Oral Answers to Questions
Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Justine Greening
The right hon. Lady is right to raise her concerns about the behaviour of the police and security services. We raise our concerns, too. That should not overshadow the rest of the important work we are doing to help people in Ethiopia steadily to lift themselves out of poverty. If we consider development over the last 30 years, we can really see that Ethiopia has come on a tremendous way since it first appeared on our TV screens when it was facing the famine of 1984.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
T3. Following on from the question about Gaza, may I ask what this Government are doing to assist the Palestinian Authority in their economic development of the west bank?
Oral Answers to Questions
Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
We have taken a whole series of steps in difficult economic circumstances, of which the first is parity of esteem in the NHS constitution. We have seen a big expansion of talking therapies that were not available under the previous Government; we have introduced for the first time a waiting time standard for young people with psychosis, which never existed under the previous Labour Government; and we have, for the first time, a Minister with dedicated responsibility for child and adolescent mental health services. Of course much more needs to be done. The demands on our mental health services are very great, but the steps that I have mentioned have not been taken by previous Governments. We have managed to take them because we have put the money in and made important reforms to get rid of bureaucracy. All of those things are possible only if there is a strong economy backing a strong NHS.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
Q3. On Saturday, the fountains of Trafalgar square, right through to Lancaster museum and Fleetwood’s Marine hall, were lit purple to raise awareness of pancreatic cancer. Will the Prime Minister look very carefully at the report produced last week by the all-party group on pancreatic cancer, with the support of Pancreatic Cancer UK, calling for more research into this dreadful disease before it becomes Britain’s fourth biggest killer in terms of cancer?
The Prime Minister
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and the all-party group for the work that they do. I know how close this issue is to his heart and how much he feels this personally. The difficult situation here is that the one-year survival rate for those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer is about 20% and the five-year survival rate is only 5%, and that is not good enough. We are spending more money on research. We are investing a record £800 million over five years in a series of biomedical research centres, including the Liverpool pancreas biomedical research unit. We need the research to go in and for these new treatments to be properly tested so that we can improve these cancer survival rates as we have for other cancers.
Oral Answers to Questions
Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Justine Greening
We have had many, many discussions. The hon. Lady will be delighted to hear, I hope, that tax avoidance and tax evasion will be one of the agenda items that this country will put on the table when we host the G8 this year as part of our presidency. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will lead on that effort.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
T7. Representatives of the IF campaign whom I met at Lancaster university last week expressed their gratitude for this Government’s continued commitment towards a 0.7% spend, but they also wondered about our progress with the international voluntary guidelines on the good governance of land, fisheries and forestry.
Justine Greening
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. The UK welcomes the successful global negotiation of the voluntary guidelines on land tenure and is now pushing for their national implementation, including through the G8, so that we can help share best practice and improve land governance.
Oral Answers to Questions
Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
Q15. With unemployment down in Lancaster last week, I visited A & G Precision and Sons in Preesall in my constituency. It is a family-run company of only 40 employees that supplies components for the Hawk. It does high-precision work that is required nationally and internationally. I was told that it had turned two work experience places into full-time company-paid apprenticeships. Does that not show that things are moving in the right direction in Lancashire?
The Prime Minister
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he says. I am sure he will be pleased, as well, with the order that BAE Systems had today from Saudi Arabia for Hawk aircraft, which is more good news for British jobs, British investment and British aerospace.
Oral Answers to Questions
Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
1. What recent assessment he has made of the development needs of Bangladesh.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)
The bilateral aid review identified as the main needs of Bangladesh: expanding access to health, education and safe water for the poorest; protecting against risks related to climate change; and supporting private sector development to help the poor lift themselves out of poverty. The UK’s development programme directly targets those needs and will lift 5 million people out of poverty by 2015.
Eric Ollerenshaw
How far does the Minister think that the wider work of his Department is helping to meet the desperate need for increased political stability in Bangladesh?
Mr Duncan
All three Department for International Development Ministers have visited Bangladesh in the past few months, and we are encouraging all political parties to work towards free, fair and credible elections to be held by early 2014. That requires the politics of vision, not the politics of venom, and the UK stands ready to continue our work with the Bangladesh Election Commission to make the elections a success and to help the democratic process.
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend poses the key question of whether these reforms are real. The fact that the regime in Burma has now released nearly all its political prisoners—particularly Min Ko Naing whom many Members campaigned to see released—is an enormously encouraging sign. The real test will come with the 48 by-elections due to take place before April. We will see how those elections are conducted and whether they are free and fair. If they are, that will be the most eloquent possible answer to my hon. Friend’s question.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
My Department is preparing energetically for the Prime Minister’s conference on Somalia in London on 23 February. We are working hard to deliver the results we set out to the House in the key reviews conducted last year, and we are procuring humanitarian support for many of the most wretched people in the world.
Eric Ollerenshaw
Stepping Stones Nigeria is the charity based in Lancaster involved in educational development in the Niger delta. Would my right hon. Friend be good enough to facilitate a meeting between his officials and the charity to see how far that work can be expanded?
Mr Mitchell
The charity is doing excellent work, and we will be pleased to ensure that it can meet officials perhaps to find out how it can access the Government’s new global poverty action fund, which specifically seeks to help non-governmental organisations and charities that are doing brilliant work in difficult parts of the world.
Oral Answers to Questions
Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr O’Brien
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say it is vital that we address uncollected tax, particularly in certain countries that have been identified. We are encouraging international partners to join in that, and our own Treasury has been very much in the lead. The G20 has agreed to the multilateral convention on mutual assistance in tax matters, and that is what it is now focusing on in trying to get an exchange of tax information, which will help us to support countries in collecting the tax that they are owed.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
5. What recent assessment he has made of the priorities for development in Bangladesh.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
British development in Bangladesh promotes resilience to national disasters, gets girls into school, tackles maternal mortality and helps the Government to raise their own revenue through support for fair and transparent taxation. I plan to visit Bangladesh shortly to ensure that British taxpayers’ money is well spent.
Eric Ollerenshaw
Having seen some of that work that the Secretary of State’s Department is doing in Bangladesh, may I first congratulate him on it? More specifically, what help does he think his Department could provide, perhaps alongside other Departments, to ease the political logjam that seems to bedevil Bangladeshi society from top to bottom?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend has seen for himself why the issue he raises is so important. A key part of our work is helping ordinary people to hold their political leaders to account, which we do through strengthening accountability and the Government’s ability to raise taxes, and through strengthening local media. I have recently given a significant accountability grant to the BBC World Service Trust to do just that.