Debates between Chris Stephens and Steve Baker during the 2019 Parliament

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Stephens and Steve Baker
Wednesday 17th January 2024

(2 months, 1 week ago)

Commons Chamber
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Steve Baker Portrait Mr Baker
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I will answer in a couple of ways. First, only just over £1 million of that £15 million has been drawn down, which is a sign that the amount is sufficient. Secondly, the Northern Ireland civil service has recently announced that up to £10 million has been made available to assist small and medium sized businesses, with up to £100,000 available per business. The experience of her constituents—I have the figures in front of me—shows that this Government are committed to our infrastructure being ready for the future. That is partly why we are so keen to see the Executive back, with a large package to help support the stabilisation and transformation of public services, so we can get the kind of investment she refers to.

Chris Stephens Portrait Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
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3. What recent discussions he has had with the Administration in Northern Ireland on the effect of increases in the cost of living on people in Northern Ireland.

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Steve Baker Portrait The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Steve Baker)
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The Government have taken decisive action to help tackle increases in the cost of living, including support for the most vulnerable households in Northern Ireland. We are targeting support this winter through a range of measures, including cost of living payments of £900. It remains vital that there is a functioning Executive in place that can deliver for the people of Northern Ireland, who deserve that stable Government taking the relevant decisions.

Chris Stephens Portrait Chris Stephens
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I want to return to the subject of public sector pay. Public sector workers in Northern Ireland have seen their real pay fall by more than 7% over the past year. Does that not demonstrate that the UK Government’s response to the cost of living crisis is leaving Northern Ireland behind? I encourage the Minister to join the cross-party calls to ensure that public sector workers in Northern Ireland are fairly paid for their important work.

Steve Baker Portrait Mr Baker
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I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman raises this matter again. He will have heard what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said. I wish to emphasise that the money that has been made available in what is a large package for stabilisation and transformation in Northern Ireland includes a sum of money to enable public sector pay to be settled, but that is a matter to be decided in Northern Ireland. That is why we continue to press the DUP and other parties with as much force as we can muster to restore the Assembly and the Executive to deal with that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Stephens and Steve Baker
Wednesday 22nd November 2023

(4 months, 1 week ago)

Commons Chamber
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Steve Baker Portrait Mr Baker
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I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend. I had the pleasure of visiting the national Centre for Secure Information Technologies, and I had a particularly interesting time testing some of its systems—I do not think I should comment any further on that particular experience. We are always keen to promote its work, and I am grateful to her for giving me the opportunity to say on the record that it does a fantastic job. Together with the National Cyber Security Centre, I am sure it will continue to promote cyber-security in the UK and, indeed, abroad.

Chris Stephens Portrait Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
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4. What discussions he has had with the Administration in Northern Ireland on the potential impact of budgetary constraints on the delivery of public services in Northern Ireland.

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Steve Baker Portrait The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Steve Baker)
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Northern Ireland’s finances are unsustainable, I am sorry to say, and the Departments are facing difficult decisions to live within their budgets. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has directed the Departments, using powers under the Northern Ireland (Interim Arrangements) Act 2023, to launch public consultations on measures to support budget sustainability and raise more revenue.

Chris Stephens Portrait Chris Stephens
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I thank the Minister for that answer. The Prime Minister announced on Monday that one of his five new key priorities is to improve education across these islands, yet at the same time his Government are starving Northern Ireland’s Department of Education of £300 million. We all know that the Government love fantasy economics, but surely the idea that cutting £300 million from education will improve it is a flight of fantasy too far even for this Government.

Steve Baker Portrait Mr Baker
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My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was right when he said that education is the closest thing we have in public policy to a silver bullet, but I say to the hon. Gentleman that the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council has acknowledged that Northern Ireland is currently receiving the funding it needs through a combination of the Northern Ireland block grant, locally generated revenue and additional UK Government funding packages. Those additional packages amount to some £7 billion in additional funding since 2014. I am afraid that the reality for schools in Northern Ireland is that they are long overdue reform, and the cost of running a divided education system is considerable. We need to see much more integrated education and much more efficiency, to ensure that children get the education they richly deserve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Stephens and Steve Baker
Wednesday 6th September 2023

(6 months, 3 weeks ago)

Commons Chamber
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Steve Baker Portrait Mr Baker
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I am inclined just to say no. The reality is that this conversation will keep going to and fro. We have left the European Union and we are staying out of the European Union. Our task is to make sure that we flourish as a nation outside the EU, and I wish the hon. Gentleman would just get behind it and move on.

Chris Stephens Portrait Chris Stephens
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In June this year, according to research by the Trussell Trust, one in six people across Northern Ireland faced hunger, with nearly half of those referred to Trussell Trust food banks being children under the age of 16. In Scotland, primary school children get a £120 uniform grant and secondary school pupils get a £150 uniform grant, but the amount in Wales in Northern Ireland is almost a quarter of that. Given that parents are choosing between spending money on back-to-school supplies or on food, what steps is the Minister taking to ease the cost of living pressures on families in Northern Ireland?

Steve Baker Portrait Mr Baker
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As I said, we provided a large sum of money to ease cost of living pressures in Northern Ireland. The hon. Gentleman mentions food banks, which are very much on my mind, given the scale of the food bank in Wycombe. I am very well aware of the cost of living pressures in Northern Ireland. We continue to put large sums of money into Northern Ireland, but it would be much better to deal with all these issues in the presence of a restored Executive.

Covid-19

Debate between Chris Stephens and Steve Baker
Monday 28th September 2020

(3 years, 6 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Chris Stephens Portrait Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
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It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie). He claims to have the most beautiful constituency in these islands. I, of course, represent the most sophisticated electorate in these islands, as I have argued many times. He used to serve alongside me on the Work and Pensions Committee, and I shall confine most of my remarks to that subject. I thank him for the tone he adopted, because it was a lot better than some of the madder contributions earlier. One Conservative said that they thought the Government had turned to the dark side. Many of us came to that conclusion many years ago.

I will confine my contribution to ensuring that the Government support the least fortunate in our society. I was very surprised when I tabled a parliamentary question asking how many advance repayments there had been in the latest available figures. The latest figures available are for May this year—the height of the lockdown—and 1.6 million universal credit claimants had a deduction from their payments due to advance repayments. In West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, 800 individuals had an average of £61 deducted from their payments. In Glasgow South West, it was an average of £56 taken from 3,800 claimants.

Those statistics show that claimants had money taken off them at the height of lockdown. I think that is something the Government need to reflect on. I find it deeply troubling that the Government were taking money off people who were claiming universal credit at the height of lockdown. We have to make sure that people do not have to choose to heat or to eat. The consequences of such policies, as we learned on a webinar I took part in by Feeding Britain, of which I am a trustee, have put enormous pressure on food banks and other charities.

Where I do agree with the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine is that the local organisations in both our constituencies—the churches, food banks and charitable organisations—have stepped up magnificently during the crisis. However, they have stepped up to do some things that they would not have had to do if the Government had not taken deductions from individuals for advance repayments. That has put pressure on groups such as Drumoyne Community Council with its food project, the Govan Youth Information Project, Govan HELP and G53 Together, which brings together a large number of organisations in the Greater Pollok ward of Glasgow South West. They have done a magnificent job of looking after all the people who have needed help during the crisis.

I have heard the conspiracy theories. I am sure I am not the only one whose inbox is flooded with theories about covid—that somehow it is a conspiracy and all of that. It is not; it is a severe pandemic that attacks natural human behaviour. It is natural to shake someone’s hand when we see them. It is natural to hug them if we know them well enough. We cannot do that in these troubled times, due to this disease and this pandemic.

I want to place it on the record, as I have done a number of times over the past few months, that a major round of applause should go to our constituency office staff—not just those in Glasgow South West, but those across these islands. They really have stepped up. Whether Members have been in this House since December or for decades, I am sure they would all agree that our constituency office staff teams have never been busier. I claim, with some justification, that mine are the best, but I know that every single Member of this House is grateful to the constituency office staff of every Member of this House.