Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Alex Sobel

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am told that driving licences are now being issued faster than they were. I am also told that there are no delays in successful online driving licence applications and that customers should receive their licence within a few days. If I am misinformed about that, I trust that my hon. Friend will let me know.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q10. Prime Minister, food prices are going up, rents are going up and energy costs are going up. Every day, I have more and more constituents coming to me to say they thought the day would never come—things just cost too much. At the same time, people are anchored to the minimum wage, working two, three, four or five jobs on low wages with in-work benefits. They just cannot afford it. At the same time, we have a Minister, the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), saying that to survive they should take on more hours or get a better job. Does the Prime Minister agree with his Minister, or does he agree with me that we should have an emergency Budget?

[The Prime Minister]

I accept that of course there are economic pressures on our country now caused by the factors that we have mentioned, but that is why we have already increased the minimum wage by £1,000 per year for those who are on it, already increased universal credit by £1,000 a year, and all the other measures—billions and billions of tax that we are putting into supporting incomes. The reason we can do that is that we have strong economic fundamentals, with unemployment—I do not know when the hon. Gentleman was born—at the lowest it has been since 1974. That is giving us the foundation to take our country forward.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Alex Sobel

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What we are doing is supporting the NHS, supporting staff and making sure that we have as much capacity as possible, and absenteeism, although high, is not as high as it has been at some other points during the pandemic, although that is no cause for complacency. What we will do is keep the period of isolation under constant review, and if we think we can bring it down without increasing infection, of course we will do so.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister is right to laud our life science industry, as British universities and British scientists have helped us to get through covid; so why, after developing the UK’s Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre with taxpayer money alongside British universities, have the Government decided to sell it off so that in future pandemics future vaccines will be held not in public for all of us, but in a few private hands?

[The Prime Minister]

What we are doing is investing hundreds of millions to make sure that we have a dynamic vaccine industry. Clearly the Government need to work hand in glove with the private sector, as we have done. No matter how deep the abhorrence of the private sector on the Opposition Benches, it was private-sector private capital that produced the vaccine success.

COP26

Debate between Boris Johnson and Alex Sobel

Monday 15th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I was at COP representing the Inter-Parliamentary Union as the global co-rapporteur for COP26. The global Parliaments delivered a very strong document. While I was there, I met the Speaker of the Tuvalu Parliament, Samuelu Teo, who told me that donor countries had provided enough finance for them to build a seawall, but the consultants from the donor countries could not agree on how to build the seawall. This is one of the really difficult issues—we promise but we cannot deliver. Will we deliver the adaptation measures that small and developing states need so that they do not go under the ocean?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. The next Egyptian presidency of COP will focus on adaptation measures and what we all need to do to support them.

Covid-19

Debate between Boris Johnson and Alex Sobel

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The best thing I can do is encourage my hon. Friend in the excellent work he is doing in holding the Scottish nationalist Government to account, and encourage them to get on and use the funds that the UK Government are giving to the people of Scotland to support jobs in Scotland.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

I am sure the Prime Minister will agree that councils have borne the brunt of covid, particularly during lockdown, and have given all our communities maximum support. Leeds has incurred £40 million of additional costs, as the council is not covered by the grants the Government have given, and will now face further lockdown costs, with an overall £100 million budget shortfall, in the main caused by years of central Government underfunding. Will the Prime Minister ask his good friend, the Chancellor, to grant local councils a one-off payment to offset the additional costs incurred due to covid-19 and ensure the financial stability of councils this year and next?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, I know that many councils find themselves under great pressure, although some have handled their budgets better than others. We have given £4.6 billion, I believe, to support local councils, and we will continue to support them. I thank the staff and workforce of councils for the huge and vital role they all help to play in fighting this disease.

Priorities for Government

Debate between Boris Johnson and Alex Sobel

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer that I have given several times already today, which is that the people of Scotland had a vote in 2014, and they voted overwhelmingly to remain in the Union. They were absolutely right, and I see no reason to dissent from that view.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister mentioned aviation. Norway has an aviation emissions plan that includes making all short-haul flights electric by 2040, and it includes research and development to achieve that. Does he have that scale of ambition?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman will have noticed that in my opening statement I mentioned electric planes.

Oman, UAE and Iran

Debate between Boris Johnson and Alex Sobel

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

Both the Prime Minister and I have made it clear that we do not agree with what President Trump said about Jerusalem. We do not agree with his decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and we do not agree with his decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. What the Prime Minister said was welcomed in the region. I found a wide measure of knowledge and appreciation of the UK’s position. We want to encourage our American friends to come forward with the long-awaited plans, which have been gestating, for the middle east peace process. That is the symmetry that the world wants to see from the Trump Administration. In the context of this recognition of Jerusalem, now is the time to bring forth those plans and to do something symmetrical to advance the middle east peace process.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Although we welcome the progress that the Foreign Secretary reported this weekend, may I ask him whether he pressed the Iranian authorities to allow Richard Ratcliffe into Iran, so that if Nazanin cannot be home for Christmas, he at least will be able to visit her and see the state that she is in?

[Boris Johnson]

Tempting though it is to go into the details of our discussions on each of these consular cases, given the sensitivity and difficulty of our conversations, it would be better if we just said that we continue to ask for the cases to be treated in the humanitarian way that they deserve, and for those people to be released as soon as possible.

Korean Peninsula

Debate between Boris Johnson and Alex Sobel

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I do. The hon. Gentleman has caught my sentiments exactly.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I do agree that this crisis has been created by the missile tests and thermonuclear test last week by the North Korean regime, which clearly is not acting like a rational nation state. I thank the Foreign Secretary for his approach and for using the UN Security Council to put pressure on China and to restart the six-nations talks. However, on Sunday, the President of the United States made a public statement on Twitter, as is his wont, saying:

“South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!”

Is that our approach? Are we saying that the approach of regional nations such as South Korea amounts to appeasement? The “one thing” he mentions is clearly military action. Are we pressing all the other options on the United States?

[Boris Johnson]

It is not so much that we are pressing all the options on the United States—though of course we are—but that those are the options that the United States itself massively prefers and wants to bring about.