Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, this Government were elected to build 40 new hospitals, and that is what we are going to do. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will be setting out the list, but I can also tell my hon. Friend that the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was awarded £9 million in October for urgent upgrades to protect vital frontline care. I am sure he will understand that further, long-term solutions are now under active consideration.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for getting things moving on the disclosure and barring scheme. It was also good to hear him belatedly adopting the policy of jobs, jobs, jobs, but does he mean jobs in the UK, or in France, Poland, Germany, Korea and China? It is all very well announcing, for example, blue passports, but those are now not being produced in the north-east, but by a French company in a Polish factory. Will the Prime Minister now take back control and give instructions to the Treasury, the Cabinet Office, Whitehall and town halls to buy British and protect British jobs, jobs, jobs?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) behind me says from a sedentary position, “What has the right hon. Gentleman got against Poland?” We will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country. We will actively buy British. We will ensure that contracts go to great British companies, but what we will not do is turn our faces against the notion of international free trade and the market, which has brought colossal wealth to the people of this country. Those are the politics and the economics of the madhouse.