Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Wednesday 21st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

Work on clause 11 has been going on for a long time, to deliver on our commitment to table amendments during proceedings in the House of Lords—with the agreement of the Scottish and Welsh Governments if humanly possible.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

T7. Will my hon. Friend mark the centenary of women’s suffrage by giving Government support to the Overseas Electors Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) to enfranchise British citizens who have lost the right to vote?

[Chloe Smith]

Yes, I intend to speak on the Government’s behalf during the Bill’s Second Reading on Friday. The proposal is an important Conservative manifesto commitment, but I hope that it will also command cross-party support.

Carillion

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The 1,200 apprentices obviously needed to be found both a training provider and an employer, and Carillion had been performing both those roles. The CITB has now stepped in and taken up the role of the training provider for all those young men and women. I assure the hon. Lady that the CITB is going to be extremely active—and will be pressed by Ministers to be very active—in ensuring that it reaches out to employers and finds spaces for those young men and women as rapidly as possible.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

This is a very serious day, with a most significant and unfortunate corporate collapse. I urge my right hon. Friend to give as much reassurance as he can to constituents such as mine, working in the Carillion headquarters in Wolverhampton, that there will be a continuing role for them under the administrator while a more permanent solution is put in place. I thank him, his colleagues and officials in the Department for their work in putting this statement together in order to reassure public sector providers of service within Carillion and its subcontractors that they will continue to provide service to the NHS hospitals in particular. Will he ensure that those construction projects where Carillion remains a prime contractor—I am particularly thinking about the NHS hospitals in Birmingham and Liverpool—will not suffer significant delays and that arrangements are put in place rapidly to maintain those contracts?