and the entire House will want to commemorate tomorrow Holocaust Memorial Day, when we remember the 6 million Jews who lost their lives at the hands of the regime of Hitler, and of course, we remember other genocides, not least more recently in Bosnia—we all pray for continued peace in that country.
At the heart of this matter, we have a Prime Minister who is being investigated by the police for breaking his own laws—it is absolutely unprecedented. This is a man who demeans the office of Prime Minister. This is the latest in a rap sheet that is already a mile long: illegally proroguing Parliament; misleading the House; decorating with dodgy cash; and partying while the public suffered. Every moment he stays, he is dragging out the agony for families who remind him of the sacrifices they made and dragging his party further through the dirt. The public know it, the House knows it, even his own MPs know it—when will the Prime Minister cop on and go?
I want to join the right hon. Gentleman and echo his sentiments about Holocaust Memorial Day, where I think he is completely right.
I must say that the right hon. Gentleman made the same point last week, and he was wrong then and he is wrong now. It is precisely because I enjoy co-operating with him so much, and with all his Scottish colleagues, that I have absolutely no intention of doing what he suggests.
Every moment that the Prime Minister lingers, every nick in this death by a thousand cuts, is sucking attention from the real issues facing the public; Tory cuts, Brexit and the soaring cost of living have pushed millions of families into poverty. The impending national insurance tax hike hangs like a guillotine, while they eat cake. This is nothing short of a crisis, and the only route out—the only route to restore public trust—is for the Prime Minister to go. How much longer will Tory MPs let this go on for? How much more damage are they willing to do? It is time to get this over with—show the Prime Minister the door!
I do not know who has been eating more cake. [Interruption.] People do not get this, but behind the scenes the right hon. Gentleman and I co-operate well, and I want to continue to do so.
I once had a memorable swim in the Wye—I think at about 5 o’clock in the morning—and it tasted like nectar. I understand the problems that my right hon. Friend raises: it is important that our beautiful rivers should be clean. My right hon. Friend the Environment Minister will visit the Wye area shortly, with or without his swimming trunks, and we are urging the Welsh Government to take the matter as seriously as this Government are.
The Prime Minister will know that many families throughout the United Kingdom are struggling with the increased cost of living and rising energy costs, but in Northern Ireland that is compounded by the protocol. The cost of bringing goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland has increased by 27%—when we can get access to those goods. It is costing business £2.5 million every day, which is almost £1 billion a year. That is the cost of the protocol. The Prime Minister talks about uniting this nation and levelling up; he could do that by removing the Irish sea border and fully restoring Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market.
I support passionately the right hon. Gentleman’s indignation. Yes, I never thought, when we negotiated, that it would mean 200 businesses would stop supplying Northern Ireland, foods being blocked and Christmas cards being surcharged. Frankly, the EU is implementing the protocol in an insane and pettifogging way. We need to sort it out and I completely support what the right hon. Gentleman says.
Yes, my right hon. Friend is completely right, and I welcome the report by his Committee. This Government are going further and faster than any other Government hitherto to protect and improve the health of our rivers and seas.
I am afraid the hon. Gentleman, in everything he said just now, plainly does not know what he is talking about. What I can tell him and his constituents is that, irrespective of what they want to focus on—and I understand why they do—this Government are going to get on with the job and deliver for the people of this country.
I really cannot improve on that brilliant question. The people of South East Cornwall are lucky to have my hon. Friend as their representative, and she is right in what she says.
I thank the hon. Member for drawing this appalling case to the attention of the House. I can certainly assure him that he will be getting the meeting that he needs at the earliest opportunity.
I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has the meeting he wanted. We have already changed the law to allow doctors to prescribe cannabis products where clinically appropriate, but we are very keen to support this, provided that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is happy as well.
The hon. Lady talks about racism and Islamophobia. She should look at this Government; look at the modern Conservative party. We are the party of hope and opportunity for people across this country, irrespective of race or religion. We do not care what religion people affirm. All we care about is whether they are interested in ideas of aspiration and opportunity; that is what we are about.
My right hon. Friend the policing Minister has assured me that we will be introducing a new funding formula before the end of the Parliament, but I am pleased that Bedfordshire police have already recruited 100 additional officers as part of our uplift programme. That is part of the 11,000 more officers that this Government have put on the streets.
There has never in the history of this country been such a bonanza for buses. I am personally a bus fanatic. We are putting £5 billion into buses and cycling during this Parliament, and there is £355 million of new funding for zero-emission buses—and yes of course we want to see the benefits of that funding spread right across the whole of the United Kingdom.
What a joy it is to welcome my hon. Friend to his place; the joy seems a bit confined on the Opposition Benches. I thank him for his work and support for everybody at Queen Mary’s Hospital, which he and I campaigned for, for many years. Last year Queen Mary’s received £800,000 of funding and I hope that it will benefit further from the £1 million funding awarded to Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust to improve technology services across its estate.
I do not think there was a question there. There was an invitation for me to do what of course the Labour party wants me to do, but I am not going to do it. We are going to carry on with our agenda of uniting and levelling up across the country, and they fundamentally know that they have no answer to that. We have a plan and a vision for this country; they have absolutely nothing to say, and that is the difference between our side and their side.
I thank my hon. Friend. The Chinese military flights that have taken place near Taiwan in recent days are not conducive to peace and stability in the region. What we need is a peaceful and constructive dialogue by people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. I know that that is what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and all colleagues are working for.
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberThis morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, during which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor updated the Cabinet on how the Government’s plan for jobs is working, with higher wages, higher skills and rising productivity. He will make a statement to the House shortly setting out how we will build a new age of optimism. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
I very much welcome the A66 northern trans-Pennine project from Penrith to Scotch Corner. That £1 billion investment will improve safety and congestion and help to level up our region, supporting jobs, essential services and tourism, but we have to get the project right. Will my right hon. Friend ask his Department for Transport, Ministry of Defence and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to work together pragmatically and reasonably with suggested route amendments to ensure that local communities such as Warcop, Musgrave and Sandford are not left blighted by the current plans?
My hon. Friend is right that the development that he refers to is part of an infrastructure revolution that I think will transform the country, but he is also right that we should consider local feedback from stakeholders and the community when finalising the design, and so we will.
Unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition is isolating, so I call Ed Miliband to ask the questions on behalf of the Opposition.
I want to reassure both sides of the House: it is one time only that I am back. [Laughter.]
We all need the vital COP26 summit in Glasgow to deliver next week, because failing to limit global warming to 1.5° will have devastating consequences for our planet. That goal is shared across the House. Does the Prime Minister agree that, to keep the goal of 1.5° alive, we need to roughly halve global emissions in this decisive decade?
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his place. I think the whole House extends its sympathies to the Leader of the Opposition. I hope he returns soon.
It is, of course, correct that COP26 is both unbelievably important for our planet but also very difficult. It is in the balance. The right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) is right in what he says about the need to keep 1.5° alive. It depends on what happens this decade and it depends on the commitments that are made. All I will say is that, under the UK presidency-designate of COP26, very substantial commitments have already been achieved. We have moved from only 30% of the global economy committed to net zero by the middle of the century to now 80%. Every day, as I talk to international leaders, we hear further commitments to make those solid commitments that the world will need. Whether it is enough, I am afraid it is too early to say.
I applaud the efforts of the UK presidency under the COP26 President-designate, the right hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma). However, I want to direct the Prime Minister’s attention to the issue of this decade. I will come to net zero targets for the middle of the century in a moment, but yesterday he will know that a very important report came out from the United Nations, the United Nations Environment Programme “Emissions Gap” report. On the eve of COP, it warned that far from halving global emissions this decade, we are on course to reduce them by only about 7.5%. Does the Prime Minister acknowledge, because this is crucial for what happens at Glasgow and after Glasgow, how far away we are from the action required in this 10-year period?
Indeed I do, but what I think the House should also recognise is how far we have moved in the space of a few years since the Paris COP summit of 2015, where, as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will remember, the world agreed to net zero by 2100, by the end of the century, and agreed to try to restrain global warming by 4°. We are now trying to keep alive the prospect of restricting that growth to 1.5°. Every day, countries are coming through with solid commitments on stopping the output of coal-fired power stations, reducing their use of internal combustion engines, planting millions of trees and investing hundreds of billions of pounds in the developing world. Those are solid commitments. Whether they will be enough, I am afraid it is still too early to say.
I will just correct the Prime Minister on one point: it was the second half of the century that was set out in Paris, not 2100 for net zero. Here is the problem on the question of net zero targets for the middle of the century: it is easy to make promises for 30 years’ time; it is much more difficult to act now. Australia recently announced a 2050 net zero target, but its 2030 target would head the world towards approximately 4° of global warming. Can I urge him not to shift the goalposts when it comes to Glasgow? It is about the emergency we face this decade. It is about the nationally determined contributions this decade. Please keep the focus on 2030, not 2050 and beyond.
The focus is certainly on 2030. We have 122 nationally determined contributions already, and 17 out of 20 G20 countries have made NDCs. The commitments are coming through. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that we need to keep the pressure up. What you cannot do is go in advance of what is truly practicable for the world economy and for what people can do. The Government will go as fast as we possibly can. Labour’s plans, which I think he endorsed, were condemned by the GMB union—its paymasters—for meaning that it would be confiscating people’s cars by 2030 and that families would be allowed only one aeroplane flight every five years.
Let me tell the Prime Minister that what this summit needs is statesmanship, not partisanship, which is what we have just heard from him. He should not be trying to score party political points on such an important issue facing our country and our world. That is never the way I did PMQs. [Laughter.] Let me ask him about the crucial issue of climate finance for developing countries. The reason the Paris summit succeeded was that there was a coalition of vulnerable countries and developed countries that put pressure on all the big emitters, including China and India. The problem is that the world has not delivered on the $100 billion of finance promised more than a decade ago in Copenhagen. The plan is to deliver it maybe in 2023. But I want to ask him about his actions. Has it not made it much harder to deliver on that promise that we are the only G7 country to cut the aid budget in the run-up to this crucial summit?
I thought we were not going to have any partisan points. That did not last long. Actually, one of the first things I did as Prime Minister was go out to my first United Nations General Assembly as Prime Minister and announce a huge £11.6 billion commitment from the UK to help the developed world to tackle climate change. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, yes, of course it is true— [Interruption.] We have not cut that; we have not cut that, Mr Speaker. We are keeping that investment.
Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman that this country is working flat out to ensure that we do reach the £100 billion commitment from the whole of the world. We are seeing the money come in from the United States, from the Italians, from the French and from the European Union, and it is quite right that it should. We have a way to go. Whether we will get there or not, I cannot say—it is in the balance—but the challenge is there for the leaders of the developed world. I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman that they need to rise to it.
It is one thing for the Prime Minister not to know what is in the Paris agreement, but another for him not to know what is in his own Budget. He has cut the aid budget; of course he has cut the aid budget. He has abandoned the bipartisan belief in the aid budget across both these Houses, but it is not just on aid where the Government face both ways. They have a trade deal with Australia where they have allowed the Australians to drop their temperature commitments. They are telling others to power past coal while flirting with a new coal mine, and they are saying that we have to move beyond fossil fuels but open the new Cambo oilfield. Is not the truth that the Prime Minister has undermined his own COP presidency by saying one thing and doing another?
No, Mr Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman is completely wrong, and I think he should withdraw what he has just said about the £11.6 billion, because we remain absolutely committed to the £11.6 billion that we are investing to tackle climate change around the world. That is absolutely rock solid.
The right hon. Gentleman talks about Australia. I talked to the Prime Minister of Australia only recently, and Australia has just, with great difficulty, made the commitment to get to net zero by 2050. It is a great thing. I talked yesterday to our Indonesian friends. For instance, Joko Widodo, a good friend of this country, has agreed on coal to bring forward the abolition of coal use in Indonesia to 2040—a fantastic effort by the Indonesians. I talked to President Putin—I think it was yesterday—and he confirmed his determination to get to net zero by the middle of the century. That is what the UK is doing: working with countries around the world to get the outcome we want. It is still too early to say whether that will succeed. It is in the balance.
The thing the Prime Minister has underestimated throughout these last two years is the fact that COP26 is not a glorified photo opportunity; it is a fragile and complex negotiation. The problem is that the Prime Minister’s boosterism will not cut carbon emissions in half. Photo opportunities will not cut carbon emissions in half. I say to the Prime Minister that in these final days before COP26, we need more than warm words. Above all, Glasgow has to be a summit of climate delivery, not climate delay.
The right hon. Gentleman talks about cutting CO2 in half. Well, that is virtually what this country—this Government—has done. Since 1990, we have cut CO2 by 44% and the economy has grown by 78%. That is our approach—a sensible, pragmatic Conservative approach that cuts CO2, that tackles climate change and that delivers high-wage, high-skilled jobs across this country. Our net zero plan will deliver 440,000 jobs. That is what the people of this country want to see, and that is what they are seeing. They are seeing wages up, they are seeing growth up, they are seeing productivity up under this Government. If we had left it to the Leader of the Opposition, who is sadly not in his place, we would still be in lockdown. That is a point that the right hon. Gentleman might bring to the attention of the Leader of the Opposition, wherever he is currently self-isolating.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about Wolverhampton; that is why we are working flat out to ensure that young people in Wolverhampton benefit from the kickstart scheme, and we are working with City of Wolverhampton Council to ensure that young people get bespoke support for their return to work.
I am sure that the thoughts and prayers of the entire House will be with Walter Smith—the legend that was the Rangers, Dundee United and Scotland manager—who sadly passed away yesterday. Many of us will not forget the day he led us to victory over France at Hampden.
Naturally, most of today’s focus and attention will turn to the Chancellor’s Budget after Prime Minister’s questions, but before we turn to domestic matters, I think that it is right and important to raise the dire humanitarian situation that is developing in Afghanistan. The World Food Programme estimates that more than half the population—about 22.8 million people—face acute food insecurity, and 3.2 million children under five could suffer acute malnutrition.
Given the history of the past 20 years, it should be obvious that we have a deep responsibility to the country and its people. They are dying, and they need our help. It has only been two months since the allied forces relinquished control of the country, so can the Prime Minister update us on what exactly his Government are doing to end the famine in Afghanistan?
The right hon. Gentleman raises an issue that I know is on the mind of many people in this House and across the country. We are proud of what we have done to welcome people from Afghanistan, but we must do everything we can also to mitigate the consequences, for the people of Afghanistan, of the Taliban takeover.
What we did, as the right hon. Gentleman will recall, was double our aid commitment for this year to £286 million. We are working with the UN agencies and other non-governmental organisations to do everything we can to help the people of Afghanistan. What we cannot do at the moment is write a completely blank cheque to the Taliban Government or the Taliban authorities. We need to ensure that that country does not slip back into being a haven for terrorism and a narco-state.
The fact is that there is a humanitarian crisis and people are in need today. There was nothing there about tangible actions that the Government are taking on the ground now.
The situation is getting worse by the day. In August, the allies ran away from their responsibilities in Afghanistan, and now it very much feels as if this Government are washing their hands of the legacy that they left behind. Not only are the Afghan people being failed on humanitarian aid, but promises made to them on resettlement are being broken. When the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme was announced on 18 August, the Government talked about resettling
“up to 20,000 over the coming years”,
but, more than two months on, we have heard nothing. The Afghan people are being left with no updates and with vague targets.
Can the Prime Minister finally tell us when the resettlement scheme will open? Can he guarantee that 20,000 Afghans will be resettled? When exactly is the deadline for that to happen?
We made a commitment to resettle 20,000 Afghans in addition to those whom we brought out under Operation Pitting, which I think most fair-minded people in this country would think was a pretty remarkable feat by UK armed services. Many of those 15,000 are already being integrated into the UK, into schools and into communities, and we will help them in any way we can.
I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman is completely wrong in his characterisation of the stance that the UK has taken towards Afghanistan and the changes there. We continue to engage. We engage with the Taliban; this country was one of the first to reach out and begin a dialogue. What we are insisting on—
What about the resettlement scheme? Answer the question!
Just to get to the right hon. Gentleman’s point—while he rather uncivilly calls out—what we are insisting on is safe passage for those who wish to come and settle in this country, for people to whom we owe an obligation, and that is what we are doing.
My only question is, why is it only National Cheese Toastie Day? Why is it not International Cheese Toastie Day? I hope very much that among its many other achievements, the COP26 summit will bring the entire global community to a better understanding of the Wyke Farms carbon-neutral cheese toastie.
The Prime Minister will be aware of the harm that the Northern Ireland protocol is doing to the political and economic stability of Northern Ireland and the very delicate constitutional balance created by the Belfast or Good Friday agreement. In the Command Paper published by the Government in July, they committed themselves to addressing these issues, and recognised that the protocol was simply not sustainable. Does the Prime Minister accept that the conditions now exist to trigger article 16 of the protocol in the event that the current negotiations with the European Union fail to arrive at an acceptable outcome?
The right hon. Gentleman is completely right, I am sad to say. We are working hard to secure an agreement by negotiation, but we need to see real progress, because, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, the real-life issues on the ground in Northern Ireland have not gone away. As we have been saying for some months, if we cannot see progress—rapid progress—in the way that we spelt out in our Command Paper, I think it will be clear to everybody that the conditions for invoking article 16 have already been met.
My hon. Friend—indeed, the whole House—will be hearing more about the spending for health in just a few moments, but I can tell him that we have received 120 applications for the biggest hospital building programme in a generation, and that his application will certainly be among those that will receive our most urgent consideration.
The reports of spiking are extremely disturbing, and as the hon. Lady knows, it is already a criminal offence. I know that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has asked the police to update her on exactly what details they have and what is happening. She wants to give them the space, for the time being, to conduct their inquiries into what is going on, but I would ask everybody with information about such incidents to come forward and contact their local police.
With COP26 imminent, I would like to draw the Prime Minister’s attention to the good work that is being done in Morecambe on the Eden Project. Wes Johnson at Morecambe and Lancaster College has put forward a programme to teach youngsters in Morecambe the international Eden ethos, in order to, shall we say, propagate the goodwill around the world. I would like to invite the Prime Minister to come to the Morecambe riviera to see the Eden Project site at his earliest convenience.
I am delighted to respond in the affirmative to my hon. Friend, because the last time he asked me about this it was to ensure that we got an Eden Project in Morecambe. It sounds from what he is saying that we are making progress in that direction, and that is thrilling.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, but the reality is that of course we monitor all the data very carefully every day. We see nothing to suggest that we need to deviate from the plan we have set out that began with the road map in February, that we are sticking to, and that has given business and this country the ability to get on and achieve the unlockings that we have seen and indeed the fastest economic growth in the G7.
My constituent Sophia Dady has composed a song about the positive action we can each take to combat climate change, which emphasises the need to “clean, repair and protect”. Will the Prime Minister join me in encouraging all UK schools to follow the lead of Fairfield Prep School in Loughborough and other schools across the world from Hawaii to Norway in raising awareness of this important issue through learning the song?
Well, yes—do I have to learn the song? I will do my best. I thank my hon. Friend for raising the work of her constituents and her constituents’ school. It is absolutely vital that we not only recycle where sensible but cut down on the use of plastics.
All our donations are registered in the normal way. I would just remind the hon. Lady that the Labour party’s paymasters, the GMB, think that Labour’s policies mean that no families would be able to take more than one flight every five years and that they would have their cars confiscated.
This week is UK Wind Week, and later this afternoon I will be welcoming some young people from my constituency who see their futures in the renewable energy sector that has done so much to level up the Grimsby, Cleethorpes and north-east Lincolnshire area. Will the Prime Minister give an assurance that the Government will continue to invest in the skills and development of our young people in order to benefit the renewable energy sector?
Yes, and I think the whole House should be proud of the fact that the UK still produces more offshore wind—[Interruption.] Not hot air, but energy for the people of this country. It is clean, green energy produced off Cleethorpes in the North sea, and we are going to be massively increasing the volume of that output.
The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point about the high energy costs for energy-intensive industries, and that is why we have abated them with about £2 billion since 2013. The answer is to do what we are doing, which is to make up the long-term baseload needs of this economy by investing in nuclear, as I am afraid Labour failed to do in its 13 lost years, and in renewables.
(3 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberIt will be three years tomorrow since a chemical weapon was deployed by Russian military intelligence on the streets of Salisbury. All our thoughts remain with those affected, their families and loved ones, and we will continue to seek justice for them. I am sure this House will want to pay tribute to the people of Salisbury and Amesbury, and wish them well for the future.
This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Liverpool is a welcoming city, with the oldest Chinese community in Europe, but in 1946 the British Government ordered the forced repatriation back to China of thousands of Chinese seamen who were living in Liverpool with their British families, causing lasting emotional trauma. Many of their descendants still live in my Liverpool, Riverside constituency. Will the Prime Minister take steps to acknowledge these events, and provide the descendants with a formal apology and the justice they deserve?
I have happy memories of my own visits to Liverpool, and I can tell the hon. Member—[Interruption.] I can tell her that we are certainly very grateful across the country to the Chinese community for their amazing contribution. Her message has been heard loud and clear.
Of course, I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for what he says. He will hear more in just half an hour or so—let us try to keep it to half an hour, Mr Speaker—from the Chancellor about how exactly we intend to make sure we build back better across the whole of this country and unleash the tremendous potential of the whole of the United Kingdom, including of course Carlisle, which he so well represents.
I join the Prime Minister in his comments about the Salisbury atrocity.
Does the Prime Minister agree with President Biden that the sale of arms which could be used in the war in Yemen should be suspended?
Ever since the tragic conflict in Yemen broke out, this country has scrupulously followed the consolidated guidance, of which the right hon. and learned Gentleman will be well aware.
The trouble is that, while President Biden has suspended arms sales that could be used in Yemen, the UK has not. In fact, we sold £1.4 billion-worth of arms to Saudi Arabia in three months last year, including bombs and missiles that could be used in Yemen. Given everything we know about the appalling humanitarian cost of this war, with innocent civilians caught between the Saudi coalition and the Houthi rebels, why does the Prime Minister think it is right to be selling these weapons?
The UK is part of an international coalition following the UN resolutions, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman will know well and which are very clear that the legitimate Government of Yemen were removed illegally. Those are the resolutions that we follow, and we continue scrupulously to follow the humanitarian guidance—among the toughest measures anywhere in the world—in respect of all arms sales. He talks about humanitarian relief, and actually I think the people of this country can be hugely proud of what we are doing to support the people of Yemen: almost £1 billion of aid contributed in the past five years.
The Prime Minister says the system is very robust in relation to arms sales. It cannot be that robust: the Government lost a court case just two years ago in relation to arms sales. The truth is that the UK is increasingly isolated in selling arms to Saudi Arabia, despite what is happening in Yemen, despite Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, and despite the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—a murder the US has concluded was approved by the Saudi Crown Prince. So I have to ask: what will it take for the Prime Minister to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia?
We condemn the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. We continue to call for a full independent investigation into the causes of his death, and indeed we have already sanctioned 20 people in Saudi Arabia. I repeat the point that I have made that the UK Government continue to follow the consolidated guidance, which, by the way, was set up by the Labour party.
To make matters worse, the Government decided this week to halve international aid to Yemen—to halve it. The United Nations has said that Yemen faces the worst famine the world has seen for decades, and the Secretary-General said on Monday that cutting aid would be a “death sentence” for the people of Yemen. How on earth can the Prime Minister justify selling arms to Saudi Arabia and cutting aid to people starving in Yemen?
It is under this Government that we have increased aid spending to the highest proportion in the history of our country, and, yes, it is true that current straitened circumstances, which I am sure the people of this country understand, mean that temporarily we must reduce aid spending, but that does not obscure the fact that when it comes to our duty to the people of Yemen we continue to step up to the plate: a contribution of £214 million for this financial year. There are very few other countries in the world that have such a record and that are setting such an example in spending and supporting the people of Yemen.
This week the Government halved our international aid to Yemen. If this is what the Prime Minister thinks global Britain should look like, he should think again, and if he does not believe me—if he does not like it from me or the UN Secretary-General—he should listen to his own MPs. Just this morning, the Conservative MP the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) said:
“Cutting support to starving children is not what Global Britain should be about. It undermines the very idea of the UK as a nation to be respected on a global stage.”
The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said this was “unconscionable”. Will the Prime Minister now do the right thing and reconsider this urgently?
I repeat: we have given £1 billion since the conflict began; we are in support of UN resolutions; this year we are contributing another £214 million to support the people of Yemen. There are very few other countries in the world that have that kind of record. In these tough, straitened circumstances, bearing in mind the immense cost of the covid epidemic that has affected our country, I think the people of this country should be very, very proud of what we are doing.
Britain should be a moral force for good in the world, but just as the US is stepping up, the UK is stepping back. If the Prime Minister and Chancellor are so determined to press ahead with their manifesto-breaking cuts to international aid—cutting the budget to 0.5%—they should at least put that to a vote in this House. Will he have the courage to do so?
We are going to get on with our agenda of delivering for the people of this country and spending more than virtually any other country in the world—by the way, spending more, still, than virtually any other country in the G7—on aid. It is a record of which this country can be proud. Given the difficulties that this country faces, I think that the people of this country will think that we have got our priorities right.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman cannot work out what his priorities are. One minute he is backing us on the road map; the next week he is turning his back on us. He cannot even address a question on the issues of the hour. He could have asked anything about the coronavirus pandemic; instead, he has consecrated his questions entirely to the interests of the people of Yemen. We are doing everything we can to support the people of Yemen given the constraints that we face. We are getting on with a cautious but irreversible road map to freedom, which I hope that he will support. Very shortly, Mr Speaker, you will be hearing a Budget for recovery.
I thank my right hon. Friend, and of course we will support all civil servants. By the way, I thank them for the work that they have done up and down the country throughout the pandemic. I think everybody in this House would agree that now is the time, really, for our civil service to focus on working together to build back better together, rather than on measures that might divide our country.
May I associate myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister on the terrible atrocity three years ago in the town of Salisbury?
The situation in Yemen has been called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. One hundred thousand people have been killed, 16.2 million are at risk of starvation, and 2.3 million children, Prime Minister, are at death’s door, facing acute malnutrition. The UK Government’s response is not one of compassion; instead, it is to impose cuts. That is what you are doing, Prime Minister—a 50% cut to international aid to Yemen, a move that the UN chief, António Guterres, has described as “a death sentence”.
Since the start of the war, the Tories have shamefully backed the Saudi regime through billions of pounds of arms sales and support, despite evidence of war crimes and of the targeting of civilians. Will the Prime Minister confirm that today’s Budget will force through the devastating cuts to international aid?
I think anybody listening to this debate will have heard me say that this country—this Government—in the last five years has given £1 billion to support the people of Yemen. I can tell the right hon. Gentleman, in case he thinks there is any diminution of our efforts, that on Monday we are going to provide cash support to 1.5 million of the most vulnerable Yemeni households, support 400 health clinics and treat 75,000 cases of severe malnutrition. That is the continuing effort of the British people and the British Government to help the people of Yemen.
The reality is a 50% cut to Yemen aid at a time of a global pandemic. The coronavirus has hit poor and vulnerable countries the hardest, threatening decades of hard-won gains while exacerbating existing inequalities. During his leadership race, the Prime Minister made a commitment to stand by 0.7% for aid spending, a position he reaffirmed in June last year at that very Dispatch Box. What followed was yet another U-turn—another broken promise. Why is the Prime Minister breaking his own manifesto commitment, and why are his Government breaking the promises they made to the world’s poorest?
I think most people in this country will know that the Government have given £280 billion to support the people, the economy, the livelihoods and the businesses up and down the whole of the United Kingdom. That has, as you will hear from the Chancellor, Mr Speaker, placed strains on our public finances. In the meantime, we continue to do everything we possibly can to support the people of Yemen, including, by the way, through a massive vaccination programme, to which the people of this country have contributed £548 million—the second biggest contributor in the world.
Indeed. We will protect our vital green belt, which I think constitutes 12.4% of our land. We can build our homes as my hon. Friend rightly suggests—300,000 of them on brownfield sites across the country.
We are now in the third month of the Northern Ireland protocol and we are fast approaching the end of the three-month grace period. The Prime Minister will be aware of the disruption the protocol is causing to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the damage it is doing to the stability of the political institutions established under the Belfast agreement. What action does the Prime Minister intend to take to deliver on his promise to protect Northern Ireland’s position within the UK internal market and provide us with unfettered access to goods from Great Britain?
The position of Northern Ireland within the UK internal market is rock solid and guaranteed. We are making sure that we underscore that with some temporary operational easings in order to protect the market in some areas, such as food supplies, pending further discussions with the EU. As I have said to the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, we leave nothing off the table to ensure that we get this right.
My hon. Friend is completely right. I thank her again, by the way, for her amazing service in the NHS in Wrexham and in returning to the frontline. It was at Wockhardt in Wrexham that I met young female scientists who are helping to make the vaccine that will not only free our country, we hope, from the captivity of covid, but help to liberate the entire world. It was wonderful to see it happening in Wrexham. We want to see many more young female scientists growing up in that part of the world.
With great respect to the hon. Member, what the country needs are councillors who charge you less while delivering better services. If we look across the country, we can see that it is overwhelmingly Conservative-run councils that do that. The right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) laughs. Westminster has kept council tax low. In Camden where he lives, it is three times as high. That is the difference.
I sympathise very much with Luke’s family and his friends, and there is nothing I can say that will alleviate their loss. But what we are doing is recruiting many more police officers to fight crime, rolling up the county lines drugs gangs wherever we can and setting out plans to keep serious sexual and violent offenders behind bars for longer. I can tell the House that we now have 6,620 of our target extra 20,000 police already recruited.
I was delighted to hear a sort of acceptance there that the hon. Gentleman is running a nationalist party, if that is what he was saying, because I am afraid I agree with that; they are not in respect of the whole of this country. But I think that most people will think it extraordinary that they are talking about another referendum—the Labour Chief Whip is nodding quite rightly—when, actually, what the people of this country want to see is us working together as one United Kingdom without further constitutional upheaval, to get through the pandemic and build back better.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her campaign. It was great to be in Accrington and I hope that she will be hearing even more shortly from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor about what we can do to support the towns fund and other measures to help Accrington and places across the whole country.
We are now heading up to Amy Callaghan, who I welcome back again—good to see you.
Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I would like to thank you and Members across the House, including the Prime Minister, for your well wishes during my illness.
The Prime Minister previously guaranteed that there was no threat to the Erasmus scheme as a result of Brexit. We now know that charities such as STAND International in my constituency that participate in the programme are set to lose 96% of their funding as a result of the UK Government’s decision to pull the plug on Erasmus+. Can the Prime Minister guarantee that charities will receive match funding under the new Turing scheme, and will he agree to meet me and representatives from STAND International to ensure that no young person in East Dunbartonshire gets left behind as a result of Brexit?
I am sure I speak for everybody when I say how much I welcome the hon. Lady back to PMQs—it is great to see her back. I do give her that assurance, and I think the Turing scheme will be better and will deliver exactly what she wants. If there was a criticism of the Erasmus scheme, it tended to favour higher-income households. We will do everything that we can with the Turing scheme to reach out to give opportunity to people from disadvantaged backgrounds. That is what we intend to do.
My right hon. Friend is completely right to continue to raise the case of Harry Dunn, and we sympathise deeply with his family. It is a case that we continue to raise with the highest level, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has only just raised it with Tony Blinken, the US Secretary of State.
Rhondda Cynon Taf, where my constituency is located, has the third highest covid death rate in the UK, due mainly to inequality, poverty and chronic underfunding. This UK Government have an appalling record on providing Wales with even a fair share of UK spending, let alone the funding needed to level up. Eleven years of Tory austerity cuts have destroyed the capacity of our public services to withstand the pandemic, and now they plan to bypass the democratic structures in Wales. My constituent Lyndon has a question for the Prime Minister. What will it take for him to stop ignoring the south Wales valleys?
I am afraid I disagree profoundly with the implication of what the hon. Lady is saying—and indeed with what her constituent Lyndon is, by implication, asking—because this Government continue to give massive support through the Barnett formula and elsewhere. I think through Barnett alone it is £2.4 billion, and there is now more coming through the levelling-up fund and other means. It is thanks to the UK Government that the furlough scheme has supported 3,400 jobs in her constituency alone. That is one of the advantages of the United Kingdom.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his last-minute lobbying. He has only a few minutes to wait before he may hear something to his advantage.
Prime Minister, in an interview with Sophy Ridge broadcast on 8 December 2019, you pledged that there would be no checks on goods going from NI to GB or from GB to NI. While this has proven more challenging to deliver in practice, would you wish to take this opportunity to encourage Ministers in Northern Ireland to do all they can—
My humble apologies. Can the Prime Minister make this aspiration a reality and ensure that they act in accordance with section 46 of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, which stresses the importance of facilitating the free flow of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Yes, I certainly can do that. As I said in answer to the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson), we leave nothing off the table in order to make sure that we get that done. There is unfettered access NI-GB and GB-NI.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He has mounted an excellent campaign and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will say more about that shortly.
HS2 reduces journey times from Manchester airport to London from two hours 24 minutes to 59 minutes. With the carbon capture that we would generate and the increased capacity to the west coast main line, what prevents the Government from putting shovels in the ground in the north now?
The answer to that is, as anybody who gets a project done on their home or wherever knows, that starting again midway through I am afraid greatly multiplies the cost, but we will go as fast as we possibly can.
My hon. Friend has long been a campaigner for the wonderful benefits of social enterprise. I visited some of his own, and if he just waits a little longer, he will receive an update on social investment tax relief.
I am suspending the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements for the next business to be made.
(3 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberToday, I am proudly wearing purple to celebrate the International Day for Disabled People, which is of course tomorrow. Next year, we will publish our national strategy for disabled people, which will be the most ambitious intervention in this area for a generation, putting fairness at the heart of the Government’s work and levelling up so that everybody has the opportunity fully to participate in the life of this country.
I know that the whole House will want to join me in welcoming the fantastic news that the MHRA—the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency—has formally authorised the Pfizer vaccine for covid-19. The vaccine will begin to be made available across the UK from next week. I would like to pay tribute to and to thank all those who have made this possible. It is the protection of vaccines that will ultimately allow us to reclaim our lives and get our economy moving again.
This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
I would like to share in the congratulations of the Prime Minister on the creation of this new vaccine and the speed with which it has been got out, and to give those congratulations especially to the engineers, technicians and scientists who have delivered it. I believe that we should support the widest distribution and take-up of safe and effective medicines, but does my right hon Friend agree with me that it should always be taken on a wholly voluntary basis by individuals and families?
Absolutely. I strongly urge people to take up the vaccine, but it is no part of our culture or our ambition in this country to make vaccines mandatory. That is not how we do things.
May I join the Prime Minister in his comments on disabled people?
Like the Prime Minister, can I start with the fantastic news about the licensing of a vaccine? This pandemic has caused so much grief and so much loss, but we are now a big step closer to the end of the tunnel. Like the Prime Minister, can I express my thanks and the thanks of everyone on these Benches and across the House to all the scientists who have worked on this and to everybody who has taken part in the trials. Delivering a vaccine fairly, quickly and safely will now be the next major challenge facing the country, and whatever our differences across this House, we have all a duty to play our part in this national effort and to reassure the public about the safety of the vaccine.
This morning, a priority list has been published for the first phase of the roll-out. We understand that around 800,000 doses will soon be available, and that is good news. Because of the two doses that will be required, that means 400,000 people can be vaccinated in the first batch. So can the Prime Minister tell the House: who does he expect to receive the vaccine next week?
I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for his point about the roll-out, and I will perhaps update the House on what the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has concluded so far. The priority list will be: residents in a care home for older adults, and their carers, in order to stop transmission; those of 80 years of age or older; front-line health care and social care workers; all those of 75 years of age and over; all those of 70 years of age and over; and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals. There is then a list that I am sure the House will want to study closely, but that I believe represents common sense.
It is important at this stage for us all to recognise that this is unquestionably good news—it is very, very good news—but it is by no means the end of the story; it is not the end of our national struggle against coronavirus. That is why it is important that the package of moderately tough measures that the House voted for last night—the tiering system—is followed across the country, because that is how we will continue to beat the virus.
The Prime Minister has referenced the priorities for the first phase, and as he said, the top two priority groups are residents in care homes for older adults and their carers, all those of 80 years of age and over, and front-line health and social care workers. I am not criticising that list in the slightest, but it is obvious that that is more than 400,000 people. The Prime Minister will understand how anxious people in those particular groups are, after having sacrificed so much. Will he give the House the answer to the question that they will be asking this morning, which is: by when does he expect that all people in those two top groups can expect to be vaccinated?
At this stage it is very important that people do not get their hopes up too soon about the speed with which we will be able to roll out this vaccine. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said, it is beginning from next week, and we are expecting several million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine before the end of the year. We will then be rolling it out as fast as we possibly can. That is why I put so much emphasis on the continuing importance of the tiering system and of mass community testing, at the same time as we go forward through these tough winter months. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to ask about timetables, but at the same time as we roll out the vaccine over the next few weeks, we will need to keep that tough tiering and testing regime in place.
May I press the Prime Minister a bit further about the plan for care homes? I do so because we all want this to work. The top category is residents in care homes, and this will obviously be a huge concern for many people. This morning the Welsh Government have already raised some serious practical problems about the delivery of vaccines into care homes, bearing in mind the temperatures at which the vaccines have to be stored. The Prime Minister must know that this is going to be a four-nation problem, and he must be aware that this problem will arise. We all want to overcome that problem, and in that spirit I ask the Prime Minister what plans he has put in place to address the particular problems of getting the vaccine safely and quickly into care homes, given the practical difficulties of doing so, and the anxiety that those in care homes will have about getting it quickly?
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is entirely right to raise the issue of care homes and our ability to distribute this particular type of vaccine rapidly into care homes, because it does need to be kept at minus 70°, as I think the House understands, so there are logistical challenges to be overcome to get vulnerable people the access to the vaccine that they need. We are working on it with all the devolved Administrations in order to ensure that the NHS across the country—it is the NHS that will be in the lead—is able to distribute it as fast and as sensibly as possible to the most vulnerable groups.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to raise that particular logistical difficulty. That is why it is also important that we get the AstraZeneca vaccine, which we hope will also come on stream. While he is paying tribute to those who have been involved in the vaccines, perhaps he could also pay tribute to the work of the vaccine taskforce, which secured the deal with Pfizer and which he, I think, criticised only a few weeks ago.
I pay tribute to everybody who has got us this far, and we will work with all of them to get us where we need to go next. This has to be something that we all pull together to deliver as quickly and safely as possible over the next few months. I have made that offer to the Prime Minister before, and I do it again.
It is in that vein that I turn to the next question, which is about public confidence in the vaccine. That is a real cause for concern, because it is going to be crucial to the success of getting this rolled out across the country and getting our economy back up and running. As the Prime Minister knows, we have the highest regulatory and medical safety standards in the world, but it is really important that we do everything possible to counter dangerous, frankly life-threatening disinformation about vaccines. The Opposition have called for legislation to be introduced to clamp down on this, with financial penalties for companies that fail to act. Will the Prime Minister work with us on this and bring forward emergency legislation in the coming days, which I think the whole House would support?
We are, of course, working to tackle all kinds of disinformation across the internet. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to single out the anti-vaxxers and those who I think are totally wrong in their approach, and he is right to encourage take-up of vaccines across the country. We will be publishing a paper very shortly on online harms designed to tackle the very disinformation that he speaks of.
May I also urge the Prime Minister, once the Government have a communications plan for the vaccine, to share it with the House so that we can all say the same thing in the same way to the country and thus encourage as many people as possible to take up the vaccine?
The arrival of the vaccine is obviously wonderful news, but it will come too late for many who have lost their jobs already. I want to turn to the collapse of the Arcadia Group and Debenhams in the last 48 hours. That has put 25,000 jobs at risk and obviously caused huge anxiety to many families at the worst possible time, and it threatens to rip the heart out of many high streets in our towns and cities. Can the Prime Minister tell the House what he is going to do now to protect the jobs and pensions of all those affected by these closures?
We are looking at what we can do to protect all the jobs that are being lost currently across the country. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has written to the Insolvency Service to look at the conduct of the Arcadia directors, and we will be doing everything we can to restore the high streets of this country with our £1 billion high streets fund and the levelling-up fund. But I must say that I think it is a bit much that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should attack the economic consequences of the fight against coronavirus when last night neither he nor his troops could be bothered to vote for measures—sensible, balanced measures—that would open up the economy and allow businesses to trade. How can he attack the economic consequences of our battle against coronavirus when he will not even support measures to open up the economy?
When I abstain, I come to the House and explain. When the Prime Minister abstains, he runs away to Afghanistan and gives the taxpayer a £20,000 bill.
On the question of jobs, there are serious questions that need to be answered about the collapse of these businesses. I do not want the Prime Minister to deflect from that and what it means for these many families. This is not an isolated incident; over 200,000 retail jobs have been lost this year—that is 200,000 individuals and their families—and 20,000 stores have been closed on our high street, and that is before the latest restrictions. I suspect that if we had seen that scale of job losses in any other sector, there would have been much greater action already.
I urge the Prime Minister to take this seriously; do not deflect. As well as providing emergency support, will he work with us, the trade unions and the sector to finally bring forward a comprehensive plan to save retail jobs and to provide the sector with the much greater support it needs through this crisis? These are real people, Prime Minister, with real jobs and families, who are facing the sack. They really need to hear from you.
We are, of course, supporting every job we possibly can, as well as supporting every life and every livelihood, with a £200 billion programme. I would take the right hon. and learned Gentleman more seriously, frankly, if he actually could be bothered to vote for a moderate programme to keep the virus down and open up the economy. We are getting on with our programme of rolling out the vaccine and sensible tiering measures, in addition to which we are delivering 40 more hospitals and 20,000 more police officers. He talks about abstention. When it came to protecting our veterans from unfair prosecution, he chose to abstain. When it came to protecting the people of this country from coronavirus at this critical moment, he told his troops to abstain. Captain Hindsight is rising rapidly up the ranks and has become General Indecision. That is what is happening, I am afraid, to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He dithers; we get on with the job.
My hon. Friend is a magnificent and doughty campaigner for Wakefield. I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will listen very closely to his call for the national infrastructure bank to be established in Wakefield. My hon. Friend should wait on events.
This morning, for the first time in months, people have woken up with a genuine sense of hope. The news on the vaccine approval is the news we have all been waiting for. For many, however, that hope on the horizon remains far too distant. There are millions who still have not had a single penny of support from this UK Government. As others rightly received help, they received none. Prime Minister, yesterday I met ExcludedUK, which represents many of those 3 million citizens. For the past nine months, the excluded have been living without any help and without any hope. It is now, tragically, costing lives. Prime Minister, they told me something genuinely shocking. They are aware of eight people who have taken their lives in the past 10 days—eight people in 10 days. Prime Minister, we are now a little over three weeks from Christmas. These people need help. Will the Prime Minister commit to looking again at the support package for the excluded, to ensure that no one, but no one, is left behind?
I obviously sympathise very much with those who have taken their lives and their families. This has been a very tough time for the country. We are investing massively in mental health support across the country, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, which flows through, in Barnett consequentials, to Scotland. We have put in a huge package of support. He knows this, but I must repeat this for self-employed people across the country. I know there are hard-to-reach people, but they are also supported with the increases in universal credit and the many other means of support that are currently on offer. When we look at the overall level of support this Government have given the people across the country, it compares favourably with any other Government around the world.
I have to say, and I do this with regret, that that simply is not good enough. These people need help, and I am asking the Prime Minister to think very carefully about this. This has been an abject failure by this UK Government, and the Prime Minister has been missing in action. The Government have U-turned on almost everything else, so why cannot the Prime Minister and the Chancellor change their minds on their support for these 3 million people? These are people working in construction, creative industries, events, education, hospitality, retail and healthcare. They have not just been left behind; they have been ignored for nine months. The Chancellor has repeatedly dodged this issue. ExcludedUK has not been offered one formal meeting with a Government Minister. Will the Prime Minister commit today to a meeting and working with ExcludedUK on a meaningful package of support, or is he simply going to abandon these people three weeks from Christmas?
We have abandoned nobody and we are continuing to support people. In addition to the support I have already mentioned, we have announced nearly £400 million to support vulnerable children and their families through the winter. We have increased universal credit, as I just mentioned to the House, increased the local housing allowance and provided billions more to local authorities to help those who are hardest to reach. I may say to the right hon. Gentleman that the best way to help the self-employed, and to help the economy of this whole country, is to get us moving again with the package of measures that the House voted for last night to allow retail to start up again and to allow business to start up again—
The hon. Gentleman says it is shameful. We on the Government side of the House do not think retail is shameful. We want businesses to open up again, and that is the nature of the package that was voted for last night, which I think was quite right. It is a great, great shame that the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) could not bring himself to support it.
Yes, I can, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on his campaign. Any decision to allow for the sale of the hospital is, of course, a matter for the local clinical commissioning group, but I know that he fully supports the £12 million that we put in for the development of a new health and wellbeing centre for Edenbridge.
I simply fail to recognise the characterisation that the right hon. Lady makes of investment across the whole of the UK. The Welsh Government will receive an additional £1.3 billion next year. We are providing £240 million more to support Welsh farmers and £2.1 million to support fisheries in Wales. The last time I looked at transport in Wales, the Welsh Labour Government spent £144 million on plans for an M4 bypass, which they then junked.
Yes, indeed. I congratulate the three female entrepreneurs whom my hon. Friend mentioned. They will be helped by the vaccine, they will be allowed to do business again, and what a shame it is that our programme, which was sensibly and safely to open up the economy, was not supported by the Leader of the Opposition.
If the hon. Gentleman wants to keep this country in the EU, which I think was the gist of what he was saying, he will be sorely disappointed and so will the Labour party.
Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend reminds me that it is Small Business Saturday this Saturday. Everybody should be shopping local. I can also tell him that the Treasury is considering the responses to the call for evidence on business rates ahead of the review’s conclusion in the spring.
We are doing a huge amount to support our aviation industry, but I appreciate the stress and difficulties that many families are in at the moment because of the threats to that sector, which are global, alas, because people are just not flying in the way that they were before the pandemic. I have every hope that it will bounce back very strongly, particularly in this country, which is a world leader in aviation, once we get the economy moving again, as I hope we can.
I thank my right hon. Friend for his excellent suggestion. He is a great champion of small business. Every measure that the Government produce is judged by the effect or impact it will have on businesses large and small. As he knows, we are also providing for these particularly difficult circumstances about £100 billion in business support—the bounce back loans and many other forms of support—but the best thing for businesses large and small is for us to shop local, as I said earlier, and to allow the economy cautiously and prudently to reopen.
I would take the hon. Lady’s point more seriously if she and her party could be bothered to vote for measures—[Interruption.]
I am sorry—she defied the Labour Whip. Forgive me, Mr Speaker. She defied the injunction to dither from the ditherer-in-chief. She did not obey his instruction to dither. I would take her more seriously if her party leader would vote for measures that would open up the economy while protecting lives across the UK.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I repeat what I said to the House several times yesterday afternoon. Of course we want to reflect local conditions as closely and accurately as we can in taking our decisions about tiering, but we must look at the entire national picture. On his point about internal combustion engines, I would just remind him that a hydrogen engine can also be an internal combustion engine.
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question. She is raising an important issue. I know that many people suffer from the syndrome that she describes, and I will ensure that she gets a proper meeting with the relevant Minister to discuss her objectives.
Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend is completely right about the importance of the new UK shared prosperity fund. It will be different from the levelling-up fund and we are going to work closely with him and with people in Cornwall to ensure that we use the additional funding best for the needs of people and communities in Cornwall.
On the last point, that is a matter for the Scottish Government, who have the fiscal freedom to do that. I thank health and social care workers in Scotland and across the whole country, and I am proud of the increases we have been able to put in—12.8% over the past three years, and a pay rise for 1 million people in the NHS, as part of the biggest ever investment in the NHS, even before covid began. This investment will continue under this Government.
I am proud that the UK led the way in instituting a target of net zero by 2050; of all the developed nations, we were the first. We are looking at our nationally determined contribution, which will be extremely ambitious and will be published around the time of the climate summit on 12 December this year.
I just repeat the point I made earlier about the huge sums the Government have invested in looking after families’ lives and livelihoods across the whole of the UK—this is well north of £200 billion now. As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, there has been a UC uplift of £1,000. We will continue to support families across this country throughout the pandemic, but the objective must be, as I hope he would agree, to get the economy moving again and get people back into work in the way that everybody would want. It is a fact that under this Government, despite all the difficulties we have faced, the unemployment rate is lower than that in France, Spain, Italy, Canada and the United States. We will continue to work to look after every job that we can.
In order to allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I am suspending the House for three minutes.
(4 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberThis morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Three weeks ago today, the community in my constituency of West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, and indeed I think the entire country, was rocked by the events on the railway line just south of Stonehaven: the tragic events in which three men—Brett McCullough, Chris Stuchbury and Donald Dinnie—tragically lost their lives. I am sure my right hon. Friend and indeed the whole House will join me in sending our deepest condolences to the family and friends of those three men today, as well as our thanks and heartfelt gratitude to the incredible men and women of our emergency services and multiple agencies who worked in incredibly difficult conditions to help the survivors from that incident.
The interim report is on the desk of the Transport Secretary as we speak, and I know that the full report will take time to run its course, as is only right, but what assurances can my right hon. Friend give my constituents that the serious questions that they have will be answered, that any recommendations will be implemented and that the Government will do everything they can to prevent an accident like this from ever happening again?
I thank my hon. Friend, and I know the whole House will want to join me in sending our condolences to the family and friends of Brett McCullough, Donald Dinnie and Christopher Stuchbury. I would like to join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the extraordinary work of the emergency services and the public for the bravery that they showed. Britain’s railways are among the safest in Europe, partly because we take accidents like this so seriously, and therefore we must ensure that we learn the lessons of this tragic event to make sure that no such incident recurs in the future.
Can I join the Prime Minister in those comments about the tragic events of just a few weeks ago? Can I also begin by paying tribute to John Hume, who passed away during recess? John was a beacon of light in the most troubled of times. He will be seriously missed.
Let me start today with the exams fiasco. On the day that thousands of young people had their A-level grades downgraded, the Prime Minister said, and I quote him:
“The exam results…are robust, they’re good, they’re dependable”.
The Education Secretary said there would “absolutely” not be a U-turn; a few days later—a U-turn. We learned yesterday that the Education Secretary knew well in advance that there was a problem with the algorithm, so a straight answer to a straight question, please: when did the Prime Minister first know that there was a problem with the algorithm?
Perhaps I could begin by congratulating the right hon. and learned Gentleman on his birthday? I say to him, on the exams and the stress that young people have been through over the summer, that both the Secretary of State for Education and I understand very well how difficult it has been for them and for their families, going through a pandemic at a time when we have not been able, because of that pandemic, in common with most other countries in the world, to stage normal examinations. As a result of what we learned about the tests—the results—that had come in, we did institute a change. We did act. The students, the pupils of this country now do have their grades, and I really ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether he will join me in congratulating those pupils on their hard work, and whether he agrees with me that they deserve the grades they have got.
I have already expressed congratulations to all those students and I do so again, but I want to go back to my question, which the Prime Minister avoided. I know why he avoided it, because he either knew of the problem with the algorithm and did nothing, or he did not know when he should have. Let me ask again: when did the Prime Minister first know that there would be a problem with the algorithm?
As the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows perfectly well, Ofqual made it absolutely clear time and again that in its view the system that was in place was robust. Ofqual is, as he knows, an independent organisation and credit had to be given to its views. All summer long, he has been going around undermining confidence and spreading doubts, in particular about the return to school in safe conditions—[Interruption.] It is absolutely true. And today is a great day because the parents, pupils and teachers in this country are overwhelmingly proving him wrong and proving the doubters wrong, because they are going back to school in record numbers, in spite of all the gloom and dubitation that he tried to spread. It would be a fine thing if, today, after three months of refusing to do so, as pupils go back to school, he finally said that school was safe to go back to. Come on!
The Prime Minister is just tin-eared and making it up as he goes along. I am surprised—[Interruption.] The Education Secretary stood at that Dispatch Box yesterday and acknowledged that Labour’s first priority has been getting children back to school. That has been our first priority. I have said it numerous times at this Dispatch Box, and the Prime Minister knows it very well. He is just playing games.
The Prime Minister is fooling nobody. Even his own MPs have run out of patience. The vice-chair of the 1922 Committee, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), has said that the Government are
“saying one thing on Monday, changing its mind on Tuesday, something different presented on Wednesday.”
That sounds familiar doesn’t it? Another of his MPs, who wisely wants to remain anonymous, is perhaps in the Chamber today. He or she said—[Interruption.] I am speaking for you, because this is what was said by his own MPs. He or she said, “It’s mess after mess, U-turn after U-turn…It’s a fundamental issue of competence, God knows what is going on. There’s no grip.” His own MPs are right, aren’t they?
This is a Leader of the Opposition who backed remaining in the EU and now is totally silent on the subject. Now he has performed a U-turn. He backed that, and perhaps he still does. This is a Leader of the Opposition who supported an IRA-condoning politician who wanted to get out of NATO and now says absolutely nothing about it. This is a Leader of the Opposition who sat on the Front Bench—
Order. I think that questions are being asked, and we do need to try to answer the questions that have been put to the Prime Minister. It will be helpful to those who are watching to know the answers.
Order. Prime Minister, I think I will make the decisions today. Come on!
Mr Speaker, if I may say so, I think it would be helpful to all those who are watching to know that this Opposition, and this Leader of the Opposition, said absolutely nothing to oppose the method of examinations that was proposed and, indeed, they opposed the teacher accreditation system that we eventually came up with. Is he now saying that those grades are not right, or is this just Captain Hindsight leaping on a bandwagon and opposing a policy that he supported two weeks ago?
The problem is that he is governing in hindsight, as well as making so many mistakes.
Mr Speaker, before I go on, the Prime Minister said something about the IRA, and I want him to take it back. I worked in Northern Ireland for five years with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, bringing peace. As Director of Public Prosecutions, I prosecuted serious terrorists for five years, working with the intelligence and security forces and with the police in Northern Ireland. I ask the Prime Minister to have the decency to withdraw that comment.
It is the same every time: pretend the problem does not exist, brush away scrutiny, make the wrong decision, then blame somebody else. This has got to change, because the next major decision for the Prime Minister is on the furlough scheme. The jobs of millions of people are at risk. The longer he delays, the more they are at risk, so will he act now, finally get this decision right and commit to extend the furlough scheme for those sectors and those workers that desperately need it?
What we are doing in this Government is getting our pupils back to school, in spite of all the doubts that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has tried to sow, and we are getting people back to work. What he wants to do is extend the furlough scheme, on which this country has already spent £40 billion. What we would rather do is get people into work through our kick-start scheme, which we are launching today—£2 billion to spend to support people, young people in particular, to get the jobs that they need. He wants to keep people out of work in suspended animation. We want to move this country forward. That is the difference between him and us.
There was a question about the allegation regarding Northern Ireland, and I was very concerned—that was the point I was making. I think that, in fairness, I am sure you would like to withdraw it.
Mr Speaker, I am very happy to say that I listened to the protestations of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, and I think they would have been more in order, throughout the long years in which he supported a leader of the Labour party—
When the Prime Minister has worked with the security and intelligence forces on prosecuting criminals and terrorists, he can lecture me. I asked him to do the decent thing, but doing the decent thing and this Prime Minister don’t go together.
This has been a wasted summer. The Government should have spent it preparing for the autumn and winter. Instead, they have lurched from crisis to crisis, U-turn to U-turn. To correct one error, even two, might make sense, but when the Government have notched up 12 U-turns and rising, the only conclusion is serial incompetence. That serial incompetence is holding Britain back. Will the Prime Minister take responsibility and finally get a grip?
I take full responsibility for everything that has happened under this Government throughout my period in office. Actually, what has happened so far is that we have succeeded in turning the tide of this pandemic, and, despite the negativity and constant sniping from the Opposition, we are seeing a country that is not only going back to school but going back to work. Britain is in the lead in developing vaccines and in finding cures for this disease—dexamethasone—and treatments for this disease. Not only that, but we are taking this country forward, despite the extreme difficulties we face. What I think the people of this country would appreciate is the right hon. and learned Gentleman and I, the Labour Front-Bench team and everybody across this House coming together, uniting and saying that it is safe for kids to get back to school. I must say that we still have not heard those words from him. Will he now say, “School is safe”?
I have said it so many times. School is safe. My own children have been in school throughout. There is no issue on this. The Prime Minister is seeking to divide, instead—[Interruption.] I wrote to him on 18 May, in confidence and in private, offering my support to him to get kids back to school. The only reason they were not back before the summer was because of his incompetent Education Secretary.
The Prime Minister will recall that before the recess I asked him whether he would meet the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group. I had the privilege of meeting the families on 15 July. They gave me incredibly moving accounts of how covid-19 had taken their loved ones from them. On Sky News last week, the Prime Minister was asked whether he would meet the families and he said:
“of course I will meet…the bereaved—-of course I will do that.”
But yesterday they received a letter from the Prime Minister saying that meeting them was now “regrettably not possible”. The Prime Minister will understand the frustration and the hurt of those families that he said one thing to camera and another to them. May I urge him to reconsider, and to do the right thing and find time to meet these grieving families?
May I say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it is absolutely typical of him that he should frame it in that way? Of course I am very happy to meet the families and the bereaved and I sympathise deeply with all those who have lost loved ones throughout this pandemic; we all feel their pain and their grief. But it turns out that this particular group he refers to are currently in litigation against the Government, and I will certainly meet them once that litigation is concluded. I say to him that it would be a better thing if, rather than trying to score points in that way, he joined together with this Government and said not only that school is safe to go back to—[Interruption.] By the way, that is the first time in four months that he has said it, so I am delighted to have extracted it from him over this Dispatch Box—[Interruption.] He has never said it to me in the House of Commons. I hope he will also say that it is safe for the workforce of this country to go back to work in a covid-secure way.
We want to take this country forward. Not only are we getting the pandemic under control, with deaths down and hospital admissions way, way down, but we will continue to tackle it, with local lockdowns and with our superlative test and trace system, which, before Opposition Members sneer and mock it, has now conducted more tests than any other country in Europe. The right hon. and learned Gentleman might hail that, rather than sneering at this country’s achievements.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the concern that he does. We must, of course—and will—deliver on what the protocol says, which is that there shall be unfettered access between GB and NI, and NI and GB, and there shall be no tariffs. We will legislate in the course of the next months to guarantee that.
May I associate myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition on the tragedy that we witnessed close to Stonehaven, and indeed with the Leader of the Opposition’s tribute to John Hume—a man who did so much for the delivery of peace in the island of Ireland?
Yesterday the Prime Minister told his Cabinet:
“I am no great nautical expert but sometimes it is necessary to tack here…in response to the facts as they change”.
It was surprisingly honest for the Prime Minister to admit that his Government are all at sea—a UK Government now defined by eight U-turns in eight months. But if the Prime Minister is true to his word, surely he must see sense and change tack for a ninth time. With the clock ticking for struggling businesses and workers, will the Prime Minister commit today to extend the job retention scheme beyond October—or are Boris’s Government making the political choice to accept levels of unemployment last seen under Thatcher in the early 1980s?
Opposition Members of all parties seem to want to extend the furlough scheme, which has already cost the country £40 billion. It has supported 11 million people, but, after all, keeps them in suspended animation and prevents them from going to work. We want to get people back to work, and that is why I hope the right hon. Gentleman will instead support our kick-start scheme to get young people into jobs and support them in those jobs. How much better is that than languishing out of work?
My goodness, “languishing out of work”; the furlough scheme is there to protect people so that they can come back to work when the time is right. France, Germany and Ireland have extended their furlough schemes until 2021. They have made a moral choice. They are not prepared to punish their people with record levels of unemployment. People in Scotland are seeing a tale of two Governments. While the Tories are cutting furlough scheme support, yesterday Nicola Sturgeon was announcing new investment to protect jobs, including a youth guarantee. We all know that jobs are under threat if the furlough scheme ends in October. The power to end this threat lies with the Prime Minister. Will he do his duty and extend the furlough scheme, or are we going to return to levels of unemployment last seen under Thatcher, with the resultant human misery?
We are not only continuing with the furlough scheme until the end of this month, as the right hon. Gentleman knows—a scheme that is far more generous, by the way, than anything provided in France, Germany or Ireland. We are continuing with that scheme, but after it elapses we will get on with other measures to support people in work. Starting today, there is the kick-start scheme to help young people to get the jobs that they need. That is in addition to a £160 billion package that we have spent to support the economy throughout this crisis. The Government have put their arms around all the people of this country to support them throughout the crisis. That is what we are doing, and we will now help them to get back into work.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are working at pace with rail companies to try to deliver new products in terms of ticketing that would ensure better value and enable people to get back to work in a flexible way.
May I thank the Prime Minister and the Chancellor for the financial and economic interventions the Government have made to date? The Prime Minister will be aware that, as much as we want to see people back in work, there are certain sectors, such as tourism, travel, hospitality and aerospace, where that will not be possible in the short to medium term. Therefore, may I encourage the Prime Minister to look at a targeted extension for those sectors, and also to look at a specific UK-wide scheme to help those who have so far been excluded from the current schemes, including the newly self-employed?
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there are a great number of schemes in addition to the job retention scheme that support people in work in all sorts of sectors—the coronavirus loans, the bounce-back loans, and the grants that we have made to businesses of all kinds. He mentions the tourism and hospitality sector, and we have made huge investments in those, including the very successful eat out to help out scheme that we have been running. But it is also very important that we get people back into the workplace in a covid-secure way and, unlike the Leader of the Opposition, we do everything we can to give them confidence that it is a good idea to go back. An ounce of confidence is worth a ton of taxpayers’ money.
I thank my hon. Friend, who raises an important point. As he will know, the rules around access to schemes for alternative finance are not the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, but of the Bank of England. I am sure the Governor will have heard my hon. Friend today.
Not at all. We have supported the arts industry alone with about £1.7 billion of support. In Scotland, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman never tires of saying, the overall support for tackling coronavirus has been in the order of about £4 billion. We will continue to give support, but we happen to think—and I hope it is common ground across the House—that it would be better for the UK economy and better for all the people he rightly cares about to get back into work.
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the wonderful attractions of north Wales, which I know very well, as I tried to get elected there many years ago—unsuccessfully. I congratulate him on his success, and may it be long repeated.
I must say that I listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said, but he seems to have ignored the fact that we have just had an inflation-busting public sector pay rise. As part of the package that we agreed in 2018, nurses alone have had a 12.5% pay increase since then. I appreciate his sentiments—he is on the right lines—but he should look at what is actually happening.
I thank my hon. Friend for her apposite intervention on behalf of Alexander Dennis. I was a keen customer of Alexander Dennis’s fantastic machines. I cannot guarantee this, but I hope that our green recovery and our massive investment in green buses will be of benefit to the workforce of Alexander Dennis.
I thank the hon. Gentleman. I encourage him to return from New York, Shanghai or wherever he is and join us in this House as fast as he can. Actually, what the people of this country want to see is their representatives back on their seats as fast as possible in the Palace of Westminster. That is what we should work for, and that is why we are working together to drive down this virus and create a covid-secure environment.
My hon. Friend makes a very interesting point, and I am sure that point of view is shared by many people in this country. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will be setting out a roadmap for reform of the BBC shortly and addressing the very issues he mentions.
It is a rare privilege to ask a question in the House, so you would have thought, Mr Speaker, that they could have come up with something better than that. This is a global pandemic, which this Government are dealing with extremely effectively at a medical level. What we want to do now, in a covid-secure way, is to get our children back into school. That is happening today, in spite of the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues; I do not know where the hon. Lady has stood on this issue. We also want to get our country’s economy back on its feet again and get us back to work. So I hope that she and her colleagues will say that it is also safe to go back to work in a covid-secure way.
I heartily endorse, I am afraid, the sentiments that my right hon. and learned Friend has expressed. Anybody who has worked with HS2 over the past few years will know that it does treat local residents with, I am afraid, a high-handed approach—or has done. What I can tell him, however, is that where there is damage to local roads HS2 will pay compensation. I will certainly take up his point with HS2.
I direct the hon. Lady to what I have said already, which is that there will always be those who argue for an infinite extension of the furlough scheme, and who want to keep people off work, unemployed, being paid very substantial sums, for a very long time. I do not think that is the right thing. I think the best way forward for our country is, as far as we possibly can, to get people back into work. As she knows, there is the job retention bonus at the end of the year, and there are abundant schemes. Already £160 billion has been spent to support the economy throughout the crisis, and we will continue, as I said, to put our arms round the entire people to keep them going throughout this crisis. But furlough—indefinite furlough—is just not the answer.
I thank my hon. Friend. I have a great deal of sympathy with those who are so desperate as to put their children in dinghies, or even children’s paddling pools, and try to cross the channel, but I have to say that what they are doing is falling prey to criminal gangs and they are breaking the law. They are also undermining the legitimate claims of others who would seek asylum in this country. That is why we will take advantage of leaving the EU by changing the Dublin regulations on returns, and we will address the rigidities in our laws that make this country, I am afraid, a target and a magnet for those who would exploit vulnerable people in this way.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and, yes, it was incredibly exciting to go to Appledore and see the potential of that yard and see what Harland and Wolff is doing there. Also, of course, he is absolutely right in what he says about the potential for various other contracts both in Devon and in Belfast; I cannot give him the kind of guarantees he wants over the Dispatch Box now, but watch this space.
(4 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberThis morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
My constituents in Wrexham welcome the announcement by the chief medical officers of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England about reducing the UK covid alert level from 4 to 3. Indeed, through my work at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital, I have seen a reduction in the number of covid-positive cases needing to be treated. Does the Prime Minister therefore agree that the UK-wide approach works and we need to continue with it to beat the pandemic?
First, I personally pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the shifts she has put in throughout the pandemic and of course thank all her colleagues at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital, which I know. Working together across all four nations of our country is indeed the way in which we will beat the pandemic.
Yesterday, the Government announced the next stage of easing lockdown restrictions. If that plan is to work—and we want it to work—we need an effective track, trace and isolate system. The Prime Minister promised that a world-beating system would be in place by 1 June. The latest figures from yesterday’s press conference hosted by the Prime Minister show that 33,000 people are estimated to have covid-19 in England. The latest track, trace and isolate figures show that just over 10,000 people with covid-19 were reached and asked to provide contact details. I recognise the hard work that has gone into this, but if two thirds of those with covid-19 are not being reached and asked to provide contact details, there is a big problem, isn’t there?
On the contrary. I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has been stunned by the success of the test and trace operation. Contrary to his prognostications of gloom, it has got up and running much faster than the doubters expected. They are getting it done—Dido Harding and her team have recruited 25,000 people and so far they have identified and contacted 87,000 people who have voluntarily agreed to self-isolate to stop the disease spreading. I do not think the right hon. and learned Gentleman would have predicted that a few weeks ago. I think he should pay tribute now to Dido and her team for what they are doing.
The Prime Minister just has not addressed the question I put to him. I was not asking about those who have gone into the system—the 10,000—or those who have been contacted; I was asking about the two thirds of the 33,000 with covid-19 who were not reached. That is a big gap. The Prime Minister risks making the mistakes he made at the beginning of the pandemic—brushing aside challenge, dashing forward, not estimating the risks properly. If two thirds of those with covid-19 are not being contacted, that is a big problem. If we do not get track, trace and isolate properly running, we cannot open the economy or prevent infection from spreading, so let me ask the question in a different way. What is the Government’s strategy for closing the gap between the number of people with covid-19 and those going into the system—not what happens to those who go into the system?
I hesitate to accuse the right hon. and learned Gentleman of obscurantism. He is misleading on the key point. The number of people with covid in this country is, of course, an estimate.
Order. Prime Minister, one of us is going to have to give way and it will have to be you. Obviously, no hon. Member misleads or ever would, whichever side they are from.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is inadvertently giving a false impression of what test and trace is doing. The 33,000 cases in the country is, of course, an estimate. NHS test and trace is contacting the vast majority of those who test positive and their contacts and getting them to self-isolate. It is a formidable achievement. Yesterday, the right hon. and learned Gentleman was kind enough to say that he supported our policy and our programme—I seem to remember him saying that loud and clear yesterday. Today—as I say, I understand the constraints of the profession in which he used to work; I know how it works—he seems to be yo-yoing back into a position of opposition. Which is it: is he supporting what we are doing or is he against it?
The figures I have, which the Prime Minister says are inadvertently misleading, are the slide at his press conference yesterday and the slide at the Government’s press conference last week—the latest figures. They are the two figures. I do support the next stage of the operation, but the Prime Minister is wrong to reject challenge. Sixty-five thousand people have lost their lives because of covid-19. The Prime Minister should welcome challenge that could save lives, rather than complaining about it.
Another risk to this plan is if local councils do not have the powers and resources to implement local lockdowns. There is a report today that eight out of 10 councils face bankruptcy or cutting services, with many of those in the north-east and midlands, where, as the Prime Minister knows, there are the worst affected areas for covid-19. The real concern among council leaders is that they do not have the powers or guidance to implement lockdowns quickly if needed. The Conservative leader of Oxfordshire County Council said it would be “interesting” for central
“government to confirm what is meant by the local lockdown”—
including—
“clear guidance as to those powers and what is expected of us”.
Can the Prime Minister tell us when local authorities will get the guidance that they need?
Everybody understands—we have seen it already, across the country—that when there are local outbreaks, for instance in Weston-super-Mare or in GP surgeries in north London, there have been local lockdowns and local crackdowns. We have a very effective cluster-busting operation, which is designed to ensure that we keep those outbreaks under control. Local councils understand how to do it, with the local resilience forums backed up by the joint biosecurity centre. That is how it works and that is how it is going to work, and it is a very effective way of keeping this disease under control. I am not going to pretend to the right hon. and learned Gentleman or to the House that this thing is beaten or that the virus has gone way, because clearly that is not the case. We have to remain extremely vigilant, and local councils will be supported in doing their vital work in implementing local lockdowns.
May I now turn to the app? This really matters because unless someone with covid-19 can name and identify everybody they have been in contact with, the app is the only way of tracing unknown contacts. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) made precisely that point yesterday. He gave the example, “How on earth do you trace everyone in close contact at a seafront or in a park without an app?” Up until last week, the Government maintained that the app was “critical—another of their slides—but at the weekend the Health Secretary downplayed the app, saying it was only ever additional support. So which is it: critical or not?
I wonder whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman can name a single country in the world that has a functional contract tracing app—there isn’t one. What we have—and what, I am afraid, has left the Opposition slightly foundering—is a very successful NHS test and trace operation, which yesterday they supported. Yesterday, they said it was good enough for this country to go forward with step 3 of our plan, but today they are yo-yoing back again and saying that it is not good enough. They need to make up their mind. They need to get behind NHS test and trace, support it and take the country forward together.
Germany. It had its app working on 15 June and it has had 12 million downloads—I checked that overnight. [Interruption.] Twelve million—it is way beyond. The Health Secretary said that we would have the app by mid-May—presumably that was on advice. The Prime Minister said that we would have it by 1 June, but now Government Ministers say that it will not be ready until the winter. We have spent £12 million on this. Other countries are ahead of us. When are we going to have a working app?
I am afraid that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is completely wrong, because no country in the world has a working contact tracing app. I have always been clear—we have always been clear—that the app would be the icing on the cake. If we can get it to work, it will be a fine thing, but there is not one anywhere in the world so far. What we do have is a fantastic NHS test and trace operation that is already up and running, that is going to get better and better, and that will be indispensable to our future success. I think that he should support it and, by the way, that he should make it much clearer that he supports our programme going forward.
Since the right hon. and learned Gentleman mentions Labour councils and support for Labour councils, perhaps he might clear up the position of yesterday and say once and for all that Labour councils should now be encouraging children in their areas to go back to school. We heard some warm words from him yesterday. Can he now confirm that he wants all children who can go back to school to go back to school this month?
Yes. The only U-turn here was the Education Secretary on 9 June, who ripped up the Government’s plans to get children back into school before the summer break.
There is a theme to these exchanges. Last week, I asked the Prime Minister about two claims about child poverty. He said that absolute child poverty and relative child poverty
“have both declined under this Government”.—[Official Report, 17 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 796.]
On Monday, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner ruled that the Prime Minister’s answer was “mostly false”. The Prime Minister also said that there are 400,000 fewer families living in poverty now than there were in 2010. On Monday, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner ruled that that was simply “false”. He has been found out. He either dodges the question or he gives dodgy answers. Mr Speaker, no more witnesses; I rest my case. Will the Prime Minister do the decent thing and correct the record in relation to child poverty?
I am happy to point out to m’learned friend that actually, there are 100,000 fewer children in absolute poverty and 500,000 fewer children falling below thresholds of low income and material deprivation. This Government, as he knows, are massively increasing universal credit with £7 billion more to help the poorest and neediest families in our country. We are getting on with it. We are taking the tough decisions. He still cannot make up his mind.
Talking about child poverty, the single biggest determinant of a child’s success is whether he or she goes to school. The right hon. and learned Gentleman still will not say whether children should go. I think it is absolutely infamous for him to come to the House one day and say he supports the programme and then, the next day, not to confirm that he wants kids to go to school now.
My hon. Friend knows a great deal about the subject whereof she now speaks. We remain fully committed to the welfare of all seafarers, regardless of their nationality. We ask all states to do the same. I look forward to discussing that in person with her.
I am sure the whole House will join me in passing on condolences to the family of the three children who sadly lost their lives in a house fire in Paisley last Friday evening, Fiona, Alexander and Philip Gibson—such a terrible tragedy.
This morning, we heard growing concerns from medical experts about the real risk of a second wave of covid-19. At the same time, experts at the Fraser of Allander Institute outlined the scale of the economic challenges ahead, with a raft of redundancies and business closures if financial support is withdrawn. They warned that measures that risk a second wave of the virus would delay recovery in Scotland until 2024. The health and economic emergency requires an unprecedented response.
On Monday, the Scottish Government’s advisory group on economic recovery, led by independent business leaders, published its initial analysis to secure a strong recovery. Will the Prime Minister welcome those efforts to find a way forward out of this economic crisis?
Yes, indeed. I would be only too happy to study the documents to which the right hon. Gentleman refers.
I am grateful to the Prime Minister for that answer, and I am glad that he agrees that we need to take every action to study and aid the economic recovery. I am sure he is aware that the Scottish advisory group has called for an accelerated review of the devolved fiscal framework. Crucially, it has supported a significant increase in access to capital to stimulate an investment-led recovery in Scotland. Scotland can make different choices and invest in a strong recovery, but we can only do it with the necessary financial powers. Our First Minister and our Finance Secretary have already made a request for more borrowing powers. Will the Prime Minister implement the recommendations of those business leaders and give the Scottish Parliament the economic powers it needs to fuel a recovery in the wake of the pandemic, or will he put Scotland’s economic recovery at risk?
I respectfully remind the right hon. Gentleman that, as part of our UK campaign against the coronavirus, Scotland has so far received £3.8 billion in Barnett consequentials—a fact that I am sure is seldom off his lips in his discussions with SNP colleagues. We will continue to invest massively in Scotland because Scotland, like the whole of the UK, benefits from being part of the oldest and most successful political partnership anywhere in the world. I congratulate the SNP, by the way, on its U-turn—which could be copied with advantage by our friends on the Opposition Front Bench—on education and getting all kids into school.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out the evil that is done by drug gangs around the whole country. County lines operations have spread across our country, and we must roll them up. That is why we are tackling them directly with every technological resource at our disposal, and that is why we are making sure that we invest in another 20,000 police officers going to Keighley and across the country as well.
Diolch yn fawr, Mr Llefarydd. Covid-19 has now broken out in three Welsh food factories. There are 200 cases in Llangefni in Ynys Môn, 70 in Wrexham and 34 in Merthyr Tydfil. A plant in Germany has also seen 1,500 workers test positive. The difference, of course, is that German employees get sick pay worth 100% of their salary. Here, workers get sick pay worth on average perhaps 20% of their salary, so they lose 80% of their salary. These are low-paid workers. For any future local lockdown to succeed, people will need to be supported. Will the Prime Minister now commit to local furlough-like schemes for self-isolating workers?
As I said in my statement yesterday, the coronavirus job retention scheme—the furlough scheme—as well as what we have done for self-employed people, which has also been considerable, and the expansion of universal credit have been massive commitments by our Government to the workforce of this country. We will continue to make those commitments and, as I said yesterday, if we have to move back—obviously we do not want to—to local lockdowns, or indeed a national lockdown, nobody should be penalised for doing the right thing. So there is the right hon. Lady’s answer.
I will certainly look at all proposals that my hon. Friend makes on taxation. As she must know, they are a matter for the Chancellor and for the next Budget, although what we have already done is give business rates holidays—pushing back business rates right until the end of next year—and huge coronavirus loans, bounce-back loans and grants of £25,000 for every business. What we will also do is support tourism across the whole of the UK, and I hope that she will put the welcome sign above Eastbourne this summer, so that people can enjoy its attractions.
We have massively increased our spending on universal credit, but the hon. Lady raises an important point about access to benefits for terminally ill people, and I will undertake, if I may, Mr Speaker, to revert to her as soon as possible by writing.
I refer my hon. Friend to what I said to our hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) just now. We will continue to support the hospitality sector in all the ways that I have described, but, of course, what could also happen is that people in Newcastle-under-Lyme could be encouraged to enjoy themselves sensibly, in a covid-secure way, and keep the purple flag flying above it.
The hon. Lady has an extremely important point. It is one that we are working on very intensively now in Government, so that we use the opportunity of this crisis to bounce forwards with new low-carbon technology that will continue to drive the UK’s formidable aerospace industry.
We have of course invested a huge amount in south Leicester. The local growth fund is expected to deliver 2,700 jobs and 5,000 new homes, but, as I am sure the House will understand, this is a planning decision, with which this Government obviously cannot involve themselves.
As I think the Leader of the Opposition himself confirmed just now, we do have a pretty good estimate of what is happening in the country. Overall, we think the numbers have moved down from, say, one in 400 four weeks ago to maybe one in 1,700 today. The incidence continues to decline across the country. Where there are particular outbreaks and particular hotspots, such as in Bedford or elsewhere, we now have the resources of our test and trace operation and the joint biosecurity centre, which are getting better and better the whole time, to implement those local crackdowns and cluster-busting operations.
Yes, indeed. I thank my hon. Friend for what he is doing to represent his young constituents. It is vital that we invest in people’s skills during what will unquestionably be economically difficult times. We are not just investing in training through our new £2.5 billion national skills fund: we also want to encourage as many in-work placements as possible and get people the live experience that they need.
The right hon. Gentleman raises an incredibly important point. Any MP will have had very hard cases caused by the DBS system. It is important for the protection of children and young people, but we are considering the Supreme Court’s judgment and will set out our opinion in due course.
I have absolutely no hesitation in commending and congratulating all the groups that my hon. Friend mentions—the Friary, the Cotgrave Super Kitchen and West Bridgford Community Helpers. I congratulate them all.
The Prime Minister stated that when we leave the EU at the end of this year Northern Ireland will still remain a full part of the United Kingdom. But I have in my hand a letter received by the management of the port of Larne only this week, stating that it has to prepare to become a border control post, and 14 acres of land has been looked at for car parking, for lorry parking and for construction. There is a sense of urgency, as the proposals have to go to the EU by the end of the month. Can the Prime Minister explain how Northern Ireland can remain a full part of the United Kingdom if people coming from the rest of the UK into Northern Ireland have to pass through a border control post? Would he advise management to tear this letter up as well?
I have not seen the letter the right hon. Gentleman describes, but I can tell him absolutely categorically that there will be no new customs infrastructure for the very simple reason that, under the protocol, it is absolutely clear in black and white that Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the whole of the United Kingdom. We will be joining the whole of the United Kingdom in our new independent trade policy and doing free trade deals around the world.
I thank my right hon. Friend, and he is quite right that there will be tough times ahead for people and for families. That is why we have massively increased universal credit. We stand by, as we have throughout this crisis, to help the British people through it.
I have been contacted by hundreds of my constituents about racial inequality in the UK. We had the Lammy review of the justice system, we had the race disparity audit in the workplace, and we now have the independent review of the Windrush scandal. What is the Prime Minister’s timeframe for implementing those recommendations?
Actually, we are getting on with implementing a huge number of the recommendations we have already had. Sixteen of the Lammy recommendations have been implemented. A further 17 are in progress; two of them we are not progressing. The Home Secretary will set out further what we are going to do later—before recess—about Windrush with Wendy Williams’s report, and we will go on with our cross-governmental commission to ensure that we stamp out racism and discrimination across this country and throughout our system of government. We take it exceptionally seriously, and I am glad that the hon. Lady raised it.
Absolutely. I can certainly say to my hon. Friend and to the people of Blyth Valley that we are going to do absolutely everything we can in the course of our infrastructure revolution to ensure that UK steel manufacturers are at the front of the queue for the great projects that we are going to construct. We have already identified about £3.8 billion worth of opportunities.
My constituent Elizabeth Smurthwaite contracted coronavirus in her care home and was refused admission to hospital. This Government’s policy of discharging patients with coronavirus into homes has led to over 16,000 deaths. Sadly, Elizabeth has since passed away. Last week, the Health Secretary said that he accepted responsibility for these deaths in our care homes. Does the Prime Minister?
Of course this Government accept responsibility, and I accept responsibility, for everything that has happened throughout this crisis, but I will say that what happened with the discharge of patients into care homes was all done according to clinical decisions, as the NHS has confirmed, and actually there was a 40% reduction between January and March in the number of people going from the NHS into care homes. Thankfully, we are now seeing a massive reduction, thanks to the efforts of care workers and our care home action programme, to get the numbers of deaths in care homes down to the levels we would expect to find this year.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw the attention of the House to a very serious and worrying situation, which we are monitoring closely. Perhaps the best thing I can say to her is that we are encouraging both parties to engage in dialogue on the issues on the border and sort it out between them.
The last few days have been very difficult for our town. I offer my deepest condolences to the families of those who died in the dreadful attack in Forbury Gardens on Saturday evening. It is impossible to imagine what they are going through. My thoughts are also with the injured and their families, and with all those who have been affected by this terrible attack. I thank Thames Valley police and the other emergency services for their swift and effective response and for the incredible bravery shown by officers. Will the Prime Minister ensure that the investigation now receives all the resources it needs and that our town is properly supported? We have a strong and diverse community. We can and we will get through this together.
Yes, indeed. I thank the hon. Member for his question and for how he expressed it, because I think the whole House shares his feelings of support for the police and acknowledges their bravery in running towards danger, as well as that of the members of the public who themselves intervened. It was a really extraordinary moment, but it was also an appalling crime and an appalling tragedy.
Obviously there is a case that must now be properly proceeded with, and I just make two comments. First, if there are any lessons that we need to learn about the way we handle things in the future, we will of course learn those lessons and this Government will act in this Parliament. Secondly, as I said yesterday to the House, and I think it is a common view, we will not let this kind of attack—this kind of senseless murder—distract us or in any way allow us to be intimidated or to change our way of life.
I have a short statement to make about Divisions. With effect from today, the doors will be locked 18 minutes after the start of a Division. As at present, this can be extended if there is a queue at that time.
In order to allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I am now suspending the House for three minutes.
Virtual participation in proceedings concluded (Order, 4 June)
(4 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberYesterday was International Nurses’ Day and I know that the whole House would want to thank the nurses, and also the care staff and key workers, for their tireless work in responding to the covid-19 pandemic. Sadly, 144 NHS workers’ and 131 social care workers’ deaths have been reported as involving covid-19. Our thoughts are with their families and friends. Yesterday, this House learnt of the tragic death of Belly Mujinga—the fact that she was abused for doing her job is utterly appalling. My thoughts, and I am sure the thoughts of the whole House, are with her family.
This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Green investments generated the highest returns in the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. As we restart our economy, will my right hon. Friend commit to prioritising investment in low-carbon infrastructure, such as the electric vehicle charge point network and renewable energy production, which will also help the UK to meet its net zero target by 2050?
Yes, and to encourage the take-up of electric vehicles, we are putting a further £1 billion into EV infrastructure across the country to prevent range anxiety for those who use EVs.
I join the Prime Minister in thanking our nurses and all those on the frontline, and send my condolences to all the families of those who have died of coronavirus, including Belly Mujinga, as the Prime Minister referenced—a ticket officer who we learnt this week died from covid-19 in awful circumstances.
In his speech on Sunday, the Prime Minister said that we need to rapidly reverse the awful epidemic in our care homes, but earlier this year, and until 12 March, the Government’s own official advice was—and I am quoting from it:
“It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home…will become infected.”
Yesterday’s Office for National Statistics figures showed that at least 40% of all deaths from covid-19 were in care homes. Does the Prime Minister accept that the Government were too slow to protect people in care homes?
No, Mr Speaker, and it was not true that the advice said that—and actually, we brought the lockdown in care homes ahead of the general lockdown, and what we have seen is a concerted action plan to tackle what has unquestionably been an appalling epidemic in care homes, and a huge exercise in testing is going on—a further £600 million, I can announce today, for infection control in care homes. Yes, it is absolutely true that the number of casualties has been too high, but I can tell the House, as I told the right hon. and learned Gentleman last week and, indeed, this week, that the number of outbreaks is down and the number of fatalities in care homes is now well down. There is much more to do, but we are making progress.
I am surprised that the Prime Minister queries the advice of his own Government up until 12 March. I do, of course, welcome any fall in the recorded numbers, and he is right to reference that, but he must still recognise that the numbers are still very high.
This week, The Daily Telegraph carried the following quote from a cardiologist:
“We discharged known, suspected, and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared, with no formal warning that the patients were infected, no testing available, and no PPE to prevent transmission. We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable.”
Does the Prime Minister accept that the cardiologist is right?
I have the utmost respect for all our medical professionals, who are doing an extraordinary job in very difficult circumstances. I can tell the House that the number of discharges from hospitals into care homes actually went down in March and April, and we had a system of testing people going into care homes. That testing is now being ramped up across all 15,000 care homes in this country.
I want to probe a little further the figures that the Prime Minister has given us. The Office for National Statistics records the average number of deaths in care homes each month. For the past five years, the average for April has been just over 8,000. This year, the number of deaths in care homes in April was a staggering 26,000. That is three times the average and an additional 18,000 deaths. Using the Government’s figures, only 8,000 are recorded as covid deaths, leaving 10,000 additional and unexplained care home deaths this April. I know that the Government must have looked into that, so can the Prime Minister give us the Government’s view on those unexplained deaths?
The coronavirus is an appalling disease which afflicts some groups far more than others—I think the whole country understands that—in particular the elderly, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to draw attention, as I have said, to the tragedy that has been taking place in care homes. The ONS is responsible for producing its data, and the Government have also produced data which shows not only that there has been, as I say, a terrible epidemic in care homes, but that since the care homes action plan began we are seeing an appreciable and substantial reduction not just in the number of outbreaks, but in the number of deaths. I stress to the House and to the country that solving the problem in care homes is going to be absolutely critical—getting the R down not just in care homes, but across the country—to our ability to move forward as a nation with the stepped programme that I announced on Sunday. We must fix it, and we will.
The Prime Minister says that solving the problem in care homes is crucial, but that can happen only if the numbers are understood, so I was disappointed that he does not have an answer to the pretty obvious question: what are those 10,000 unexplained deaths?
The overall figure for those who have died from covid-19 given by the Government at yesterday’s press conference was 32,692—each one a tragedy. For many weeks, the Government have compared the UK number against other countries. Last week, I showed the Prime Minister his own slide showing that the UK now has the highest death total in Europe and the second highest in the world. A version of the slide has been shown at the No. 10 press conference every day since 30 March—that is seven weeks. Yesterday, the Government stopped publishing the international comparison, and the slide has gone. Why?
As the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows very well, the UK has been going through an unprecedented, once-in-a-century epidemic. He seeks to make comparisons with other countries that I am advised are premature, because the correct and final way of making these comparisons will be when we have all the excess death totals for all the relevant countries. We do not yet have that data. Now, I am not going to try to pretend to the House that the figures, when they are finally confirmed, are anything other than stark and deeply, deeply horrifying. This has been an appalling epidemic.
What I can tell the House is that we are getting those numbers down: the number of deaths is coming down; the number of hospital admissions is coming down. Thanks to the hard work of the British people in reducing the R and reducing the number of fatalities, we are now in a position to make some small, modest steps to begin to come out of some of the very restrictive measures that we have had. I think that people do understand what we are trying to do as a country. As for the international comparisons that the right hon. and learned Gentleman seeks to draw now, he will have to contain his impatience.
Well, I am baffled. It is not me seeking to draw the comparisons; these are the Government’s slides, which have been used for seven weeks to reassure the public. The problem with the Prime Minister’s answer is that it is pretty obvious that for seven weeks—when we did not have the highest number in Europe—the slides were used for comparison purposes, and as soon as we hit that unenviable place, they have been dropped. Last week the Prime Minister quoted, in defence, Professor Spiegelhalter. This is what Professor Spiegelhalter said at the weekend, and we need to think about it:
“we should…use other countries to try and learn why our numbers are high”.
Dropping the comparisons means dropping the learning, and that is the real risk.
Let me now ask the Prime Minister about the changes coming into effect today. A real concern for many people is childcare. I want to quote a mother of a young child. I apologise that the quotation is a little lengthy, but it reflects the queries that all Members of this House will have been getting. She says this: “As Boris said in his speech, people are encouraged to go back to work, meaning my partner, as he works in construction. My partner has explained to his boss this can’t happen because we’ve got no childcare. He also rang the nursery, but they’re not open. I work as well, but my boss is having none of it. I hope I can get some advice. Me and my partner have been so stressed all day.” What advice would the Prime Minister give her?
On the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s earlier point about not learning from other countries—nothing could be further from the truth. We are watching intently what is happening in other countries, and it is very notable that in some other countries where relaxations have been introduced, there are signs of the R going up again. That is a very clear warning to us not to proceed too fast or too recklessly. I hope that the country does understand that.
On the specific point, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman rightly raises, about people’s anxieties about going back to work when they do not have adequate childcare, I think that I was very clear—both with him and with the House earlier in the week—that in so far as people may not be able to go back to work because they do not have the childcare that they need, their employers must be understanding. As I said, it is clearly an impediment and a barrier to people’s ability to go back to work if they do not have childcare. I would be very happy to look at the specific case that he raises to see if there is anything more that we can do to shed light on the matter.
I am grateful to the Prime Minister for indicating that he will look into that particular case. It is, I think, one of very many.
The Prime Minister is asking the country to support decisions that will affect millions of lives. I recognise that these are not easy decisions; they are very difficult, balanced decisions that the Prime Minister and the Government have to make, and, after the confusion of the last few days, gaining public confidence in them is crucial. The Prime Minister says that his decisions were
“driven by the science, the data and public health”,
so, to give the public confidence in the decisions, can the Prime Minister commit to publishing the scientific advice on which they were based?
All Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advice is published in due course, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows. Let me be absolutely clear with the House that SAGE, our scientists and our medical officers have been involved in every stage of preparing this strategy. I remind the House that what we are doing is entirely conditional and provisional. The UK has made a huge amount of progress.
The people of this country have worked incredibly hard to get the R down, and we cannot now go back to square one. We cannot risk a second outbreak, and we will do everything to avoid that.
Actually, when people look at what we are advocating as the way forward, the stepped process that we have set out, I think they can see exactly what we are trying to do as a country, and they can see that everybody is still required to obey the social distancing rules. The common sense of the British people got us through that first phase of this disease: I am absolutely confident that they will get us through the next as well.
I thank my right hon. Friend for what he does to champion the environment and the cause of reducing CO2 emissions. Alas, we have had to postpone the COP26 summit that was to have taken place, as he knows, in Glasgow at the end of this year. But our enthusiasm and determination to get to net zero by 2050 remains undiminished.
May I begin by thanking all our nurses for their efforts in keeping us safe and looking after us, and applaud yesterday’s International Nurses Day?
Last week, the Prime Minister, in response to my questioning, noted the ability of the Governments of all four nations to come together and to deliver a very clear message for our people. Events on Sunday could not have been more disastrous from this Government. The Prime Minister has made confusion costly, devolved Administrations have been shut out, there is widespread confusion among the public and the Government have shown a total disregard for workers’ safety. Many, sadly, have seen the images of London buses being packed this morning. Will the Prime Minister accept that the clear message in Scotland is to stay home to protect the NHS and to save lives?
Indeed, the message throughout the country is, of course, that you should stay at home if you can, unless the specific circumstances that we have outlined apply. But I must say that I do not accept the leader of the SNP’s characterisation of the co-operation that we have had across all four nations. In my experience, it has been intense and it has been has been going on for days and days and weeks and weeks, and actually if we look at the totality of the measures that we are taking as a country, there is much more that unites us than divides us. We will go forward together.
The reality is that the Prime Minister has failed to deliver a clear message, and he did not address the point about London buses being packed this morning. The Prime Minister is threatening progress made against the spread of this virus by the general public who are following the advice to stay at home. The Prime Minister is putting workers’ safety at risk by calling on those who cannot work at home to go to their jobs without any guidance on health and safety.
Only last Monday, the Health Secretary launched the test and trace app trial. On Sunday, the Prime Minister appeared to leapfrog any success with that by announcing easing of restrictions. Before any lockdown easing and to avoid undermining the progress made so far, the Prime Minister must make sure that there are sufficient levels of testing available, and the ability to test, trace and isolate is fully in operation. Why is the Prime Minister throwing weeks of progress against the virus into jeopardy, undermining the work of our outstanding NHS?
The right hon. Gentleman raises a point about London buses that is quite right, and I do not want to see crowding on mass-transit public transport in our capital or anywhere else. We are working actively with Transport for London to ensure that we have more capacity and discourage people from going to work during the peak, and that the operators, particularly TfL, lay on more tube trains in particular when they are necessary throughout the day. A huge amount of work is being done. We also want to see proper marshalling at stations to prevent crowded trains.
On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about test, track and trace, that is going to be a huge operation for the entire country. He should pay tribute to the work of all those hundreds of thousands of people who are now responsible for massively escalating our test, track and tracing operation. We now test more than virtually any other country in Europe. The rate of acceleration—the rate of increase—has been very sharp indeed, and we will go up to 200,000 by the end of the month. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the success of the programme is absolutely vital if we are to be able to move on to the second and third steps of our road map.
As my right hon. Friend knows, it is this Government’s ambition to end rough sleeping by 2024. It is great to see the progress that has been made even in this very difficult time—as he says, 90% of rough sleepers are now in accommodation or have been offered accommodation. We will be investing considerable sums to make sure that we build the housing and address the social issues to tackle that problem for good.
I thank the Government for listening to representations from the Liberal Democrats and others on protecting jobs by extending the scheme yesterday. Will the Government now do the same for the self-employed? People such as cleaners, childminders, taxi drivers and hairdressers have all seen their incomes devastated and are only now able to apply for help for the past three months, but millions of these families now have no help in the future. Surely, self-employed people must have their support extended, too.
I admire the right hon. Gentleman’s brilliant attempt to take the credit from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor for his extension of the coronavirus job retention scheme, which has been one of the most extraordinary features of this country’s—our collective—response to the crisis. The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the position of the self-employed; we are making sure that they get payments, over three months, of up to £7,500 as well.
I thank my hon. Friend very much, and I agree with him, but whatever the defects of the Labour Government in Wales, my experience is that we have been working very well together across all the four nations and will continue to do so. My honest view is that all those who talk about confusion or mixed messages are grossly overstating the position. The common sense of the British people is shining through this argument. They can see where we want to go and where we need to go.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. He actually nabbed me behind the Speaker’s Chair after he last put it to me. I can tell him that we estimate that 1.3 million British nationals have now been returned. I know that he would like the RAF to be more involved, but I can also tell him that we have put £75 million into a charter arrangement, and a whole range of airlines have signed up to it. We are doing everything that we can to bring people back as fast as we can.
As ever, I hear what my hon. Friend says about the Electoral Commission. What I can say is that, for the people who were investigated, I hope that all those who spent so much time, energy and effort drawing attention to their supposed guilt will now spend as much time and energy and ink and air time drawing attention to their genuine innocence.
The hon. Gentleman draws attention to a very important issue. We will make sure that nobody in this country, let alone asylum seekers, is ill-treated. I shall certainly be investigating the matter to which he refers, but am happy to write to him.
I am sorry that the wonderful festival at Hay-on-Wye has had to be postponed this year. I thank my hon. Friend for what she is doing to promote it, and I congratulate the organisers on their typical Welsh ingenuity in making the festival online, turning it into Hay-on-Wifi.
As I have said, one of the most remarkable things about this crisis has been the way that the whole country has come together to deal with it. There has been a spirit of unity and sharing that we have not seen for a very long time. I do not think that a lot of people in this country want to see the Brexit argument reopened. They want to see it settled, they want to see it done, and that is what this Government intend to do.
I have a picture at home of myself and William Hague aboard the Llangollen steam railway, I am proud to say. I congratulate the group on what they are doing to raise funds. I have no doubt that they have a glorious future ahead with my hon. Friend’s support.
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent point. If he could send me details, we will be very happy to take up the case that he describes.
In Burton and Uttoxeter, and across the country, we have seen the incredible dedication of our NHS workers in dealing with covid-19—dedication that has tragically cost some their lives. What steps is the Prime Minister taking to ensure that the NHS is adhering to Public Health England calls to risk-assess black, Asian and minority ethnic staff on the frontline and where possible to make appropriate arrangements to move them to non-patient facing roles?
I thank my hon. Friend. I think I understood very clearly what she was saying. It is obvious from the data that coronavirus, as I said earlier, is falling disproportionately on certain groups, and not just the elderly. We need to examine exactly what is happening. We need to protect all the most vulnerable groups, and we will take steps to ensure that NHS staff and others are properly protected, advised and screened.
I think the best and shortest answer I can give to the hon. Lady is that we totally understand the situation with aviation. Clearly, inadvertently this year the planet will greatly reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, and she is absolutely right that we need to entrench those gains. I do not want to see us going back to an era of the same type of emissions as we have had in the past. Aviation, like every other sector, must keep its carbon lower. We are certainly working on technological solutions to ensure that we can do that.
Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister join me in paying fulsome tribute to all the staff at Stepping Hill Hospital, particularly those caring for patients with covid-19? Does he recognise that many people have not been attending hospital as usual? How will he be assisting hospitals, such as Stepping Hill, in ensuring that my constituents can access healthcare as usual?
I thank my hon. Friend. One of the most important features of the way this country responded to the epidemic was that we did protect the NHS. We maintained capacity in the NHS throughout. Nobody went without a ventilator. There was space in intensive care units throughout the crisis, but we have a situation now, as he rightly says, where too many people are not going to hospital or the doctor to seek the treatment they need and deserve. I certainly encourage people with conditions that need medical treatment to go and get that treatment now. That will help us to reduce deaths this year and throughout the crisis.
(4 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe whole House will want to join me in paying tribute to Lance Corporal Brodie Gillon, a reservist medic of the Scottish and North Irish Yeomanry, who was tragically killed in Iraq last week. My thoughts and deepest sympathies are with her family and loved ones at this very difficult time.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Like many others in the United Kingdom, my constituents in Aylesbury are understandably deeply concerned about covid-19, and I pay tribute to staff at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Bucks social services and everyone in the community who is helping those with the virus or in isolation. Can my right hon. Friend assure the people of Aylesbury, and everybody in the country, that the Government will take whatever action is needed and spend whatever money is needed to save lives and protect livelihoods?
I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the staff at Stoke Mandeville and to all the staff in our fantastic NHS for the way they are coping at this extremely difficult time. We not only put another £5 billion into the NHS last week, as he heard from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, but we will certainly do whatever it takes and provide whatever funding is necessary to help our NHS through this crisis and, indeed, to support the whole country with Government-guaranteed loans, as he will have heard yesterday.
Thank you for your statement, Mr Speaker. I thank MPs for the very responsible approach they have taken to today’s Question Time by sitting a suitable distance apart to avoid cross-fertilisation of this horrible disease.
I also want to join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to Lance Corporal Brodie Gillon, who was killed in Iraq last week. Our thoughts are with her family and friends.
Today people are mourning the loss of loved ones, and many more will be suffering from the effects of coronavirus, including those already losing work or losing their jobs who are worried about whether they can keep a roof over their head. Our greatest thanks must go to the frontline medical and public health staff who are fighting to combat the spread of the disease, to the public servants, particularly postal workers, who have made such sacrifices today, and to the cleaners who are providing vital support. We must also thank those working round the clock to make sure our shops and warehouses are stocked with the essential food supplies that everybody needs.
We on these Benches will do our duty to hold the Government to account. Together, we need to ensure that the most effective action is taken to protect people, and it is in that spirit that I ask questions of the Prime Minister today.
Every member of the public will make sacrifices in the effort to stop the spread of coronavirus, but those on low pay, self-employed workers and small business owners are understandably worried. Sue wrote to me this week. Her family is in isolation, and she says the current £94.25 a week statutory sick pay is
“not enough to pay for their food shopping.”
Can the Prime Minister do what the Chancellor repeatedly refused to do yesterday and pledge to increase statutory sick pay to European levels?
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the way in which the Opposition have approached the issue generally and for the co-operation so far between our Front Benches on this matter. As he rightly says, this is a national emergency, and we are asking the public to do things and take actions in a way that is unprecedented for a Government in peacetime, and perhaps even unprecedented in the last century.
When we ask people to take action to isolate themselves if they or a member of their household has the disease, or to take steps that jeopardise businesses and cause people to risk losing their job, it is absolutely right that, whatever their circumstances, we should ensure workers get the support they need. So in addition to the package of business support that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor outlined yesterday, we will be working with the unions and colleagues across the House, and bringing forward further measures to support workers of all kinds throughout this crisis.
UK sick pay levels lag far behind those of European counterparts. The Scandinavian countries are giving many people 100% of wages during this crisis, and I hope that when the Prime Minister brings forward proposals on this they will reflect the reality of people’s lives—you cannot feed a family on 90-odd quid a week. Those people are therefore putting everybody at risk because they have to go out to work in order to put food on the table. In order to claim statutory sick pay, workers need to prove that they earn a minimum of £118 per week, so I hope that when the Prime Minister brings forward proposals he will give confidence to the millions of people who work in low-income jobs, are in insecure work or are self-employed, and will commit to extending very much enhanced statutory sick pay to all workers.
As I have told the House before, of course we will ensure that nobody is penalised for doing the right thing, protecting not just themselves but other members of society and making sure that our NHS is able to cope. Clearly, statutory sick pay will, typically, be supplemented by other benefits, but I repeat what I said to the right hon. Gentleman: as the state is making these demands of the public and of business, it is only right that throughout this period we should be doing whatever it takes to support the workers of this country throughout this crisis.
What it takes is a recognition of the social injustice and inequalities that exist in this country, and I hope that when the Prime Minister makes the proposals on statutory sick pay levels that will be recognised. A quarter of the people who are most crucial to support us in the crisis, social care staff, and almost half of home care workers are on zero-hours contracts, so they are therefore automatically not entitled to sick pay. By not extending statutory sick pay to all workers, the Government are forcing social care staff—the people who could, unwittingly, be transmitting the disease among the most vulnerable in our community—to choose between health and their own hardship.
Yesterday the Chancellor, unfortunately, offered nothing to the 20 million people living in rented homes, including 3 million households with children. These people are worried sick that they will not be able to pay their rent if they get ill, lose pay or feel that they need to self-isolate. It is in the interests of public health, of the health of all of us, that people do not feel forced to go to work in order to avoid eviction when they know that they may be spreading this terrible disease, so will the Prime Minister now confirm that the Government’s emergency legislation will protect private renters from eviction?
The right hon. Gentleman is making a series of very powerful points, and I can indeed confirm that we will be bringing forward legislation to protect private renters from eviction. That is one thing we will do, but it is also important that, as we legislate, we do not simply pass on the problem, so we will also be taking steps to protect other actors in the economy.
We look forward to seeing the details of that, because we all represent private sector tenants in our constituencies and we know the stress that they are going through now. They need something to be said urgently about this issue, so I hope that the Government will say something as soon as possible. Today would be appropriate.
NHS staff and those who work in the care sector are on the frontline of caring for patients suffering from coronavirus. Sadly, however, those workers have no idea whether they are transmitting the virus themselves—they may not be obviously suffering from it, but they could still be transmitting it—whether they are ill or not, and what effect it will have when they return to work on the frontline. Will the Prime Minister please explain why the Government are not prioritising the testing of all healthcare staff—those in the NHS and those doing such a vital job in the care sector?
In point of fact, we are prioritising the testing of NHS staff, for the obvious reason that we want them to be able to look after everybody else with confidence that they are not transmitting the disease. This country is actually far ahead of many other comparable countries in testing huge numbers of people. We are increasing our tests from 5,000 a day to 10,000 a day. It may be of interest to the House to know that we are getting much closer to having a generally available test that will determine whether or not someone has had the disease. That will truly be of huge benefit to this country in tackling the outbreak.
The World Health Organisation said “test, test, test.” We should be testing on an industrial scale. When I met the Prime Minister on Monday evening, he assured me that 10,000 tests were going on per day. That is better than none, obviously, but it is nowhere near even the number of people working in the NHS and the care sector. It is a massive undertaking and I wish there was a greater sense of urgency from the Government in getting testing available for all staff.
NHS staff are obviously on the frontline, and many are scared because the guidance has been changed to say that they do not need to wear full protective equipment when caring for patients. A senior doctor has said:
“The rest of the world is providing staff with full protective gear and we are restricting it”.
This is a doctor saying, “I am scared.” We should not be scaring doctors and nurses. Is there or is there not a policy for them to have full protective equipment? I believe that that should be the case.
Quickly, on testing, I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that we are moving up to 25,000 tests a day.
On personal protective equipment for NHS staff, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the issue. It is obviously of huge concern to everyone that our NHS staff should feel that they are able to interact with patients with perfect security and protection, so there is a massive effort going on, comparable to the effort to build enough ventilators, to ensure that we have adequate supplies of PPE, not just now but throughout the outbreak.
Generations to come will look back on this moment and they will judge us—they will judge us on the actions we take now. Our response must be bold and it must be decisive. The market cannot deliver what is needed; only collective public action, led by Government, can protect our people and our society. That collective action must not allow the burden to fall most on those who lack the resources to cope, as happened after the financial crash. People across the country do understand the need for temporary restrictions on our way of life to protect us all, and we will work with the Government, but the Prime Minister must understand that that will require balancing action to protect the most insecure and vulnerable, in the interests of public health as well as of social justice. The health of us all depends on the health of the most vulnerable, so I ask the Prime Minister: will he step up now—not tomorrow—and give support to those vulnerable people who live on the margins of our society, who are vulnerable themselves and make us all vulnerable, and give them the support and the assurance that they are desperately searching for today?
Indeed I can, and that is why we have announced another £500 million to go straight to councils to help them immediately with the needs of the poorest and the most vulnerable; that is why we have announced immediate cash injections into business, to help them through an unquestionably very difficult time; and that is why will be bringing forward further measures to ensure that every worker receives support throughout this difficult period.
Be in no doubt: the right hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the unprecedented nature of this crisis. We are asking the public to do quite extraordinary things and we are asking business to shoulder quite extraordinary burdens. But the more effectively we can work together to comply with the very best scientific advice, which is what has actuated this Government throughout the crisis—which is what has guided this Government throughout the crisis—the better our chances of relieving the burden on the NHS; the more lives we will save and the more suffering we will avoid; and the quicker we will get through it. Be in no doubt that—the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right—this is an enormous challenge for this country, but I think the people of this country understand what they need to do to beat it. They also, I think, understand that we will beat it, and that we will beat it together.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on what he is doing for Bassetlaw Hospital. I remember going to talk to the wonderful doctors and staff at Bassetlaw. They explained in great detail their fascinating plan for improving service for their patients. I am absolutely determined to support him and them in their ambitions. That is why we have already put £15 million into expanding emergency care capacity in Bassetlaw. My right hon. Friend the Health Secretary is working intimately with Bassetlaw to take forward the whole project.
I associate myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister on the killing of Lance Corporal Brodie Gillon.
This is an unprecedented emergency and it requires an unprecedented response. I welcome the fact that parties across the House, and Governments across these islands, have worked together as we attempt to protect all our peoples. It is the right approach and it is the least the public expect and deserve from us.
Yesterday the Chancellor announced a £330 billion financial package for business. Today the UK Government need to announce a financial package for people. Members from six parties across the House have expressed support for a temporary universal basic income to help everyone, especially freelancers, renters and the self-employed. Using the current tax system, will the Prime Minister stand up and give a commitment today to provide people with the security of a universal basic income?
First, I want to thank the right hon. Gentleman for the spirit in which he has spoken. Indeed, there is a huge amount of collaboration going on across all four nations of this country, as you can imagine, Mr Speaker. We are in lockstep.
What I would say on the right hon. Gentleman’s appeal for basic income is, do not underestimate the value to people of the measures that we have already announced that will support business, keep jobs going and make sure those businesses continue in existence. That must be the first step. As I have said repeatedly now to the right hon. Gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition, it is important that throughout the crisis we take steps to support workers. The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) is quite right and the suggestion that he makes is, of course, one of many such suggestions.
I thank the Prime Minister for his answer. There is a willingness from all of us to work together as we go through this crisis, but thousands of people are already losing their jobs. It is happening today. Millions will face the same threat. They need reassurance and support, and they need it today. They need an income guarantee.
We must not repeat history. People are worried about their bills and about keeping a roof over their head. In the last financial crisis, the banks were bailed out, but ordinary people were not. The Prime Minister has it in his power to protect people’s incomes and provide them with peace of mind. At this time, an emergency universal income scheme would do just that. Will he at least commit to meeting all of us who support that proposal to discuss how we can protect the incomes of all our peoples?
Yes, indeed. I can make that commitment and I said as much in my earlier answer to the right hon. Gentleman. It is very important that, as we go forward, we try to enlist a consensus in this House about how to support people throughout the crisis. I agree profoundly with what he said about not repeating history. It is very important that, as we ask the public to do the right thing for themselves and for everybody else, no one, whatever their income, should be penalised for doing the right thing, and we will make sure that that is the case.
I pay a particular tribute not just to our amazing NHS, but to our teachers and everybody who works in our schools for everything that they have done to keep our schools going throughout this difficult crisis so far. Of course we will do everything we can to remove burdens on schools, and Ofsted is one in particular that we can address. The House should expect further decisions to be taken imminently on schools and on how we make sure that we square the circle of ensuring that we both stop the spread of disease, but relieve, as much as we can, the pressure on our NHS.
I completely agree with what the hon. Lady says, and I thank her for all the work that she does in the health service. I can certainly tell her that we have stockpiles of PPE equipment and that we are proceeding—it is very important for the House to understand this—in accordance with the best scientific advice, and it is the timeliness of those measures that is absolutely vital in combating the spread of the epidemic, and indeed that is how we save lives. I am delighted that the UK’s approach has been commended today not just by Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, but by Dr David Nabarro of the World Health Organisation.
As the House will know, there is already a coalition of British manufacturers that are now working together at speed to supply the ventilators that we need. We already have 8,000, and we are moving rapidly upwards, and I will keep the House informed of developments.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his invitation. I am happy to consider his invitation to Rhondda and will take it up.
What I really hope is that the Prime Minister will look at the whole coronavirus crisis through the eyes of the Rhondda, because we have a large number of sole traders, chippies, electricians and plumbers. We have a lot of people in very insecure employment. We have got lots of people who are elderly and people who are on very low incomes and have next to no savings. Many people have already been laid off this week or are worried that they are going to be laid off in the next fortnight, so we really do need the Prime Minister to address these matters.
If I am honest, I do not want to be partisan, but it does feel as if we are a bit of an afterthought. I really beg the Prime Minister to look through the eyes of the Rhondda, because I think he would then double sick pay so that it is a sensible figure. I think he would introduce something like a summer version of the winter fuel allowance so that the elderly get some help. I think he would probably introduce some kind of VAT holiday for sole traders. I know he hopes, and we all hope, that the whole of the country will bounce back quickly after this, but I say to him that after the floods and the poverty that we have historically suffered in the Rhondda, communities like mine will find it phenomenally difficult to bounce back if he does not take that kind of action now.
The hon. Gentleman speaks powerfully and passionately and, in my view, wholly rightly for the people of the Rhondda. I can tell him that our thoughts in this Government are with the people of the entire country in helping everyone to get through this virus. We will do, as I say, whatever it takes to support business and, as I said in my earlier answer to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, also to support individuals and families. I welcome the agreement of the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), the leader of the Scottish National party that we should do it on a cross-party basis.
I repeat the answer I have given several times to several of the hon. Lady’s colleagues: we will do whatever it takes to ensure that all workers are protected throughout this crisis.
We are extending the hours in which deliveries can be made, and we are talking right now with the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee about ensuring that pharmaceutical goods get at the right time to the customers who need them.
I endorse completely the sentiment that the hon. Gentleman has just expressed about the need to do this collectively. The Government have announced a £46 million package of investment for finding a vaccine. As I have just said, a huge amount of work is going into investing in test kits, and those are changing and improving the whole time. The House will be reassured to know that this work is being done at an international level. We are working with our EU partners, the G7, the G20, the World Health Organisation and the International Monetary Fund—everybody is working together on the very issues that the hon. Gentleman raised.
Yes. My hon. Friend identifies exactly the three priorities of this Government.
Defeating the coronavirus must be the top—indeed, the only—priority for the foreseeable future. There is already huge anxiety across the UK. Businesses are facing unprecedented challenges and uncertainty, so, regardless of leave or remain, how quickly will the Prime Minister recognise the inevitable and seek at least a one-year extension to the Brexit implementation process?
Our priority is to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. The other matter that the hon. Member mentions has, as he will know, already been legislated for.
I can indeed confirm that that is exactly why we have cut business rates. We are making very considerable sums available for small and very small businesses precisely to protect the high street and the enterprise environment on which so many jobs depend.
I am sure that the Prime Minister will agree that protecting our NHS staff at this crucial time is of maximum importance. At least one GP surgery in County Durham this week received surgical masks from the NHS with expiry dates of 2016 on the box. In other cases, labels had been stuck over the top, extending the expiry dates on the boxes. What assurances can the Prime Minister give not only that surgeries get the equipment they require, but that it is actually effective once they get it?
To the best of my knowledge, all the equipment we are sending out is of the correct standard. I would be happy to look at the case that the right hon. Gentleman mentions. As I said earlier, we have stockpiles of PPE, but are making huge efforts to ensure that we have enough for the outbreak ahead.
I wholly endorse what my hon. Friend has said. We will do whatever it takes, and we will beat it together.
Apart from rent arrears, eviction from a private tenancy—a section 21 no-fault eviction—is the biggest reason for homelessness. On Friday, I met a 77-year-old woman who had lived in her home for 15 years, and a couple caring for a sister with Down’s syndrome. Both households were due for eviction today. Will the Prime Minister ask the courts to stop section 21 evictions to take the pressure off hard-pressed councils and these really worried families?
The hon. Member is absolutely right to raise this matter, and that is why I said what I did to the Leader of the Opposition. We will indeed be bringing forward legislation to address this point.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why we are speeding up DBS checks, so that they can be done in 24 hours. I want to thank and congratulate all the boroughs throughout this country for the way they are harnessing those volunteers.
The Prime Minister talked about supporting families. Will he show his solidarity for households headed up by a single breadwinner with dependent children? Saturday is National Single Parent Day, which was initiated by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Will he join the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), who is my friend in this, on the steps of Old Palace Yard immediately after Prime Minister’s questions to show that, old or young, rich or poor, big or small, all families matter?
I could not agree more strongly with what the hon. Lady said. Whether I will be able to join her, I am not sure; I will have to look at my diary. I think I have a date with you, Mr Speaker.
My right hon. Friend raises a very important point, but it is one that is not unknown to the medical profession, and we will be relying on the clinical decisions of those medical professionals.
On the matter of “whatever it takes”, it takes more than three-word slogans, and in this case it takes a bit of war socialism. We need to get money into the pockets of the workers. Has the Prime Minister seen early-day motion 302, which I have proposed, about bringing in a temporary universal basic income to support workers and get money to where it is needed?
I hear the hon. Gentleman loud and clear. He echoes a point that was made by the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford). Of course, that is one of the ideas that will certainly be considered.
My right hon. Friend is rightly engrossed day to day in dealing with the developments of covid-19, but I would like to ask him to cast his mind a little further forward. The chief scientific adviser and the chief medical officer have been clear that the best solution to this is a vaccine, but the chief scientific adviser has said that that could be as much as a year away. He has also suggested that, until that vaccine is available, it may be difficult to ease restrictions successfully. Does my right hon. Friend agree with that analysis, and if so, what does a sensible exit strategy look like?
The objective of the Government and of our scientific advisers is to depress the peak of the epidemic, to ensure that we get through it, so that we come out on the other side, and that we do that as fast as possible. That is why we are taking all the measures that we have announced. That is why we have announced the package of business support that we have. I am not going to give a timescale on it, but that is the strategy, and I am absolutely certain that it will succeed.