Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Green and Toby Perkins

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am delighted to echo my right hon. Friend’s call for a welcome for the new statue of Jane Austen in Basingstoke. I am genuinely astonished that there is not a statue of Jane Austen anywhere else in the country, given that she is one of our greatest authors and is still popular 200 years after her birth. I am also happy to echo my right hon. Friend’s desire for more statues of Britain’s greatest women to be spread around the country.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Q12. Politicians are said to be here today and gone tomorrow, but whatever tomorrow may bring, the Prime Minister is not even here today to mark the end of her first year in power. I also note that, for the first time since she became Prime Minister—[Interruption.] Listen: you might like to hear this. For the first time since she became Prime Minister, her image has been removed from the front page of the Conservative party website. Can the First Secretary tell us why she has gone from being the next iron lady to “The Lady Vanishes”?

[Damian Green]

The hon. Gentleman is ingenious in asking very personal questions, and I commend him for it. Unfortunately, he has his own record on this subject. As recently as June last year, he said that the leader of the Labour party was

“not destined to become Prime Minister”,

and called on him to resign. I suggest that he might want to make peace with his own Front Benchers before starting to be rude about ours.