Debate on the Address

David Evennett Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I know that he campaigns passionately on this issue and I merely repeat what I think he would agree with: no one should escape justice for a crime he or she may have committed, but it cannot be right that people should face unfair prosecutions when no new evidence has been forthcoming, and that applies across the whole of our country.

This is a one nation Government who insist on dealing not only with crime but the causes of crime—as a former Labour leader once put, it by the way—and on tackling all the causes of mental ill health or alienation in young people. That is why today we announced a new programme to purge online harms from the internet and to invest massively in youth clubs. We vow, as one nation Conservatives, never to abandon anyone—never to write off any young person because they have been in prison, but to help them into work, and, by investing in prisons, as we are, to prevent them from becoming academies of crime.

When we tackle crime as one nation Conservatives, and when we tackle the problems of mental ill health, we are doing something for the social justice of the country, because we all know that it is the poorest and the neediest who are disproportionately the victims of crime, and we know that it is the poorest who are most likely to suffer from mental ill health. It is our job, as a campaigning Government, to level up investment across the nation, and I am proud that we are now seeing the biggest programme of investment in the NHS for a generation. In 10 years’ time, as a result of decisions being taken now, there will be 40 new hospitals. We have fantastic NHS staff—the best in the world—and it is time to give them the funding and facilities they deserve.

Opposition Members have shouted about education. I am proud we are levelling up with a £14 billion programme of investment in our primary and secondary schools, and I hope they will support that, because we believe that is the best way to create opportunity and spread it more fairly and uniformly across the country, to give every child a superb education.

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

I welcome the Queen’s Speech and its emphasis on the people’s priorities. Is my right hon. Friend aware that in my borough of Bexley people want Brexit done, but then they want a one nation Conservative Government going forward with all the other policies that we have in the Queen’s Speech for the benefit of all of the people? We do not want to go back to the Labour period of the 1970s, which was a failure.

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is completely right. What we have is a choice between a semi-Marxist, if not Marxist, Opposition that would set this country back decades and a one nation Government who understand the vital importance of wealth creation.