Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Green Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Everyone deserves to be safe in their workplace, which is why we are making sure that, through our sentencing Act, we have appropriate sentencing in place and, more generally, that we have police officers and community support officers across the country to help combat crime. We will happily look at future sentencing when we look at reviews of that case.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

Q14.   Leadership and teamwork delivered Bolton Wanderers a superb 4-0 victory in the Papa John’s trophy match at Wembley. It is delivering the Bolton College of Medical Sciences and delivered Ayyub Patel’s superb Rumworth by-election victory. What message does my right hon. Friend have for Councillor Patel and all the campaigners, candidates and activists, as we run into this festival of democracy, our local elections?

[The Prime Minister]

I share in my hon. Friend’s congratulations for all those in Bolton, but also offer my commiserations to those in Plymouth, especially to our party chairman who is an avid supporter of the green army. Most importantly, I welcome the election of Councillor Patel and look forward to his joining our other councillors in delivering for their local areas, with less crime, lower council tax and, importantly, filling more potholes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Green Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman cannot just stand up and say that because the Home Office is getting more efficient, it will take longer for answers to be given. Yes, the Home Office is getting more efficient at dealing with these things. I do not know whether he has ever heard about technology, but these days people apply online and they are dealt with online.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

Q3. Following the recent findings of a study of terror convictions in Britain, it is clear that there are serious problems with how communities integrate into society and a danger that that lack of integration leads to acts of terror. Will the Prime Minister update the House on the Government’s counter-extremism strategy and response to these findings?

[The Prime Minister]

Again, this is a very serious issue that my hon. Friend has raised. The Government are taking a comprehensive approach to tackling terrorism and violent extremism at source, but also, through our counter-extremism strategy, we are looking at extremism more widely. We want to defeat not just terrorism and violent extremism but extremism wherever it occurs. We will shortly be publishing a new counter-terrorism strategy. In the coming months, we will be responding to Dame Louise Casey’s report on integration. That is backed up by additional investment in our security and intelligence agencies—£2.5 billion over five years—and I am clear that the Government are doing everything they can to tackle issues around integration, extremism and terrorism.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Green Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to do exactly as the right hon. Gentleman says. It is an important issue. We invest something like £1.7 billion a year in health research, but there is always this question when it comes to cancer research. The spending has gone up by a third over the last Parliament to nearly £135 million, but there is always the question about whether that is fairly distributed between all the different types of cancer. I will make sure that the Minister can give him a very full reply.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

Q11. I have a steel producer at the heart of my constituency, and so I share concerns raised about the future of our steel industry and, more widely, of energy-intensive manufacturing. The north of England still has significant manufacturing, but it is being held back by green taxes, high energy costs and emissions targets. What more can my right hon. Friend do to help energy-intensive industries?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. The changes that we are making are going to save the steel industry more than £400 million by the end of this Parliament, and that is a good example of the steps that we can take. There was an excellent debate yesterday in the House about this issue. We need to work on everything we can do in terms of procurement. We need to make sure that we are taking action in the EU against dumping, and we are. We need to make sure that we reduce energy costs where we can. We stand by to work with any potential purchaser of the Port Talbot works, which will safeguard steel jobs in other parts of the country, to see how we can help on a commercial basis. I am absolutely satisfied that we are doing everything we possibly can. We cannot totally buck the global trend of this massive overcapacity in steel and massive decline in prices, but those are the key areas—in terms of power, in terms of plant and in terms of procurement—where we can help.