Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

The hon. Gentleman is right about his amendments, but his party voted against setting up the trade remedies authority that would implement them. He cannot have it both ways.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

The African continental free trade area agreement was recently signed. Will the Secretary of State assure me that economic development and fair trade will be at the heart of the free trade agreements he looks for?

[Dr Fox]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. It is very important that we tie together better than we have in the past our trade policy and our development policy. The Secretary of State for International Development and I will be making some announcements on exactly how we can do that, and we will be discussing at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting with some of the relevant trade partners exactly how we can make that happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

In order to choose STEM subjects at university, girls need to have seen what fantastic careers STEM and engineering can offer. I know that many engineering companies want to go into schools and show that, but there is no co-ordination and no signposting of how they can do that. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that there is a central point where companies and schools can come together to get engineering into girls’ lives?

[Amber Rudd]

I agree with the hon. Lady that young women need to see the benefits of studying STEM subjects, because then they can see the huge range of options opening up to them in the modern world. In fact, we have an ambassadors programme, to which 30,000 ambassadors are signed up, who go into schools and provide just the sort of inspiration that is needed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Absolutely. This is not just the right thing to do; it is the smart thing to do. I have a role on the UN High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, whose work showed that gender equality and women’s economic empowerment is one of the most powerful global levers for growth that we can pull. Indeed, McKinsey did work that suggested that if we bridged the gender gap here in the UK, it could add £150 billion to our GDP by 2025.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I will call the hon. Lady if she has a single-sentence question.

[Chi Onwurah]

International women in engineering day was 22 June. The Minister knows how important career choices are for women and the gender gap. What is she doing about that?

[Justine Greening]

One of the main actions we can take is to make sure that girls study maths and science at A-level. We know that that is a powerful way to keep those career options open to them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I very strongly agree with my hon. Friend.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

When they were designing the superfast broadband tender, the Government were warned that they were effectively entrenching BT’s monopoly. In designing the universal service obligation, they now appear to be making exactly the same mistake again. Will the Minister commit to delivering choice in our broadband networks?

[Matt Hancock]

The premise of the hon. Lady’s question is wrong. Many companies are now delivering into the Broadband Delivery UK scheme. In fact, companies that did not even exist a few years ago are now delivering superfast broadband—and much faster—right across the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

The hon. Gentleman has nailed some of the problems in urban areas, the Minister and I are working very hard to rectify them.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to her place. As a fellow graduate of Imperial College, I hope to find in her a fellow champion of the digital economy. However, although I welcome her to her place, she should be ashamed of the situation we are in. In 2016—four years after the last Labour Government’s commitment to universal broadband for all would have come into force—hundreds of thousands of British citizens do not even have the speed to download an email and can only dream of the speed necessary to watch the parliamentary channel and see your good self, Mr Speaker. Will the Secretary of State disavow her predecessor’s laissez-faire attitude and tell us what she is going to do to end that disgraceful situation?