Oral Answers to Questions

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am happy to join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to those people, who achieved so much through their run and by raising and highlighting the importance of this issue. Organisations such as Combat Stress do an extraordinary job in our country. We must face up to the fact that because of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, there will be many more people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who will need our help and support not just this year and next year, but long into the future. That is why I think that the Chancellor’s decision to take the money from the LIBOR fines and use it to back military charities, including those that deal with this issue, is very far-sighted.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Q3. The 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster is less than three weeks away and the fresh inquests are due to start. Does the Prime Minister agree that it is a scandal that some police officers who were on duty on the day of the disaster are refusing to co-operate with the investigation, and may I ask what he will do to stop such a situation happening again?

[The Prime Minister]

An important anniversary is coming up. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating all these complaints, and in addition the families can make complaints to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The Home Secretary has written to all police forces asking them to ensure they make available all the information they hold on Hillsborough, and in my view that should include police officers co-operating with this vital inquiry.

Oral Answers to Questions

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point about access to justice, but one of the key things that the Leveson inquiry is trying to get to the bottom of is: how can we have a strong and independent regulatory system, so that we do not have to wait for the wheels of the criminal justice system or the libel system to work? People should be able to rely on a good regulatory system as well in order to get the redress they want, whether prominent apologies, fines for newspapers or the other things that are clearly so necessary.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Q9. The Department for Education is proposing to close its Runcorn site, with the loss of at least 220 jobs. It is in the 27th most-deprived borough in the country. How will that help with unemployment and social deprivation in my constituency? It is a pity that the Education Secretary has refused to meet me to discuss this matter.

[The Prime Minister]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has met the permanent secretary at the Department for Education to discuss the matter, and I will certainly discuss it with the Secretary of State as well. Of course, there will be consultation with affected staff and other local MPs, but let me make this important point: we all know that we have to try and find savings in departmental overhead budgets in order to maximise the money going into the schools. The Government have managed to maintain the per-pupil funding, and I am sure that hon. Members who think about it will consider that the most important thing for our schools, our children and our education system.

Hillsborough

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question. Everybody has to study the report and think about the consequences of what they did. What is new in the report is that it is not just about what the newspapers, particularly The Sun, did, but about where the information came from, how it was gleaned and the rest of it. People will want to consider that carefully before working out what to do next.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I have several constituents who lost loved ones, and I was in the stadium on the day, so may I thank the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition for the tone of their statements and their apologies? We should also recognise the work of the previous Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), and the current Home Secretary, who ensured that the documents were actually delivered. What we have heard is shocking—I have had a brief glimpse at the report—but it is equally shocking that on almost every single thing that the family challenged, whether on the inquest, the 3.15 cut-off point, the post mortems or the police conspiracy, they have been proved right. That is a scandal. I welcome the fact that there will be a debate, but may we also be kept up to date on what is happening as a consequence of the report, any actions being taken and any lessons learned? The Home Secretary might want to start that when she makes her statement. The key thing is that we are kept up to date. Any documents relating to future decisions must also be made public and made available to the families and others who want to see them.

G8 and NATO Summits

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue. A good portion of the G8 was spent discussing the situation in Iran, and specifically discussing the talks that are under way in Baghdad today. It was heartening that the Russians signed up to a pretty tough text on Iran, and I think that the path is very clear. Europe has rightly adopted the oil sanctions, and the pressure is beginning to tell on the Iranian economy. This is the moment at which to maximise the pressure, to encourage other countries around the world to join in with the sanctions, and to say to the Iranians “There is a different pathway. You can have civil nuclear power; you can have a more decent relationship with other countries of the world; but you must give up the ambition of enriching uranium to such an extent that it could deliver a nuclear weapon to you.”

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Whatever the structural deficiencies and other problems that exist in Greece and have existed there for a number of years, this problem was not caused by that; it was caused by the banking and economic crisis in the world, and the way in which the eurozone has dealt with it. The suffering and austerity in Greece is on a completely different scale from what we have even envisaged in this country, and it is untenable for it to continue. Will the Prime Minister go back and ask the euro partners—not least, of course, the Germans—to think again about what we can do to bring about a different plan there? I remind him that Greece is a very proud nation. It is a very important ally of ours, it stood by us alone in 1941 against the Nazis, and we should do what we can to help it.

[The Prime Minister]

Of course I agree that Greece is an important ally. Relations between Britain and Greece are very strong, and the historical analogy the hon. Gentleman draws is absolutely right. I do not agree, however, that the problems in Greece are caused only by the euro or by the banking crisis. There are deep and profound problems in the Greek economy that need to be dealt with. There must be the right combination: there need to be deficit reduction plans; there needs to be an active monetary policy; there need to be reforms to the eurozone; and there need to be structural reforms. In the end, however, it will be for the Greek people to decide whether they want to do these things inside the eurozone our outside the eurozone. Clearly, a disorderly exit would be very bad for Britain, and we should do everything we can to avoid that, but we need to plan for every eventuality and have proper contingencies in place.

Industrial Action

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

The Minister says that he has huge respect for public sector workers, but at the same time his Government are sacking tens of thousands of them. Regarding lower-paid part-time women workers, will he put in the Library some examples of the impact that the change from RPI to CPI has had on their pensions?

[Mr Maude]

We have made available a huge range of information about the effects of the changes to public sector pensions, and there will continue to be more as the negotiations make further progress in the weeks ahead.

I just want to make this point about the job losses. I very much regret that there will continue to be job losses in the public sector. If we had not inherited the biggest budget deficit in the developed world from the Government of whom the hon. Gentleman was a member, those jobs would not be at risk today.

G20

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

None of our constituents wants to pay taxes to bail out the eurozone; that is not what our taxes should go towards. When we came to office we were part of the European financial stabilisation mechanism—the EFSM. I have got us out of that from 2013, but between now and then we are still at risk because of a very bad decision to which the previous Government agreed.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

If the eurozone continues to fail to deal with the crisis, what actions will the Prime Minister take to protect the interests of the UK?

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right. The whole point about this review is that it has a vision for what our forces should look like in 2020—10 years’ time rather than just five years’ time. Because the Ministry of Defence and the service chiefs can now see their budgets for the whole of the spending review period, they can make proper plans and try to drive some efficiencies through the MOD so that they get even more for the money that they have. We must have reviews every five years. The problem has been that we had a review in 1998, which was not properly funded, and then a sort of scissors crisis, in which the commitments went in one direction and the ability to fund them went in another direction. To stop that happening in future, we need regular defence reviews and that is what we are committed to having.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

We have now seen some of the biggest cuts ever in defence, as we saw when the Conservatives were last in power. The so-called party of defence is no longer the party of defence. The Prime Minister has already said that we should be out of Afghanistan in five years, no matter what. Do the assumptions he has made assume that that is still the case and that the capability will therefore reduce over those five years?

[The Prime Minister]

Along with our NATO partners, we believe that there is a clear programme of training up the Afghan national army, police and security forces so that they should be in the lead by 2014. That is our aim, and in addition I have said that by 2015 we should not be in a major combat role or there in major numbers. By then we will have been in Helmand province for longer than the entire second world war. We will have played our part, and I am confident that we are making good progress so that the 2014 calendar to which NATO is committed will go ahead. I do not accept that taking long-term, difficult decisions about the defence of our country makes us somehow anti-defence—the opposite is true. I am passionate about our armed forces, what they represent in our country and what they do on our behalf, but we do not serve them by putting off decisions for the future, making all sorts of airy-fairy promises and then not funding them.

Public Bodies Reform

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

There is great concern in the field of health about the impact of the changes in loss of expertise, which we will examine closely in the coming days and weeks. Would the Minister today like to give a guarantee on the Floor of the House that there will be absolutely no loss of expertise?

[Mr Maude]

I am pretty sure there will be no such loss. If functions need to be carried out, the expertise deployed in doing so will be maintained.

Oral Answers to Questions

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. If we want to tackle poverty, we must go to the causes of poverty. The chief cause of poverty is people being out of work generation after generation and, as he says, young people growing up in homes where nobody works, where there is no role model to follow. That is why we are pursuing the welfare reform agenda so vigorously, because we want to help people to get out of unemployment and into work. We want it to be worth while for everybody to work or to work more than they do now. That is what our welfare reforms, so scandalously neglected by the previous Government, have set out to achieve.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Q2. The proposed £400 million Mersey Gateway project, which will create up to 4,000 new jobs in the area, is under threat because of the spending review, despite the fact that it is strongly supported by business and by all local authorities across Cheshire and Merseyside, including the Chancellor’s local authority. How will cutting projects such as the Mersey Gateway help economic growth in the north-west?

[The Prime Minister]

We are not making any further cuts in capital spending. The hon. Gentleman ought to ask the question of those on his own Front Bench. The Labour party went into the last election with a 50% cut in capital spending in its figures, and did not tell us one single project that would be cut. We have said that that is far enough; we should go no further. We will be protecting capital spending to help to boost the recovery in our country.

G8 and G20 Summits

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is always a pleasure to listen to the hon. Gentleman, but the Prime Minister is not responsible for speeches made by the shadow Chancellor, nor even for the former Prime Minister, so I think that we will leave it there.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister said in his statement that the G8 sent a collective signal that “we want the Afghan security forces to ‘assume increasing responsibility for security within five years’”—he did not say “full responsibility”. He said later on that he wanted to give an indication that we will be out of Afghanistan in five years. Does that mean that we will be out of Afghanistan regardless of the situation in that country in five years’ time—full stop?

[The Prime Minister]

The point is that for many years after our troops have left, we will have a strong relationship with Afghanistan that will involve diplomacy and aid, and perhaps even helping to continue to train Afghan forces. However, in answer to the question of whether we should be in Afghanistan by then in the way that we are now, with large-scale military deployment and all the rest of it, no we should not. We should by then have trained up the Afghan army and police force, and seen an improvement in governance, so that we can bring our troops back home.