Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Jack Dromey

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend. It is absolutely true that, through our careers strategy, we have so far invested £2 million to support career-related learning in primary schools. As Members of the House will know, we get the most extraordinary questions from primary school children and they are often very ambitious for their futures.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Q11. The father of Jane Roche from Erdington, Vince, died of covid. Five days later, her sister died of covid. She is devastated and appalled by the recent revelations as to what has gone on in Downing Street. She asks this question of the Prime Minister: does trust in British politics matter?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, it does. That is why it is absolutely vital that we should get to the bottom of whatever may or may not have taken place on 18 December last year, but we need to focus on what is happening this year. I urge the hon. Gentleman’s constituent and everybody else to get their booster jab and to look after themselves.

G20 and COP26 World Leaders Summit

Debate between Boris Johnson and Jack Dromey

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for everything that he has done with ASEAN—Association of Southeast Asian Nations—partners. He has absolutely been leading the charge for us in that region, particularly with Indonesia, and they are great partners of ours. What is coming out of COP is the idea that countries who are finding it tough, as he said, to move beyond coal need a coalition of countries to help them, with a portfolio of programmes that they need to get done, whether it is hydropower or carbon capture and storage—whatever it is—that we can help to finance and de-risk, in order to leverage in the trillions from the private sector, as we did with wind power in our country. People are seeing this model as the way we can do it—not with endless grants and handouts from Governments in the richer countries around the world, but through stimulating the private sector to come in and deliver a quantum leap in the infrastructure concerned.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

GKN-Melrose has announced its intention to proceed with the closure of the Erdington plant, which employs 519 loyal, long-serving workers in an area with the fifth-highest level of deprivation in Britain, and to export production to Poland, which is still burning coal on a grand scale for years to come. Does the Prime Minister therefore understand the dismay of the workers concerned? With the automotive industry in transition to an electric future, does he agree that we need a supply chain here in Britain, employing workers here in Britain, manufacturing here in Britain, as part of a green industrial revolution here in Britain?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I passionately agree with that. GKN does an amazing job across the country, particularly in delivering some of the most difficult solutions, such as sustainable aviation. We need to ensure that we have the ecosystem of gigafactories and electric vehicle manufacturing capabilities, and all the supply chains here in Britain, but with an energy cost that allows those businesses to be competitive. That applies to steel, automotive and everybody else, and I am afraid that, at the moment, the differential between our domestic users’ electricity costs and industrial energy costs is too high, and we have to fix it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Jack Dromey

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

You could register Wilfred. I call Jack Dromey.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

For more than half a century, the GKN factory in Erdington has produced high-quality parts for the automotive industry. Now, following the hostile takeover by Melrose, the company has announced its intention to close the factory, sack 519 workers, and export jobs and production to continental Europe. There has been some welcome engagement with Ministers on this issue, but does the Prime Minister agree that, in one of the poorest parts of Britain, if the levelling-up agenda and support for British manufacturing mean anything, this factory cannot close? Does he therefore also agree that it would be a betrayal of the British national interest were this great, historic factory to become history?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Business Secretary is working with GKN to do whatever we can, but I believe that the future of the UK automotive sector is incredibly bright. That is because—to go back to the question of the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse)—we are the Government who took the historic step, ahead of every other European country, to move towards electric vehicles by 2030. We want this country to be in the lead. We are making sure that we get the investment in the UK that will drive new technology, drive growth, and drive high-wage and high-skilled jobs in this country.

Health and Social Care

Debate between Boris Johnson and Jack Dromey

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend deeply; in that intervention, he has summed up the heart of the issue that I was trying to explain in my statement. It is the anxiety of millions of families up and down the country who face this uncertainty—about the finance, but also the proper setting for their relatives—that we are addressing today.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The backbone of the social care system is an army of underpaid and hard-working home carers and carers. How does the Prime Minister begin to justify to them a tax rise that not only breaks a promise, but hits them hard in their pockets?

[The Prime Minister]

Because we are investing massively in the sector. We are putting half a billion pounds into supporting care workers and investing in 700,000 training places. We are lifting the living wage by record amounts. Above all, we are valuing care workers and showing the respect to them and their careers that I do not believe has been properly shown before, by any Government.