LGBT Action Plan

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Penny Mordaunt

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I would like to add my thanks to the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester, and to others who have helped to get us where we are today. I made some detailed remarks about waiting times this morning, and about other issues relating to gender identity clinics. The Care Quality Commission is going to start inspecting those clinics, and there are many other things in the action plan that will help. The survey has given us a good understanding of the inadequacies of some services, and a good base for where we need to get to. We are determined to improve the situation.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Some of us have come quite a long way since 1997, and that also applies to the position of my party, of which I am now inordinately proud because of the 75 recommendations in the action plan and because of the way in which the survey has thrown up the prevalence of the trans issue. The number of trans people who took part in the survey clearly makes it entirely appropriate for us to make this issue a priority. Mr Speaker, I know that as president of the Kaleidoscope Trust you will be delighted with the balance of resources going into the Commonwealth and internationally from my right hon. Friend’s Department to enable our missions to directly support the groups and the very brave people who are fighting for the changes in their society that have been achieved over the past five or six decades here.

Syria

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Penny Mordaunt

Monday 30th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I hope to do rather better in my reply to the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald).

Whether through financial levers or through having other options in our humanitarian toolbox, we need to be able to do more in future. When I was a Defence Minister, I was fed up of coming to the House to say why we could not do airdrops; as Secretary of State for International Development, I am fed up of coming to the House to say why we cannot protect people better. We are a smart nation. We have great brains in our armed forces and in our civil contingencies, and we work very closely with our US allies. We have to come up with some better capabilities, and I am determined that we will do so.

We also want to focus on financial levers, and we are working with the EU and other international partners to develop them. I cannot give details on that today, but it is in train. I will update the House at a later date.

The US aid initiative is a joint partnership with the UK. Initially, we are each putting in £5 million to invite competition. We are asking people to come in with ideas, and we will then look at and develop those ideas, which could be about protecting civilians, getting power or water supplies back up or getting aid to individual people.

Additionally, we will set up a humanitarian innovation hub in the UK. My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East will lead on that, and it will use the best brains from across many sectors to come up with solutions that we can use and that may help our defence and civil contingency capabilities.

On the UN, huge efforts are being made by our dedicated team in New York. I have spent time with them and I have visited them, and they are making a sterling effort. We need to keep pressure on Russia and Iran, which is the only way we will get things back to how we want them to work. In the meantime, we have to find other ways of making sure that we adhere to international norms. We will all be safer if that is the case.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Is any expenditure from the conflict, stability and security fund planned for Idlib province? If so, what are the objectives of that expenditure and how will it be accounted for?

[Penny Mordaunt]

Expenditure from that fund has already been put into Idlib in particular. I am looking to do more with DFID’s funding in Idlib and in other areas that are next in the firing line. We still have some access to four such areas, and I can write to let my hon. Friend know exactly what expenditure has come out of the CSSF.