(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberOrder. The hon. Lady must have been renamed; or perhaps I was not clear enough. I called Jim Dowd.
A reported 12,000-plus rockets have been fired into Gaza over the past 13 days, with more than 500 deaths and more than 80,000 Gazans displaced. May I simply ask the Prime Minister what pressure he is prepared to apply, if he will not pursue economic sanctions against Israel, to ensure that Israel complies with international humanitarian law and exercises the restraint that he says he wants to see?
(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am grateful for the opportunity to speak in a debate that goes to the heart of the concerns of the majority in my constituency. Despite some improvement in recent times, Newham is the third most deprived local authority area in London, and the seventh most deprived in the country. It has been there or thereabouts for many decades. People from West Ham are at the sharp end of the Government’s failing economic policy, and are suffering as prices rise and wages stagnate.
As we have heard over and over again since this Tory-led coalition came to power, working people are now £1,600 per year worse off. While George Osborne—
I can only apologise, Mr Speaker. I have spent a long time in the Whips Office.
While the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) is victoriously proclaiming that his plan is working, people in my constituency are really struggling. They are struggling to pay bills, to eat and to provide for their family. This Government have shamelessly failed to offer any support to hard-working people in this country, but have provided tax breaks for their friends and let ordinary families bear the brunt of their policies.
Instead of ensuring that our economy recovered, we have had three years of flatlining. This Government have borrowed more in three years than the previous one did in 13 years, and for what? Was it to help hard-working people and to protect the vulnerable, or to oversee the slowest recovery for more than 100 years and to instigate a cost of living crisis?
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons Chamber3. What his most recent estimate is of the cost of the Crossrail project.