Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Desmond Swayne and Robert Goodwill(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Goodwill
Point taken. On my own farm I have just planted wild bird seed and a big area of nectar plants, so I will report to the House when my payments come through, although I have insisted to officials that I should be in the last decile of payments—I do not want them to accelerate my payments. I will be one of the last to get paid, so I will keep a careful eye on this matter.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
What regime is planned for soil quality? When are we likely to get it? It is so important for carbon retention.
Mr Goodwill
As I mentioned, many of the public goods we are to deliver will result in better soil quality. We also need to have a debate on the role of livestock on mixed farms because many of the farms I have visited recently on which soil quality is improving are farms that use manures and slurry to improve the soil—we no longer have that in many of the big intensive agricultural areas.
Free Childcare
Debate between Desmond Swayne and Robert Goodwill(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Goodwill
In welcoming the hon. Lady to her place, I have to say she is very much not a glass half full person. This is a great childcare offer. Yesterday morning, I was in the city of York, one of the pilot areas, meeting providers and parents who were benefiting, and I heard from people who said, “This is a great offer. It means no longer do I have to pass my husband in the hallway as I go out to my evening job and he comes in from his daytime job.” We heard of eight people in York who are now accessing employment because of the childcare being available. So it is a great offer and I am very proud that it has been delivered. We have ironed out the glitches in the software, and people are registering; as I have said, we are on track for 200,000.
The hon. Lady asked how many people we expect to register, and the short answer is that we do not know, because it is a voluntary system to which people will opt in. Also, of course, there will be three tranches. It will not all happen with a big bang in September; there will be another tranche of parents who qualify in January and another tranche after Easter. It is great news for working families—something this Government are delivering on.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Given the amount of my time that was taken, the amount of time that my constituent had to give up, and indeed the amount of time given by the technical support people in the Minister’s Department, all as a consequence of the fact that my constituent had an apostrophe in her name, can the Minister speculate why on earth we were not told that there was a manual workaround?
Mr Goodwill
I have made that clear today. There have been a number of outages, several of which were to fix some of the glitches to which my right hon. Friend draws attention. The most recent one was due to a power supply issue between 6 pm and 10.20 pm last night, 17 July. That has now been fixed and the system is up and running again.