Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Liz Kendall

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises a characteristically brilliant point, which I confess has not been drawn to my attention so far. I will look at it, and it certainly seems crazy that planes should be flying simply to retain the slots to which they are entitled, and we will see what we can do.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

Q15. The Prime Minister promised on the steps of Downing Street to fix the crisis in social care. We need an extra 580,000 care workers, not to improve services, but just to fill existing vacancies and meet the basics of growing demand. Even if the Government fund increases in the pay and status of carers, where on earth are we going to find all these extra staff when EU workers will be excluded under the Prime Minister’s new immigration system? [Interruption.] Our families and the NHS—[Interruption]—depend on—

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Kendall]

Will the Prime Minister meet me to discuss a special migration route into social care, to stop the current crisis getting even worse?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not know quite what the hon. Lady means by excluding EU workers, since there are record numbers of EU workers currently in this country, and indeed more can come until the end of the year, when they can register. I have every confidence that we will solve the issue of social care. We will be bringing forward plans very shortly, which I hope will attract cross-party support, to ensure that everybody gets the dignity that they need in old age and nobody is forced to sell their home.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Boris Johnson and Liz Kendall

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can indeed assure the hon. Lady that there will be no crashing out, because we will negotiate a great new friendship and partnership within the timescale. I know that hon. Members on both sides of the House have every confidence in the Government to do that. They said we could not change the withdrawal agreement in the 90 days we had, that we would never get rid of the backstop and that we would not get a new deal, but we did get a new deal—we got a great deal—for this House and this country, and we will get a great new free trade agreement and a new partnership for our country.

Before us lies the great project of building a new friendship with our closest neighbours across the channel. That is the common endeavour of our whole nation, and that will begin with clause 31, which will give Parliament a clear role, including the hon. Lady.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that to secure a deal with the EU, the Prime Minister had to make a choice over Northern Ireland? The choice that he made was to sign up to EU trading rules to secure frictionless trade with Ireland and the rest of the EU. Is not the truth that at the end of all the negotiations that the rest of the UK will face, we will be confronted with exactly the same dilemma? Either we remain close and sign up to the rules, in which case we give up our say—so what is the point of Brexit?—or we break totally free, in which case what is the price?

We have not made that choice. The Prime Minister has made it over Northern Ireland, and we face it over the rest of the UK. This is not getting Brexit done; it is continuing the agony for years to come.

G7 Summit

Debate between Boris Johnson and Liz Kendall

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed there is time, and we have gone over that thoroughly. I am delighted by my hon. Friend’s confidence; she speaks as someone well-acquainted with the ways of Brussels and the EU, and she will know that the deals are always done, as it were, on the steps of the court in the final furlong. That is where we will get the deal.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

Can the Prime Minister completely set the record straight on this? If Parliament passes legislation requiring him to request an extension of article 50 beyond 31 October, will he abide by the law?

[The Prime Minister]

I have answered this question twice before. We will abide by the law, but I have to say I think it is a quite incredible thing to propose, deleterious to the interests of this country and this Government, and it will make it impossible for us to get the deal this country needs.

Priorities for Government

Debate between Boris Johnson and Liz Kendall

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend, who has been zealous in his pursuit of arrangements to prevent the no-deal option. I share his desire not to get to a no-deal outcome. I am delighted that he is willing to put his shoulder to the wheel and work to find a solution that will bring us together across the House and get this thing done, because that is what the people want us to do.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

If optimism was all it took to get things done, I am sure that thousands of people would be spending this blisteringly hot and sunny day waltzing across the Prime Minister’s garden bridge and jetting off on holiday from Boris island airport. As it is, people need real solutions to their problems. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that fixing the crisis in social care requires an immediate cash injection as well as long-term funding reform, and a system that works for disabled adults as well as older people; and that, above all, it means deciding that funding cannot be left to individuals and families alone? We must pool our resources and share our risks to ensure security and dignity for all.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady very much for her question. I agree very strongly with the thrust of what she says. I suggest it is high time that this House again tried to work across parties to find a cross-party consensus about the way forward. That is absolutely vital. [Interruption.] If the Opposition are not interested, we will fix it ourselves, but I urge them to think of the good of the nation.

Iran Nuclear Deal

Debate between Boris Johnson and Liz Kendall

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

There was not a word that I could disagree with in the first half of my right hon. Friend’s question, and of course it is true that Iran is up to all sorts of bad behaviour in the region; but the Iranians are not in violation of the JCPOA—on their ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, they are obeying the letter of that agreement. Yes, it is perfectly true that they are not in conformity with UN resolution 2231 in respect of ballistic missiles, but there we are holding them to account and there is the prospect of extra sanctions to bring them into line.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

Further to that question, does the Foreign Secretary agree that Iran’s appalling destabilising behaviour in the wider region, including its support of terrorism, would be even more dangerous if its nuclear programme goes unchecked, and that it is therefore not just in Britain’s national interests, but in the interests of America and the world that the JCPOA remains in place?

[Boris Johnson]

That was very well put.

Aleppo and Syria

Debate between Boris Johnson and Liz Kendall

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I will come to the way forward for Aleppo in a minute. Let me remind the House of all the ways in which the UK is trying to be of use and trying to salve the situation. Like other Members, I pay tribute to the White Helmets, who rescue men, women and children from the rubble of bomb sites. Many Members have met them. Funded partly by the UK Government, they are doing an heroic job. Of the 3,000 volunteers, 142 have been killed in the line of duty and 400 have been wounded.

Britain is at the forefront of this humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis. We have pledged £2.3 billion—our largest ever response to a single humanitarian crisis—which makes us the second largest donor after the US. We can be proud in this country of the help that we are giving to hundreds of thousands of people. Britain has done a huge amount to mobilise the international community. I pay tribute to my hon. and right hon. Friends on the Front Bench for their work in that regard. In February, we co-hosted a conference and secured pledges of more than $12 billion, which is the largest amount ever raised in a one-day conference.

Let me answer the question about whether we are taking enough refugees asked by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). Yes, of course we should take our share, and we are doing so, but Members will agree that the overwhelming priority is to help those nearest the centres of conflict in the berm and elsewhere and to keep them as near to their communities as we can.

Let me turn to the questions that were raised by the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and repeatedly by other Members. Many have expressed the view strongly that they want this country to go further. Others have spoken about no-fly zones, or no-bombing zones. I have every sympathy with those ideas and the motives behind them. We must work through all those types of options with our allies, especially as this House is not committed to putting boots on the ground. As my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said, we cannot commit to a no-fly zone unless we are prepared to shoot down planes or helicopters that violate that zone. We need to think very carefully about the consequences.

[Liz Kendall]

rose—

[Boris Johnson]

I am really sorry, but I must make some progress.

We must consult on this as widely as possible, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield suggested, I will certainly be talking to everybody involved in the 1991 effort to provide no-fly zones over northern Iraq. We must ensure that we have innovative ways of getting aid into Aleppo and, as several Members have said, we must step up the pressure on Assad’s regime and on the Russians through sanctions. I listened carefully to what was said. The House will accept that there is a certain friability in the European resolve to impose sanctions on Russia, given the large dependency of many European countries on Russian gas. It is vital that our country remains at the forefront of keeping that resolve from crumbling, which is what we are doing.

In the long term—to get to the point made by the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury—the only realistic solution is to persuade both sides to agree to a ceasefire and then to work towards a political solution. It is of course true that that process has been stopped since April, when the ceasefire was destroyed. That does not mean that the process is dead, and it must not mean that the process is dead. On the contrary, this country and this Government have worked to keep that flame of hope alive and have worked for a settlement. On 7 September we hosted a session in London with the high negotiations committee of the Syrian opposition, which set out a detailed and progressive vision for how to achieve a transition in Syria towards a democratic, pluralist administration in which the rights of all communities in that country would be respected, but would also preserve the stability and institutions of the Syrian state while getting rid of the Assad regime.