Oral Answers to Questions
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rishi Sunak
I thank my hon. Friend for all the advice and support he has provided for me and the team over the past year as we have sought to develop policies that will help businesses, including Leonardo in his constituency, which I know he champions. He is right to highlight the opportunities of better procurement, particularly for our defence supply chain, and I look forward to working with him and colleagues to ensure that we can support his local businesses and many others across the United Kingdom.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)
The Government have put in place a number of measures to facilitate trade with the EU, including publishing comprehensive guidance on the new arrangements. HMRC has produced step-by-step guides, videos and webinars for small businesses that may be new to customs processes. The Government have also provided a £20 million Brexit support fund to assist small and medium-sized businesses in adjusting to new customs procedures, questions of rules of origin and VAT rules when trading with the EU.
Mohammad Yasin [V]
Just over a month ago, the Paymaster General told me that she would follow up on my invite to Bedfordshire chamber of commerce to hear the widespread concerns of businesses that are really struggling to overcome the new and complex operational challenges around her Government’s Brexit deal. I have heard nothing. Will the Minister attend a meeting with the chamber of commerce to hear about how customs paperwork is impacting viability, or would the Treasury also prefer to ignore the problem?
Jesse Norman
The Paymaster General is always happy to take inquiries from businesses, as am I, so if the hon. Member wishes to write to me, I am perfectly happy to respond to his questions.
Future Relationship with the EU
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend raises two important points. I can assure him that a great deal of thought has gone into ensuring that we have the supplies and enough personnel to meet the requirements on the veterinary side of things. We have always stood by any sector or part of the UK that is facing tough times, and we will continue to do so.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab) [V]
England and Wales were due to qualify for BSE negligible risk status next year, but due to the diversion of Government resources and staff to work on Brexit and covid, the Government missed the OIE—the World Organisation for Animal Health—submission deadline. Will the Minister apologise to my constituent in Bedford who runs Dunbia Cardington, who, despite his attempts to send out a message in a post-Brexit world that he is open for business and has the highest food standards in the world, will have to wait at least another year for his meat to qualify for this world-class status because of her Government’s failure?
Budget Resolutions
Mohammad Yasin Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Last week’s Budget will double Government borrowing, and it is proof that the Government’s austerity agenda, which brought unnecessary pain and suffering to millions, was a failure. Austerity has inflicted untold damages on our public services, and most obviously on our health service, which in 2010 had the highest patient satisfaction levels on record. It is painful to see what has been done to the police service, the fire service, the welfare state, the probation service, courts, the health service, education, and libraries—I could go on. All those ideologically driven cuts to our social fabric were in response to a worldwide banking crash for which Joe Public paid the price, yet now the public are supposed to cheer when the Government try to repair some of the damage that they have done, by raising council tax precepts to replace some of the police officers we have lost. Should the public now be grateful that the NHS can have anything it wants, after nearly a decade of sustained and deliberate under-investment that has brought the service and its staff to their knees?
Every person in the UK is now counting on the NHS to be there for them when this Government were not there for it. Money cannot fill the 100,000 workforce vacancies, including 43,000 nurses and 10,000 doctors, who we need right now. Despite the big spending announcements, austerity is not over for most public services, and according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, day-to-day spending per person will remain almost a fifth lower than it was in 2010, through to the middle of the current decade.
The £76 billion rise in overall spending by 2023-24 will be paid for largely by borrowing, paving the way for soaring debt and probable tax rises, particularly if the economy takes a significant hit from coronavirus and a disorderly Brexit. The Budget revealed just how weak the UK economy was even before coronavirus. Brexit has already made the economy 2% smaller than it would otherwise have been, and we are still in the transition period, which for now is protecting us from the economic shock. After a decade of Tory-led Governments, the NHS and our social care sector are chronically under-funded, under-resourced and under-staffed, just at the moment we need them most.
The substantial additional infrastructure investment that the Chancellor announced is welcome, but there are huge question marks over the Government’s commitment to tackling climate change, and the long-promised plan to fix the crisis in social care has been ignored again. I hope that the Prime Minister’s promise from the steps of Downing Street, to
“fix the crisis in social care once and for all, and with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve”
has not been forgotten. It has now been six months, and the promised plan is nowhere to be seen. It is astonishing that social care has been ignored again in this Budget, and crushing for people with dementia. Every day we hear new stories of people with dementia who are trapped in unacceptable conditions, or of families who are struggling to cover the cost of dementia care. Cross-party talks must produce a long-term, sustainable solution for social care that delivers quality care, but that must also be backed by investment to keep the system afloat.
The spending measures, alongside last week’s cuts to interest rates, may keep us out of recession for the immediate future, but it is difficult to feel reassured that our economy is strong enough to cope with the unknown impact of coronavirus, at the same time as our plans for leaving the EU are still so uncertain. Even if the economy escapes a sustained hit from coronavirus or Brexit, the Budget leaves day-to-day spending on public services other than health some 14% lower per person in 2024-25 than it was when the Conservatives kicked off their austerity programme in 2010.
The Budget continued the Tory power grab, moving control of funding from local government to central Government. It is time local government had more of a say in how funding is spent in communities, rather than locally run services such as the police, schools and transportation having to go cap in hand to central Government through a flawed bidding system. The public sector does not belong to Boris Johnson; it belongs to the public. The Government would do well to remember that.
Several hon. Members rose—