Ed Davey
Main Page: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)Department Debates - View all Ed Davey's debates with the Cabinet Office
(3 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend, who is a passionate and successful advocate for her constituents and for steelmaking in this country, in which this Government passionately believe. That is why, as I said to the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), we are supporting the UK steel industry with more than £500 million of relief, and also with huge investments to make our steelmaking greener and more competitive. We will do everything we can to ensure that we continue with British jobs in producing British steel with the infrastructure investments that I have mentioned and directing procurement at British jobs in the way that we now can.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
The Prime Minister talks about restoring freedoms as we emerge from the lockdown, yet he is pushing a Bill that will restrict one of our most fundamental freedoms—the right to peaceful protest and peaceful assembly—and tomorrow he is asking for another blank cheque to restrict everyone’s freedoms until September, even though we now know that the vast bulk of the Coronavirus Act 2020 is not needed to tackle the pandemic. So will the Prime Minister, for once, match his actions to his words, drop these draconian laws, and instead publish a road map to revive civil liberties and freedoms in our country?
The Prime Minister
I sympathise very much with the right hon. Gentleman’s desire to see freedoms restored, and I want to do that as fast as we possibly can. That is why we have set out the cautious but, we hope, irreversible road map that we have, which I hope he supports—and I hope the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras also supports, although you can never tell. What we also want to do is make sure that we are able to deal with the very considerable backlog that we have faced because of the pandemic: making sure that we have powers still to accelerate court procedures with Zoom courts; making sure that we allow volunteers to continue to help in the NHS and retired staff to come back to the colours; and making sure that we have powers that are necessary in education. It is important to be able to continue with those special measures for the months ahead, and that is why we have set out the Bill as we have.