Business and Trade
Gareth Thomas Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Office for Budget Responsibility said yesterday that exports, including from SMEs, will fall even more than expected this year; growth in exports will be less than 1% in each of the next three years; and other countries will not be hit the same way. There have been cuts in the funding to help businesses start exporting and there has been no deal with the United States, no Diwali deal with India, and no veterinary agreement with the EU to cut red tape and slash costs. What does the Minister think is the best explanation for the Government’s dismal performance on exports so far?
Ms Ghani
…When it comes to exports, we are exporting not only into the EU but outside the EU. As I said earlier, professional and business services are increasing outside the EU by 19%.
[Official Report, 7 March 2024, Vol. 746, c. 944.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for Industry and Economic Security, the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani):
An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas). The reply should have been:
Debate on the Address
Gareth Thomas Excerpts(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster). I join him in welcoming the proposed legislation for further curbs on smoking and for progress on animal welfare issues. I am sure he will not be offended if I part company with him there, as there is a lack of general welcome by the Opposition for the rather thin King’s Speech that we heard today.
I wish to concentrate on two issues. First, 13 years into the Conservative Government, the empty Government promises in the King’s Speech will not address the crisis in the NHS that now sees record waiting lists, lengthy waits in accident and emergency departments and longer waiting times for cancer patients. The Prime Minister promised today to cut waiting lists. We have heard similar promises before, but last month waiting lists rose to a record high, with almost one in seven people now waiting for NHS treatment.
The independent Health Foundation underlined the scale of the crisis by predicting that 8 million people could be waiting for treatment by next summer—that is our constituents, who are
“anxious for a diagnosis, in avoidable pain and with their lives put on hold”.
This represents a failure by the Government to provide the quality of leadership, and the imagination and resources, to modernise the NHS. Nothing in the King’s Speech suggests that change of the magnitude needed is coming soon.
In Harrow, over the past 10 years we have seen the pressures in the NHS building, as three walk-in centres—the Alexandra Avenue clinic in Rayners Lane, Belmont Health Centre and the Pinn Medical Centre—have closed due to lack of funding. They allowed my constituents to walk in off the street and see a doctor or nurse within minutes. That reduced the pressure on local doctors and, crucially, on the A&E department at Northwick Park Hospital.
Not surprisingly, waiting times in that A&E department have rocketed. Northwick Park’s A&E has not met the target of seeing 95% of patients within four hours of arrival since before 2016. Indeed, almost 92,000 patients waited more than four hours across the trust’s A&E departments in the year to September. That is not a criticism of the staff, who are doing a remarkable job in difficult circumstances. What is self-evident from the figures I have described, which are not the worst in London by a long way, is that additional funding is essential.
Given that Northwick Park has the busiest A&E department in London, and that all complex surgery cases across a trust that serves most of north-west London are undertaken there, clinicians have identified that a 50% expansion in intensive care beds—from 24 to 36—is essential. The existing beds are housed in converted wards that are not fit for purpose, so investing in a modern intensive care unit will save lives, improve the care of very ill patients, free up space for more beds to manage winter pressures and improve the working conditions of hard-pressed NHS staff.
Cancer services are also under intense pressure nationally and in my area. The failure of leadership on cancer by the party in government is best epitomised by the continuing uncertainty around the future of one of Britain’s world famous cancer units, which sits just outside my constituency at Mount Vernon Hospital. John Major’s Conservative Government closed the supporting accident and emergency unit, and, one by one, other linked services that supported the cancer unit have also disappeared from the hospital site. Since 2019, its future has been in doubt, with an independent review commissioned by the NHS describing the estate as “crumbling” and urgent resolution needed on the future location of the service.
We are five years on from that independent review. Despite excellent clinical care, the estate remains dilapidated. No significant funding from the new hospitals programme has been forthcoming. Staff and patients desperately need clarity on the future of the centre. The party in Government has given up on Mount Vernon, its cancer centre and its patients. The A&E department on the site has been shut, the minor injuries unit has been downgraded to an appointment-only service, and the Government will not sort out the future of the cancer centre.
The second issue I wish to focus on is the events in the middle east. Like so many of my constituents over the past month, and so many others in this House, I have watched the unfolding crisis with increasing horror. I utterly condemn Hamas’s appalling and ongoing terror attacks on Israel. There can never be any justification for the shocking attacks a month ago or the continued holding of hostages. When an innocent is killed, it is equally tragic, whether they are Palestinian or Israeli. We must uphold the basic fundamental human rights of innocent Palestinians too, caught in the crossfire between Hamas and Israel. International law must be upheld.
With this the fourth and most horrific clash between Hamas and Israel since the terrorist group took over Gaza, with more than 1,400 Israelis and 10,000 Palestinians reported dead, so many of them children, and with neither Hamas nor the Government of Israel yet to allow a humanitarian pause or a ceasefire, we must not give up looking for ways to save lives, and to end this cycle of misery, violence and fear. Military action, rockets, bombs and violence will not deliver long-term justice for the Palestinian people, nor long-term security for the Israeli people. As so many—from the United Nations to Save the Children and the excellent Medical Aid for Palestinians—have already made clear, urgent medical aid, water, food and fuel for hospitals must be delivered into Gaza, hostages must be brought home and siege conditions lifted to alleviate the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Many years ago, I visited Gaza. At that time, despite considerable barriers to peace, there was hope for a negotiated peaceful future and serious attempts were under way to find a way forward. It is even more essential now to find new routes for such a future. As a Minister for International Development in the last Labour Government, I worked closely with UN organisations, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Funding to UNWRA was significantly increased but, until a few days ago, Ministers had sadly reversed that investment. UNWRA needs new support, long-term commitment and a recognition that it is a fundamental part of the route to helping secure both a safer Israel and a sovereign Palestinian state.
Here in our country, the conflict has already had a significant impact—very directly for the families of British citizens killed, injured, taken hostage on 7 October or killed and injured in Gaza since. For many others, there is a sense of deep distress, renewed anger at the injustice faced down the years by the Palestinian people, and fear and anger among the Jewish community about their safety and security. The rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic attacks in our communities should be a wake-up call to us all to look for ways to bring people together rather than to push each other away.
Now, more than ever, we need to reach for understanding in our own communities to find where we can agree—or, at least, where we do not disagree. I say gently to the Home Secretary that perhaps she could lead the way and find the courage to recognise that not everyone who disagrees with her is full of hate. We must not allow these tragic events to divide us, and I join all those who call on the Government to step up efforts to achieve international co-operation and a sustained political road map to peace.
International Trade and Geopolitics
Gareth Thomas Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I join the House in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, on securing this debate. I am sure that the whole House would agree that he chairs the Select Committee with considerable distinction. The way that he approached this debate and his thoughtful and provocative speech—provocative in the best sense—are testament to him and to his expertise in this area.
We had a very interesting contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) spoke in particular about the significance of trade with Mexico and Latin America—a matter that no one else had focused on until that point. We were lucky to have the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) in the Chamber. The whole House will have cherished his contribution as there was no other Conservative Member available. We were 30 minutes into his speech when he made a particularly interesting point on the trade and geopolitical significance of Africa, which I want to return to, if I can, later in my speech. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) underlined the fundamental importance of considering the climate emergency for our trade and geopolitical agenda, and she was absolutely right to do so.
The prediction by the Office for Budget Responsibility that exports will plummet this year, will drop again next year, and will manage only anaemic growth in the next three years underscores the importance of this debate and the 13 years of economic failure that have seen trade targets repeatedly missed, rampant inflation, taxes through the roof and huge numbers of businesses in real difficulty.
The OECD expects the UK to suffer the worst performance on economic growth this year of any G7 country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West alluded to in his opening remarks, today’s global figures from the UN specialist trade body revealed that Britain has dropped out of the world’s top five for exports of goods and services. That underlines the fact that there is still no White Paper on trade; no clear plan to boost green trade; no industrial strategy to help address supply chain issues; and certainly no consultation on what Britain’s strategic trade goals should be, or what funding and other resources should be allocated to support a UK-wide trade strategy that delivers for all the nations and regions of the UK. That was a point that the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) also made.
Our trade relationship with our nearest neighbours remains in serious need of improvement. It is clear that the much-promised trade deal with the United States will not happen while the current crop of Ministers are in post. Furthermore, the Indo-Pacific tilt, at least in trade terms, does not look like being the great solution to our economic woes that various Conservative Prime Ministers once promised. Progress on a trade deal with India seems to have been considerably hampered by tensions between the Home Office and the Department for Business and Trade, and Africa has largely been ignored.
The invasion of Ukraine has had considerable trade and geopolitical consequences. It is a reminder of the importance of our allies in eastern Europe; of working through NATO; of the continuing significance of global supply chains; and of maintaining close relationships with both America and the European Union, even while we look for other trade opportunities, too.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West made the point that Europe remains our biggest, nearest market. It is home to crucial allies, and making Brexit work better ought to be a fundamental strategic priority for both trade and geopolitical reasons in the coming months. It is clear that the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which the first of last year’s Prime Ministers negotiated with the European Union, is not working, as we were once promised that it would.
Three quarters of firms that trade with Europe and that are members of the British Chambers of Commerce say that the Government’s trade deal is not helping them increase sales or grow their businesses. The Institute of Directors has reported similar problems, too. As my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) alluded to in one of his early interventions, the rules of origin, which are expected to get tighter at the start of next year, pose real problems for the automotive industry. It would be good to hear from the Minister on how she and her colleagues intend to address those points.
Although Ministers may like to ignore these difficulties in general, Europe remains our biggest export market. Therefore, while progress on the Windsor framework is welcome, if we are to make Brexit work better, Ministers need a clear plan to make trading with the European Union less cumbersome and difficult, in particular for small and medium-sized businesses. A veterinary agreement with the European Union would be a good starting point, helping to reduce the considerable red tape and trade barriers that many of our agri-exporters now face. More direct Government assistance to support different business groups negotiate mutual recognition agreements of professional qualifications would be sensible, too. We also need to find new, flexible labour mobility arrangements for those making short-term work trips and for musicians and artists seeking short-term visas to tour within the EU. We also need to resolve the position on Britain’s data adequacy status, so that there is no threat to UK digital services companies’ ability to compete in the EU.
The failure to negotiate a trade deal with the US, as Conservative Members promised in their 2019 manifesto would be struck, is being compounded by the failure to grasp the scale of the potential risk to British business from the US Inflation Reduction Act, while the EU’s own response, published in February, could further divert green investment from the UK unless Ministers act. I hope we will hear from the Minister how her Department is responding to those threats.
I welcome the apparent progress made on the Indo-Pacific tilt and the Government’s decision to accede to the CPTPP, albeit we will need to examine the agreement in considerable detail. The Secretary of State’s comments on Monday suggest that she may well have made very significant concessions to secure that accession agreement. The Minister will know only too well that, while I am sure membership of the CTPPP will bring benefits in geopolitical terms, it is not clear that the trade benefits will be huge. The Government’s own predictions suggest it will add just 0.08% to our GDP, so it will not make up for the failure to deliver a trade deal with Europe or all the extra red tape, customs deals and higher costs that the poorly negotiated deal with the EU has delivered.
It is striking, too, that we have still not seen a trade deal signed with India, despite the promises that it would be done by Diwali last year. The concern on India is that other countries are racing ahead to get their business interests in front of Indian Ministers. With India set to be the world’s third largest economy by 2030, we need to step up significantly our trade efforts there.
Why, for example, is there not a greater effort to engage with Gujarat, where the fastest growth is taking place? We have a large Gujarati diaspora in the UK, with many highly successful businesses that already have links to Gujarat, yet we appear to be doing very little to capitalise on that knowledge and expertise. Other countries, notably France, have significantly stepped up their diplomatic and trade efforts with India in recent years. I have to say that there has been a notable failure of late by Ministers to back up negotiations to secure trade deals with the resources to help businesses to take advantage of all the claimed benefits of those deals.
Lastly, on Africa—a point that the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire brought to the attention of the House—the lack of trade and geopolitical attention that Ministers are giving to that remarkable continent is striking. The cuts in development assistance, in particular cutting back on key programmes of trade assistance such as the TradeMark Africa programme, have created the sense that Britain is less interested than it once was in Africa’s future.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) constantly reminds me, the International Monetary Fund says that in just eight years’ time, fully half of all the young people entering the labour market globally will be in Africa. The continent still faces huge challenges, notably on the climate crisis, poverty and conflict, but the establishment of the African continental free trade area is an indicator of increasing African self-confidence, and new partnerships to support mutual growth and development are surely in Britain’s long-term interest.
The Conservatives’ record on trade is one of failure and broken promises, a point my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West made explicitly in his excellent opening contribution. In 2012 the Conservative party pledged to reach £1 trillion of exports by 2020. Six Chancellors and four Prime Ministers later, the OBR is predicting that the target will be hit 15 years late. I am very much an optimist about our country—Britain will do better—but I gently suggest to the House that it will take a Labour Government to get Britain back on the road to the brighter and better future that the British people most definitely deserve.
Tributes to Her Late Majesty the Queen
Gareth Thomas Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a privilege to have the opportunity to rise in this debate to pay tribute to Her Majesty the Queen on my own behalf but also, particularly importantly, on behalf of my constituents. The Queen was a remarkable monarch, loved and admired, as many in this House have underlined, across our great country and across the world. As a result, I have not been surprised by the depth, warmth and sheer volume of heartfelt messages that my constituents have shared about her life and their sense of loss at her passing.
Harrow was the first borough created by the Queen after her coronation in 1953—that is probably the most important of the many reasons why we have been the most important part of London ever since. She visited our borough many times, and she made many school visits, in particular. She also came to celebrate the borough’s golden jubilee in 2004, and she was always enormously well received.
Like others, I had the privilege of meeting the Queen on a couple of occasions. As a new Member of Parliament, I met her at a reception in Buckingham Palace for young achievers, which is probably the nearest I have ever come to being a rising star. I also met her as a Minister in the Foreign Office. What was obvious on that occasion, and in the many conversations I had with Ministers across the Commonwealth and the globe, was the enormous respect in which she was held. Her quiet work, receiving and meeting diplomats and the leaders of the countries with which our country needed to engage, was always enormously well received and hugely important. Many of my constituents—those who have links to India and Pakistan, or links across east Africa, to Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, in particular, or across west Africa, such as those with a background in Ghana, or those who have a background in the Caribbean—talk of their immense respect for her, but also of the immense respect of their families and relations back home.
The Queen’s was a remarkable life—70 years of phenomenal public service as our monarch. Her skills, her constancy and her considerable diplomatic efforts helped underline and enhance the greatness of our country. The warmth of the tributes from leaders across the globe, the Commonwealth and Europe, and indeed from the President of the United States, have only underlined her importance to our country. God save the Queen, and God save the King.
Debate on the Address
Gareth Thomas Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I very much welcome the remarks of the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) about Bob Blizzard. I had the great privilege of being elected at the same time as him, and as we learned together and with others how this place works—and, indeed, how it perhaps does not work quite so well—I had many conversations with him. I heard of his passing last week from a friend of his in my constituency, and I feel very sad that such a good man and such a great figure in the Labour party has been lost to us.
What stands out from the Prime Minister’s speech this afternoon is a complete failure to understand just how poor his Government’s response has been to date to the desperate circumstances of too many of my constituents because of the cost of living crisis, and particularly because of the huge hike in energy bills, which have gone up by at least 70% since 2010. Ministers have been complacent and too slow to act. The average household bill is now about £2,000 a year, and in October it could rise to almost £3,000. Everyone in the country is affected, but for many the huge rise in bills means some devastating and very difficult choices. For those who are the most vulnerable in our country, the choice is: do they feed themselves or do they put the heating on? Similarly, one small business owner explained to me recently how his energy bill is going up from £1,200 a month now to £2,400 in June.
More than 2 million adults have gone without food for a whole day in the past month and 2.5 million children now regularly miss meals or have to have smaller meals. In the 21st century, in one of the richest countries in the world, that is a truly shocking indication of the Government’s failure. A sustained and meaningful plan to tackle immediately the cost of living and food security crises is needed. We should have been told today when an emergency Budget was going to be brought forward to tackle those issues. My right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition’s suggestion of a cut in energy bills funded by a windfall tax to help everyone is entirely sensible, and further help for those on average or very low incomes will be critical, too. An increase in social security payments, with an uplift in universal credit, is the obvious way to do that.
One particular, but unsurprising disappointment about the Gracious Speech was the absence again of the much-promised employment Bill, leaving far too many vulnerable to bad employers. Making sure those in work are treated fairly, with respect, and have decent incomes is fundamental to the even greater country that Britain can be. It is why all public services should be supported to pay a genuine living wage, why sick pay should be extended too and why an employment Bill is needed to rein in the worst employers—for example, to outlaw fire and rehire and to increase the penalties for discrimination against women having a baby. It should have been in the Queen’s Speech.
On the economy more generally, energy price hikes, widespread inflation, interest rate rises and growing concerns that the economy is going into recession only underline how badly the economy has been run for the past decade. Indeed, over the last 10 years, Britain’s growth in exports has lagged significantly behind the rest of the G7, yet there is little recognition or action by the Treasury or other key Departments. Between 2010 and 2020, American exports of goods and services to the rest of the world rose by over 14%. Germany saw growth over the same period of over 13% in its exports. Across the G7, average growth in exports was 10%, yet Britain, under the Conservative party over the same decade, managed growth of just 4%. Even Italy saw faster export growth.
Indeed, we saw a decline in exports to the world’s fastest growing economies in the G20 over that period: since 2010, goods exports to G20 countries have gone down 10%. We lost our position as the world’s biggest centre for financial services in 2018 to New York. We missed—even allowing for covid—by a huge margin, George Osborne’s target to treble exports. Exports matter: they are crucial to business growth and to generating tax receipts; they are a factor in our soft power; and they are fundamental for job creation. Indeed, jobs linked to exports pay higher than average wages, so not properly supporting exporters is only going to prolong the cost of living crisis and hold back economic growth.
The Conservative party’s failure to take serious steps to address the problems businesses are facing trying to get into European markets will only exacerbate that problem. The Prime Minister thinks it is down to a lack of ambition by exporters. We need as a country to make Brexit work better. We are not going to be rejoining the European Union, but we do need to sort out the problems in the deal that the Prime Minister negotiated with Brussels. We should be negotiating a veterinary agreement, and sorting out mutual recognition for the qualifications of our professionals so they can travel and trade with ease across Europe. We should be tackling visa problems for our creative industries, accelerating investment in digital borders and trying to build more productive relationships with our key allies.
I wish I was surprised that the Gracious Speech did not give consumers significant new powers to hold the businesses that aspire to serve them to account. Water bills have rocketed since privatisation. Sewage spills, deliberate or not, are at shocking levels, underlining the insufficient levels of investment, while executive pay and profits for the often overseas owners of water companies continue to be too high, and clearly at the expense of treating water users—consumers—properly. Why do water companies not have to answer properly to their customers? Complaints are at record levels, yet Ministers continue to give the boards of water companies the benefit of the doubt. Why do not Ministers support the consumers of water companies to co-ordinate properly at each English water company, to elect a representative to the board and to have the right to sign off the board’s accounts, executive remuneration and its investment plans? Why is there not action to stop excessive profits and to stop the diversion of funds that could support investment to pay dividends to shareholders?
Similarly, the shocking level of energy bills only underlines the lack of agency that consumers have in energy markets. Even before the current crisis, it was clear big companies dominated the market too much, so new thinking on how to give consumers more agency in energy markets in the long term is essential to shape energy security, shift patterns of ownership and accelerate that switch to lower-carbon, renewable systems. Indeed, where is the serious plan to tackle the climate crisis? If the Government had backed the Opposition’s plans, we could double our onshore wind capacity to power an extra 10 million homes, back tidal power, triple solar power by 2030 and accelerate energy insulation to reduce the bills of working families and pensioners.
On financial services, it is there that, in the last 12 months, it is most apparent that Ministers have not shown enough interest in consumers. British banking is dominated by four large banks, which provide 70% of current accounts. Even the most generous think that recent measures to boost competition are having only limited impact. Banks are closing branches fast. Increasingly, it is mutual and co-operative financial services that are having to step in to maintain branches and support the high street. Building societies, credit unions and mutual financial insurers need legislative reform to enable them to get the capital they need to invest in new products, new IT and new markets. One boss of a mutual insurer with experience in other countries described the UK at the moment as a uniquely difficult regulatory environment for that insurer.
The shocking attempt last year to demutualise Liverpool Victoria demonstrated the need for legislative change to strip out the remaining incentives for boards to try to demutualise and to give the consumer-owners of those mutuals more powers, as well as the need to address the capital-raising difficulties that many mutuals have, and which have already been resolved in other countries, such as Australia.
In theory, the Financial Conduct Authority is supposed to stand up for consumers. It did not do so during the LV debacle and almost £35 million of owners’ money was wasted as a result. The FCA did not stand up for British Steel pensioners either and it certainly did not during the mutual minibonds scandal. It does not have the resources, and it does not have the appetite clearly, to really stand up for consumers. It has too many other things to do, so I wonder whether a separate consumer ombudsman is now needed, with the sole objective of standing up for consumers, with significant information gathering and class action powers.
Voters in Harrow decided, sadly, to end my local party’s leadership of Harrow Council. We have some work to do as a local party to understand and, crucially, to face up to why voters collectively made that decision. In time, there will, I am sure, be much for us to be proud of about the council’s actions under Labour control, particularly the response to covid, but we have to confront now the question of whether, despite cuts in Government funding to Harrow Council of more than 90%, better council services could have been provided.
One particular concern locally was recent revelations that the council had been hit by fraud, with media reports suggesting that up to £2 million that could have been spent on repairing pavements and roads had disappeared. That is money that local people paid out through their council tax and other tax bills and they have every reason to be angry about such behaviour. To be fair, the previous council leadership acted immediately. It investigated and those responsible have been sacked. The police were called in, and supported as they investigated, too. That money taken wrongly needs to be reclaimed and, if prosecutions are appropriate—and why wouldn’t they be?—they need to happen. I expect the new council leadership to lead that charge.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gareth Thomas Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Kit Malthouse
I had a useful and informative meeting with my hon. Friend and his constituent. As he knows, we have in place an action plan for IPP sentences that we are prosecuting with, I hope, some verve and energy to drive down the numbers. My hon. Friend will know that the Justice Committee held an inquiry into IPP sentences; we await its conclusions before we look at the next steps.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
My constituent Huw Davies is struggling to regain control of a home that he has owned for many years and is wondering when there will be tougher action to prevent lasting powers of attorney from being taken out fraudulently. Will Ministers set out what they are doing to toughen up the law and to toughen up the enforcement activity in respect of lasting powers of attorney?
Tom Pursglove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising an issue of which we are mindful. He will know that we are soon to embark on a process to reform lasting powers of attorney, to make sure that all the processes are fit for the modern world, that incidents of abuse and fraud are tackled robustly and that all the right checks and mechanisms are there.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gareth Thomas Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. I will study the detail and ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to take up the matter directly.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Prime Minister
No. As I have said, households in the top 20% of income pay 40 times more than the poorest. And pay for nurses is exactly what this measure funds, which is why it is so astonishing that the hon. Gentleman and his party are determined to vote against it tonight.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gareth Thomas Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
The Government recognise the importance of tackling pregnancy and maternity discrimination, which is why we will extend the redundancy protection period for six months once a new mother has returned to work and provide similar protections for those parents taking adoption leave and shared parental leave. We will bring these measures forward as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Gareth Thomas
As a devastating Equality and Human Rights Commission report highlighted some five years ago, and certainly given the experience of too many of my constituents, discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers is still widespread. When will the Government actually get their act together and bring in the legislation they have promised to stop employers making women redundant during pregnancy, and until at least six months after they have returned from maternity leave?
Paul Scully
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but legislation can only ever be part of the answer, which is why we have committed to bring together key business and family representative groups to tackle the questions on organisational culture and to ensure that women and employers know their rights. We will introduce legislative measures when parliamentary time allows.
Oral Answers to Questions
Gareth Thomas Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Yes. I thank my hon. Friend for singling out this intrepid act of quick-thinking and selflessness. I pay tribute to Kim, Zach, Shania and Robin, and I hope they got their Maccy D’s.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Prime Minister
It is vital that we tackle child poverty, and that is why we are levelling up across the country with the biggest programme of investment for a generation, if not more. We are also seeing fewer households now with children in poverty than 10 years ago, but I perfectly accept that there is more to be done.
Covid-19 Update
Gareth Thomas Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
As ever, my hon. Friend makes what sounds like an excellent point about coach operators and tourism operators. I will make sure that he sees the relevant Transport Minister as soon as possible.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Nurseries are a vital part of community infrastructure, helping our youngest to get a better chance of a good start to life and making it easier for parents to go to work. Given that over 300 shut their doors for good in February and March, will the Prime Minister publish a covid recovery plan for nurseries and early years providers to help to get them back on their feet?
The Prime Minister
We will be publishing a very comprehensive plan for educational recovery shortly.