Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Harriett Baldwin

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I direct the House to what I have already said to my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer). The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that this Government hate fraud and online fraud. We are tackling the scammers by helping people to come forward when they get an email—when they get duped. We are of course helping them in any way that we can, but we are also cutting the crime that affects people up and down our country—the neighbourhood crime—and dealing with the county lines drugs gangs, and the right hon. Gentleman should support that as well. I am proud that those numbers have come down by 17%.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Q9. Wednesday 9 February. It is wonderful news that the first in-person Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting for four years will take place during Her Majesty’s platinum jubilee year. Will the Prime Minister ensure that the global learning crisis is high on the agenda? Will he ask his amazing diplomats to ensure that every leader in the Commonwealth signs up to the Kenyatta declaration on education?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for everything she does to support education for girls. Twelve years of quality education for every girl in the world is probably the single most transformative thing we can do to improve the world. I remember working with my friend Uhuru Kenyatta on that declaration and we will certainly ensure that everybody at the Commonwealth meeting signs up to it.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Harriett Baldwin

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What we are doing is supporting hospitals in Greater Manchester and up and down the country with record investment and, as I said in an earlier answer, by making sure that we supplement the staff by calling doctors back to the colours and with volunteers, new therapeutic treatments and all the extra things that we are doing. But fundamentally, there is also a job for this country: to follow plan B and the guidance that we put in place and get boosted. That is the most important thing we can do.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the boost that the Prime Minister gave to the “Get Boosted Now” programme. Over the recess, almost 1 million boosters a day were given to people and I thank everyone involved. I also welcome the leadership that he showed on the COVAX facility and in making sure that vaccinations have been spread around the world. Given the risk of variants emerging in places where vaccination rates are not as high as in the UK, is there more that we can do to boost vaccination rates around the world?

[The Prime Minister]

The UK can be proud of what we are doing—my hon. Friend knows this area well—to support vaccination around the world. Thanks to the deal we did with Oxford-AstraZeneca, 1.5 billion doses were administered to people who needed them around the world at cost—that was thanks to the deal negotiated by the UK Government. We put £478 million into COVAX and we have a pledge to deliver 100 million surplus vaccines around the world by June this year.

G7 and NATO Summits

Debate between Boris Johnson and Harriett Baldwin

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Again, what I did hear from leaders around the world was massive, overwhelming support for the objective, which the hon. Member supports, of girls’ education. The G7 committed $2.75 billion, I think, towards the Global Partnership for Education, with the UK increasing our commitment by 15% in spite of the pandemic. I hope the message she will give to pupils in Vauxhall is that we are absolutely committed to that end.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I congratulate the Prime Minister and his whole team on delivering such a wonderful G7 summit. I welcome the announcement on the replenishment of the Global Partnership for Education. As our economy recovers and we return to the promised 0.7%, will he put at the forefront of his work in his time in Government ensuring that we really boost the efforts to educate every child in the world through UNICEF, Education Cannot Wait, the Global Partnership for Education and, of course, our wonderful UK Girls’ Education Challenge?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for her support for female education. I remember discussing it with her many, many times. I know how much she cares about it. The programme we are embarked on will mean 40 million more girls in school by 2025 and 20 million more girls reading over the next five years. We are going to do even more than I was saying to an hon. Lady on the Opposition Benches, when President Kenyatta of Kenya comes here in July for the Global Partnership for Education.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Harriett Baldwin

Monday 12th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The daily test process has gone up by 34% just in the last month, and daily capacity has gone up by 28%. As the right hon. Lady knows, by the end of this month, NHS Test and Trace is confident that it will be doing 500,000 tests—it will have capacity, I should say, for 500,000 tests a day.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

No one envies the Prime Minister having to make these incredibly difficult decisions. Last week’s Office for National Statistics community survey showed that by far and away the biggest age group catching the virus is the student age group. Since age is a much bigger predictor of risk than geography, are the Prime Minister’s advisers considering making recommendations about how individuals can control their own risk by age?

[The Prime Minister]

One of the issues that we have—I tried to address this point earlier—particularly with the large numbers of multi-generational households such as we have in this country, is that it is very difficult to confine the virus to one age group and one generation. Alas, one of the reasons we are so concerned is that it is starting to spread quite substantially among the over-60s, as we are seeing now in the Merseyside region.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Harriett Baldwin

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am a keen student of democratic principles, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, and I recall that there was a referendum in 2014 in which the people of Scotland—the people of our country—voted overwhelmingly, or by a substantial majority, to keep the Union. It was a once-in-a-generation event, as the then leaders of the Scottish National party acknowledged. I think they were right then, and we should stick with that.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

The Prime Minister and I were both elected on a manifesto pledge to increase home building and to level up our country, and there is lots to welcome in the planning White Paper, but the formula that has been used to allocate the homes seems to be doing the opposite. It has overshot in terms of numbers, and the investment is concreting down rather than levelling up, so will my right hon. Friend commit that, when the consultation closes tomorrow, he will pledge to change some of the elements of this—dare I say it—algorithm?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I can tell her that we are going to ensure that we have a planning system that is fit for purpose and that allows us, for the first time in a generation, to give young people the chance of home ownership, which millions of people are currently shut out from. That is what we want to do, but we think we can do it in such a way as to avoid desecrating our beautiful countryside and our green belt. That is what we are going to do, and I hope very much that she supports it.

Transport Infrastructure

Debate between Boris Johnson and Harriett Baldwin

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We will bring forward proposals in due course.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

As a west midlands MP, I warmly welcome today’s announcement, and I thank the Prime Minister and the Transport Secretary for working with West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street. Will he confirm, as we move towards net zero, that the extra capacity on our railways will allow lorries carrying freight to come off our motorways?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: that is one of the many advantages of the proposals before the House today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Harriett Baldwin

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point. As he knows, it is our view that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action remains the best way of preventing nuclear proliferation in Iran—it is the best way of encouraging the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon—and we think that after this crisis has abated, which of course we sincerely hope it will, that way forward will remain. It is a shell that has currently been voided, but it remains a shell into which we can put substance again.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

In recent months, the performance of West Midlands Trains for my constituents and for constituents across the region has been absolutely woeful. Does the Prime Minister agree with Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands, that if it does not shape up by the end of January, it too should have an inspection by the Secretary of State for Transport and potentially have its franchise taken away?

[The Prime Minister]

The House will have heard what I had to say to the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) about the performance of various franchise holders across our rail network. We are looking at the whole issue and the bell is tolling for West Midlands rail, if I hear my hon. Friend correctly.

G7 Summit

Debate between Boris Johnson and Harriett Baldwin

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid I do not agree with what the right hon. Lady said about no deal. As I said on the steps of Downing Street, I think there will be bumps on the road, but this is a very great country and a very great economy, and we will get it done. I am afraid that the most fatal thing to getting a deal is for this country to show that it is so apprehensive about coming out on other terms as to accept anything that the EU prescribes. That is, I am afraid, the course down which the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) is beckoning us to go. That would be a disaster.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement at the G7 to give more money to Education Cannot Wait and the leadership he has consistently shown on the importance of girls’ education around the world. Will he commit to continuing to champion this cause and seek for more of our aid budget to be spent on global education?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for everything she has done, both on the development front and in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to champion female education around the world. I believe that 12 years of quality education is the single most effective policy for solving most of the ills of the world.