Grenfell Tower Fire Inquiry

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We will soon come to the matter for which a good many Members are probably waiting—I rather imagine they are; if they are not, they should be. They could be awaiting the Adjournment debate with eager anticipation, bated breath and beads of sweat upon their brows, but quite a lot are probably waiting for the announcement of the results of the elections for Chairs of Select Committees. Before we come to those, I will take a point of order from Jenny Chapman.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The House is aware that the repeal Bill is to be published tomorrow morning. Disconcertingly, the Labour party has received reports that the press is to be briefed on its contents this evening. Mr Speaker, have you received any notice from the Government that a Minister intends to come to this House at the earliest opportunity to make a statement as to the contents of the Bill? If not, could you please advise me on how we might be able to bring the contents of the Bill to the attention of the House before 21 July?

[Mr Speaker]

The short answer is that I have received no indication of any intention on the part of a Minister to make a statement on the matter tomorrow. However, it is perfectly open to the hon. Lady and her colleagues to ensure that they have a default position so that if no ministerial statement is proffered, they could at least give themselves the chance of an urgent question. I cannot offer any guarantee as to whether such a question would be selected, but it can be selected, by definition, only if it is submitted. In so far as the hon. Lady seeks my advice, that is my advice without prejudice.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight ordinary working families who do rely on the Government to provide stability and certainty for them, and that is what this Conservative Government have done. Looking at what we have done, we see that we have supported jobs through significant new investment in skills, we have invested in public services such as childcare and the NHS, and we have enhanced consumer protections. I am happy to repeat the words that I said outside Downing Street on 13 July last year, but it is Conservatives in government who have delivered strong and stable leadership, and that is the message I will be taking out to the country during this election.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Q7. Does the Prime Minister support the people of Darlington who oppose the downgrading of their A&E and maternity services? They want an answer they can trust, Prime Minister. Is it yes or no?

[The Prime Minister]

The proposals for the configuration of health services in local areas is a matter that is being determined by local commissions in the best interests of services in the local area.

I am interested that the hon. Lady refers to the views of her constituents in Darlington. She has said of the Leader of the Opposition, the leader of her party:

“My constituents in Darlington have made it clear to me that they cannot support the Labour party under your leadership.”

How can they possibly support him as leader of the country?

Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

In the 1990s, families in Darlington welcomed Bosnian refugees into their homes, and it is a credit to them that they are willing to welcome refugees again. Our voluntary sector is already collecting toys and clothes. Those people know what to do, and the local authority is on board. What they do not know—they are trying to plan, and the success of the scheme will be greatly assisted by an ability to plan properly—is when this is going to happen. They have no idea when it will happen. The Prime Minister said “straightaway”, but we need more than “straightaway”. We need to know whether the Prime Minister is talking about days or weeks. What does he mean?

[The Prime Minister]

As I have said, the Home Secretary will make a statement next week, setting out more detail about how the scheme will work and how we will work with local councils to deliver it.

Murder of Lee Rigby

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Obviously, we can put down legal obligations in terms of complying with warrants from the Home Secretary and legal requirements on providing communications data that are vital in solving crime, but there is a moral responsibility, too. If companies know that terrorist acts are being plotted, they have a moral responsibility to act. I cannot think of any reason why they would not tell the authorities. The debate that will happen following the publication of the report will help to keep us safe.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister urgently examine whether the Prison Service has the resources and, crucially, the skills to deal with radicalisation in our jails?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady makes an important point, which we discussed in the extremism taskforce. It is a tragic fact that a number of people have gone to prison and become radicalised in prison because there have not been the appropriate services in prison or there has not been the right sort of religious instruction. Therefore, we have a programme going through all our prisons to ensure that that is in place. That is important.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with my hon. Friend. It was a step forward when the threshold was effectively increased by allowing things to be passed between husband and wife, making it £650,000 rather than £350,000, which I think it was before. That only happened because of the pressure from the Conservative party when we were in opposition. Taxes, as they say, are a matter for the Chancellor in his Budget, but we all want to see a system—this might have to wait some time—in which only the very rich pay inheritance tax, not hard-working people.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Q9. This summer, mothers from Darlington marched 300 miles to show their anger at the this Government’s wasteful mismanagement of the health service. Darlington—I want to help the Prime Minister—is in the north-east of England, like the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck). Does he agree with the Darlington mums and, it seems, a member of his own Cabinet that spending £3 billion on reorganising the NHS was his biggest mistake?

[The Prime Minister]

What we did at the beginning of this Parliament was ensure that we cut the bureaucracy and put in the extra money. The only way to have a strong national health service is by having a strong economy. Let us look at the countries that ignored their deficits. Greece cut its NHS by 14%; Portugal cut its NHS by 17%. They have something in common with the hon. Lady’s leader: they all forgot the deficit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Gordon Henderson. Not here.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

5. What steps he plans to take to assist prosecutors in depriving criminals of the profits of their crimes.

[The Solicitor-General (Mr Robert Buckland)]

The Government are committed to improving our ability to recover criminal assets by amending the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 through the Serious Crime Bill, currently in the other place, including by increasing sentences for failure to pay confiscation and the enhancement of investigatory powers after a confiscation order is made. The Home Office is leading a wider programme to improve asset recovery, with which prosecutors are fully involved.

[Jenny Chapman]

I am grateful to the Solicitor-General for his response. It is good to hear him acknowledge that more needs to be done, but may I make an extra suggestion? The National Audit Office has found that the number of asset-freezing orders has fallen by a third and my understanding is that that might be because the CPS is timid and concerned about being stung for the costs when lawyers appeal the asset-freezing order. Perhaps he will consider capping the costs that could be recouped by lawyers in such circumstances, as that might make the CPS bolder.

[The Solicitor-General]

I am always receptive to ideas about the ways in which costs can be capped, but it is right that I remind the hon. Lady that the CPS still performs the lion’s share of confiscation orders, and that in 2013-14 £97.69 million was recovered. The new CPS proceeds of crime unit, which was set up in the summer, will bring together in a more effective way the regional asset recovery teams in order to achieve the results that both she and I want to see.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

That was for a different offence, as the hon. Gentleman knows. His proposal would make simply possessing a knife an offence, assuming that the individual already has a knife-related offence against their name. In those circumstances, in which judges would have no discretion whatsoever, the proposal could, in my view, lead unwittingly to precisely the revolving door of higher rates of reoffending that we saw time and again under the Labour Government, when endless populist gimmicks led to higher rates of reoffending. One of the things that I am proud of is that this coalition Government, by avoiding that approach, have seen crime fall to the lowest levels ever recorded.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

The Government are not doing nearly enough to move public sector jobs out of London and into the regions. What does the Deputy Prime Minister think we should be doing to move organisations such as the Care Quality Commission and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to places such as Darlington?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am always open, as are the Government, to proposals on moving further parts of the public sector from Whitehall and London to other parts of the country. Sheffield has benefited enormously from that, with the Department for Work and Pensions and the business bank being established there. The BBC, a public sector body, has had a huge imprint on the north-west. We will of course look at any sensible proposals in the same direction.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We should certainly do that. We have seen a huge recovery in our automotive industry. Obviously, Dunlop’s decision is disappointing, but we have some huge success stories in component supplies and manufacture for the automotive industry. The programme in the Budget for helping energy-intensive industries will clearly help some of the companies involved in this industry, but the broader help—the £7 billion I referred to earlier—will help all businesses, including those in automotive supply.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Q4. A month ago I asked the Prime Minister about ambulance response times and he read an answer from his folder that did not answer the question at all. Since then, an elderly Darlington woman was left for more than four hours vomiting blood before an ambulance arrived. This time, please may I not have a prepared answer; can we please have some action?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to look at the case the hon. Lady mentions. She says she does not want that, but I think that is the right thing to do: to look at this individual case. In all our ambulance areas we have waiting time targets that ambulances are meant to meet in response times, and I am very happy to look to see what happened in this case and whether lessons can be learned for the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the excellent support that he has given to the Coventry and Warwickshire city deal, which we were able finally to conclude. It is as a result of that deal and other initiatives that we will be able to support more than 15,000 new jobs by 2025 and unlock £91 million of public and private sector investment—yet another example of economic decentralisation that will help to create jobs throughout the country.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

In order to serve on a jury, one needs to be on the electoral register. Are the Government increasing the maximum age for jurors from 70 to 75 to make up the numbers of all those young people who will no longer be eligible to serve?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The ambition is to increase the number of young people who are registered. A number of Members have already mentioned the work of Bite the Ballot and other organisations that are campaigning hard to do that. If we get individual voter registration right, as I hope we will—which was first proposed by the Labour Government, not the coalition Government—levels of registration in under-registered populations should increase rather than decrease.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I have been a long-standing advocate of garden cities. If we are to avoid endless infill and endless controversy about developments that sprawl from already established urban or suburban places, we have to create communities where people want to live—not just with affordable housing, but with the amenities of schools and the infrastructure necessary. That is why I believe in garden cities and why, as a Government, we are committed to publishing a prospectus on them, which I very much hope we will do as soon as possible.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Another recommendation of the social mobility commission was a substantial increase in the minimum wage that would bring it up to about £7.45 outside London, which would seriously benefit constituents in Darlington. What is the Deputy Prime Minister going to do about that one?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has asked the Low Pay Commission precisely the question about the merits and the economic knock-on effects of increasing the minimum wage by a higher rate than in the past. That is what the Low Pay Commission is about and why we have asked that question. We have asked that question; it was not asked by the Labour Government.