(4 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe House of Commons voted effectively to give outline planning consent to the third runway. It was supported by people across the Chamber—not by me, as it happens. I wait to see the outcome of the various legal processes that are currently under way to see whether the promoters of the third runway can satisfy their legal obligations under air quality and, indeed, noise pollution.
We are, of course, responsible, and we take full responsibility, but overall GP numbers are up and we are now recruiting 6,000 more. We are able to do that because we are running a sound economy and investing massively in our NHS across the whole country.
(4 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberI have asked Doug Oakervee, the former chairman of Crossrail, to conduct a brief six-week study of profiling of the spend on HS2, to discover whether such a proposal might have merit, and I will ensure that I revert to my hon. Friend as fast as possible on its conclusion.
Following today’s deeply troubling news from Nissan, has the Prime Minister spoken to the company about what impact this may have in Sunderland? Following his statement, what reassurance can he offer to the tens of thousands of workers in Sunderland and across the north-east whose jobs and livelihoods depend on Nissan’s continued success?
The automotive sector globally is suffering a contraction, partly as a result of the diesel crisis and the move to electric vehicles, and what is happening with demand in China; that is a fact. There is, as far as I know, no impact in Sunderland yet, but I draw the hon. Lady’s attention again to the massive investments that are none the less happening in our country, including in Oxford and Birmingham, with world-beating companies investing in British technology. It is worth billions of pounds, and we should salute it.
(5 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has done invaluable work in boosting the small charities fund. It will indeed be more accessible for charities around the country that are doing great work in these fields, and we see it as a valuable addition to the work of DFID and the UK’s international contribution.
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. It is very important that HIV/AIDS is not seen as an issue of yesterday. I was present at the Amsterdam conference last year to make the case that there are still target groups that need more support. Sustaining and ensuring that countries’ local health systems have sustainable methods of dealing with this is a fundamental of DFID’s global health work, and it is essential that this work continues.
(5 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberObviously we continue to work to leave in an orderly fashion with a deal, but we have made funding available and it is being used to make sure that we have preparations for a no deal.
I continue to believe, as I have said in this House before, that the best route out of poverty is through work. The hon. Lady refers to figures that I quote. I also quote figures, which I have to say are very important for this House, regarding the reduction in the number of children living in workless households. There is very clear evidence of the advantages of children being brought up in a house in which there is work. Universal credit is encouraging work. It is delivering on ensuring that we see more people in work and able to provide for their families.
(5 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberMay I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) that there will indeed be scope not only to copy across the existing favourable trade arrangements but to increase the favourability in terms of access to the UK market for many of the poorest countries in the world post Brexit.
Our commitment to global health is designed to ensure that focus is placed on the most vulnerable, and our support for sustainable health systems ensures that the work that is going on to improve maternity and pregnancy services in so many parts of the world is supported and bolstered by the work that we do both in country and multilaterally.
(6 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am very happy to agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of food production in this country. I am also happy to commend the work of hard-working farmers up and down the country, and all those who work in our food production industry. As he will know, we now have an historic opportunity as we leave the EU to deliver a farming policy that will work for the whole industry.
I certainly welcome that announcement by Facebook, and I am pleased to say that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has been working with these companies to ensure that they do more and act more clearly in taking down material of an extremist nature. I am very pleased to welcome the announcement that Facebook has made and I hope other companies will follow.
(6 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberI agree that it is an extremely important development. It is a world first to provide this amount of information in that form. It is true that it holds a mirror up to the whole of society, and not just central or indeed local government and public bodies, but all other bodies, including charities, will need to respond positively to some of the disturbing findings exposed in the race disparity audit.
We are working hard with the National Cyber Security Centre to improve competency not only within the civil service and across Government, but among our young people. Our CyberFirst programme, which I visited in Portsmouth this summer, shows that there is a massive range of really enthusiastic young people who are determined to learn the skills that they will need to help us.
(9 years, 11 months ago)
Commons Chamber“Finally” is the operative word for something that has bedevilled debate in Westminster for more than 100 years. As the hon. Gentleman knows, in January 2012 we set up the McKay commission to consider how the House of Commons should deal with legislation that affects only part of the United Kingdom. The commission’s report—an excellent one—was published in March, and the Government are now considering it in detail. I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that if this question were so straightforward to sort out, I suspect someone would have done it a long time ago.
T13. Under the Deputy Prime Minister’s flagship school meals programme, he pledged that every infant child would receive a hot, healthy school meal. How many children will be eating cold sandwiches in September because, once again, he cannot keep his word?
Even by the hon. Lady’s standards, it is a bit sour to try to undermine a policy that has not yet been implemented. It will be implemented in September and is a really progressive policy. All the evidence shows—as did the pilots conducted under the previous Government in Durham and parts of east London—that this will not only save families on low income a lot of money, but help to raise the educational performance of children from lower-income backgrounds and provide a powerful way of creating cohesion among young children as they share a meal together. We are working intensively with thousands of schools across the country at the moment, so I cannot give the hon. Lady a precise answer, but the overwhelming majority of those schools are already ready to provide this service. We are working with them over the summer to make sure that if there are any exceptions in the provision of those healthy school meals at lunch time in September, there will be only a very small number of them.
If I may say, the evidence is overwhelming that we are moving to greater consistency in sentencing. The Sentencing Council and the progressive rolling out of sentencing guidelines is an immensely helpful tool to judges in ensuring consistency in sentencing. In addition, if the judge has not explained any inconsistency with the guidance, that usually provides a good basis for my making a reference in those cases which are referable. I think we are moving in the right direction, and that progress is totally supported by the judiciary. I therefore hope that, as we move to new areas in which guidance is provided, the need for me to make references will go down.
4. What steps he plans to take to ensure that child abuse offences are prosecuted successfully.
The Crown Prosecution Service prosecutes child abuse cases robustly. In 2013-14, the number of such prosecutions rose by 440 to 7,998, with a conviction rate of 76.2%. Steps to prosecute the cases include piloting pre-recorded cross-examination of children, prioritising cases involving children aged 10 and under, and applying a new approach to child sexual abuse cases generally.
I am grateful for that answer. The Director of Public Prosecutions recently announced a series of measures regarding cases of rape because of the decline in referrals from the police to the CPS. Will such measures be considered in cases of child sex abuse, given that there has been a decline in referrals of such cases from the police to the CPS since 2010-11?
The emerging evidence is that the referrals are beginning to increase, which is good news. However, there are new guidelines, issued last October, for child sex abuse cases, which provide that there should be specialist prosecutors; a focus on the allegation, not the victim: early third-party material; and a challenging of myths and stereotypes.
(10 years ago)
Commons ChamberA great deal of nonsense is talked about raising the minimum wage. When we consider the cost to the people who are employed and the cost to the Exchequer, it is clear that we cannot continue to subsidise employers who could pay their employees a living wage.
My hon. Friend is right to express concern about carers, many of whom are women. Would not many of them benefit the most from Labour’s commitment to provide extra child care assistance so that their children can be looked after, as opposed to the Government’s promise of jam tomorrow in autumn 2015?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Most carers are women, and most of them are now older women because of that very problem that people cannot afford to pay for care.
An investigation of 80 care providers established that nearly half of them were not complying with minimum wage regulations. A fifth of the adult social care work force are on zero-hours contracts. Many are not paid for travel time, and, unsurprisingly, there is a 30% turnover of care workers who work in people’s homes. This is not just bad for them; it is also bad for the people they care for. Imagine a situation in which someone does not know who will come into their home four times a day to get them up, to feed them and to put them to bed, and who does not know who will be washing their most private parts. Imagine the strain of their having to tell different people every day how to care for them, the strain on carers when their cared-for person is unable to speak up for themselves, or the worry for people of not knowing when carers will turn up and the panic when they think they might have been forgotten.
Then there are the mistakes that occur. Members will know that I speak from experience. My mum was given both her morning and evening tablets at the same time the other day because the carer accidentally gave her her evening tablets and then thought it would be a good idea to give her her morning ones as well. Another carer just gave her her evening ones instead of her morning ones, and, even worse, a new carer took my mother for her shower, wrapped her in a towel and left her to walk alone from the bathroom to the bedroom with the towel wrapped around her, Of course, my mother fell and has a head injury, and an arm injury that is still troubling her now several weeks later. I speak from experience and I know that this is exactly what is happening to hundreds of thousands of people every day when they cannot rely on the care service. Imagine the distress, too, of a cared-for person, day in, day out, having a parade of different carers.
Low pay, insecure work and zero-hours contracts are not just bad for the employee; they are bad for all of us. I fear that yet again my words are falling on the deaf ears of those who simply want to tell us that everything in the world is fine. Well, it may be fine in their world, but it is not fine in the world of the majority of my constituents in Bolton West.
Simply telling my constituents that things are getting better does not solve the problem. This Gracious Speech does not solve the problem that a third of private rented homes are non-decent homes. It will not build the affordable homes or the social homes for people and their children. It will not provide secure tenancies or affordable child care or raise the national minimum wage. It will not guarantee a job for the long-term unemployed. It will not freeze energy prices. It will not stop workers being undercut by the unscrupulous use of migrant workers. It will not make it easier for people to see their GP. It will not stop the privatisation of the health service, and it will not tackle the issues of dog welfare and dog control that put my constituents at risk; and, worst of all, it is not going to make work pay.
I hope that in 12 months’ time I will be welcoming all the things that I said this Gracious Speech will not do, and that I will be sitting on the Government Benches welcoming the next Queen’s Speech. Truly Britain deserves better than this.
(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberI welcome the hon. Gentleman’s interest in this matter, as he knows. We have learned the lessons from Northern Ireland and that is one reason we have provided the funding we have to enable groups of people to go into schools and encourage people to register. One of the differences from which we have learned a lesson concerns the importance of online registration, which was not available in Northern Ireland. Our approach to registering young people is to encourage them to register online, and that will be carried out across the country.
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
As Deputy Prime Minister, I support the Prime Minister on a full range of Government policy and initiatives. Within Government, I take special responsibility for the Government’s programme of political and constitutional reform.
Real wages are down, 1.4 million people are stuck on zero-hours contracts and thousands more families have been forced to turn to food banks. Is that the right hon. Gentleman’s party making a difference in government?
The hon. Lady might have forgotten that when we came to power her party had left an absolute economic catastrophe behind. The great Labour recession in 2008 cost every household in this country more than £3,000. Her party predicted that more than 1 million more people would be unemployed when in fact 1.7 million new jobs have been created, of which we are very proud.