Business of the House

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I commend my hon. Friend for the work that she has done campaigning on this matter, which I know is very close to her heart and is obviously one of great sensitivity that the Government take very seriously. The sort of assaults that she is describing are senseless, evil acts of violence, which the Government are committed to eradicating, and we are taking steps to do so, including by more efficiently applying the criminal justice system, and with more than 6,000 new police officers already recruited from last year, which is a major step to ensuring that the law is enforced. I will of course raise her specific points with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, and the Backbench Business Committee may be a very good port of call for a debate in support of all the people she has got to join her all-party group.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab) [V]]

Hull is the country’s fourth most deprived council area, but for some reason it is not in the 100 priority areas for the community renewal fund, which is supposedly based on social and economic factors. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) has just highlighted, a disproportionate 40 of the 45 towns and cities receiving the £1 billion through the new towns deal have Conservative MPs. It seems that with three Labour MPs, Hull is excluded from even being considered. I am sure that the Leader of the House will want to avoid the impression of pork barrel politics and the sleaze that led to his party’s downfall in the 1990s, so can we please have a debate about the criteria for the allocation of these funds to maximise transparency?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I was going to say that I refer the right hon. Lady to the answer that I gave some moments ago, but let me just go back to what I said. The reason we need this fund is because of the failings of socialism—socialist councils and socialist MPs, letting down their constituents—and this Government are putting things right. They are levelling up, and many of the areas that are receiving the money still have socialist councils but, in their wisdom, they elected Conservative MPs to get over decades of socialist mismanagement. That is why the areas in most need now have Conservative MPs. Let us hope that Hull has Conservative MPs, too, and then it will be managed better.