Port Talbot Steelworks
Justin Madders Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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David T. C. Davies
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I think that Tata now needs to come forward with a bit more information about who exactly we can expect to see being made redundant and what their current skillsets are, so that we can begin targeting the help. The challenge up until now is that we have not had the information on who is being made redundant. Tata has made it clear that it will not automatically be the people on the blast furnaces, for example, who are made redundant, because it hopes to retain some of the people who are working there but offer redundancy to people in other parts of the plant. We have not had the information as of yet, but I think the time has come to have that information. We of course want to ensure that any redundancy packages are as generous as possible.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
My constituents who work at the Shotton plant are very worried about the news they are hearing and concerned about their colleagues’ futures, but they are also wondering what it means for them. Clearly there will be knock-on effects, not just in the supply chain but in other Tata plants around the country, so what assessment has the Secretary of State made of the short, medium and long-term impact of these decisions on other plants?
David T. C. Davies
We were very clear that while the arc furnace was being built, we wanted to make absolutely certain that all those other plants around Wales were able to receive product to finish, and Tata has been very clear that that will happen. It will have to bring it in from elsewhere over the next two to three years, but that will happen. There will therefore not be the impact that the hon. Gentleman is rightly concerned about.
Of course, that is possible only because of what some of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues have described as a reckless deal. What would have been reckless would have been for us to see Tata in an office and say, “Okay, you’re going to make 8,000 people redundant and shut down all these sites, and there’s nothing for us to do about it.” That would have been reckless. What we actually did was to come forward with a £500 million package of taxpayers’ money, and rightly so, to support the continuation of steelmaking in Port Talbot and to ensure that all the other plants in Wales—Shotton, Trostre and Llanwern—continue to receive product during that interim period, so that we do not see significant job losses anywhere else.
Oral Answers to Questions
Justin Madders Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Prime Minister (Rishi Sunak)
May I wish everyone, but in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams), a very happy St David’s Day?
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.
Justin Madders
The Prime Minister understands the importance of NHS staff, because he was out there every Thursday night clapping for them during the pandemic. He must therefore also surely know that he has not got a hope of dealing with the NHS crisis if he does not invest in its workforce. We have a plan to double medical school places and end the scandal of straight-A students being denied the chance to become a doctor. Patients support our plan, the NHS supports our plan, and even his Chancellor supports our plan. Why doesn’t he?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman needs to keep up—we are doing a workforce plan for the NHS. There are tens of thousands more doctors, more nurses in the NHS, a record number of GPs and record investment in the NHS. That is what we get with a Conservative Government delivering.
Oral Answers to Questions
Justin Madders Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Prime Minister (Elizabeth Truss)
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.
Justin Madders
When the penny dropped for the Prime Minister on Monday and she realised that her Budget was responsible for crashing the economy, she should have come to this House to explain herself and to apologise to the millions of people who will now be paying hundreds of pounds extra a month on their mortgages because of her mistakes. Now that she is here, can she tell us, given the absolute chaos that her Government have created, why the previous Chancellor lost his job but she kept hers?
The Prime Minister
I have been very clear that I am sorry and that I have made mistakes, but the right thing to do in those circumstances is to make changes, which I have made, and to get on with the job and deliver for the British people. We have delivered the energy price guarantee, we have helped people this winter, and I will continue to do that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Justin Madders Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Yes. I thank my hon. Friend for his point, and he knows a great deal about the subject. We have worked very hard with the Welsh Government throughout the pandemic, supporting them with £8.6 billion of additional funding through the Barnett formula, but clearly we need to learn the lessons together as we bounce forward from this pandemic.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
Yes is the answer, but the Labour party junked it in—[Interruption.] This is something that, for decades, politicians have failed to address: in 1999, Labour failed to address the plan. They had 13 years—13 years—in government. I think it was 13—13 unlucky years for this country—and they did not do it. They did not do it, and this Government are going to tackle it. This Government are finally going to address the issue of social care. If they want to support it with their customary doughty resolve, if they want to support it without wibble-wobbling from one week to the next on whatever their policy is—without changing like weather vanes, which is what they normally do—if they want to support it and if they want to back it, then I am all ears.