Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q2. If I can summarise what we have just heard: President Trump has locked up 2,000 little children in cages and is refusing to release them unless he is allowed to build a wall; he has quit the United Nations Human Rights Council; he has praised Kim Jong-un’s treatment of his own people; and he has turned away Muslims. What does this man have to do to have the invitation that the Prime Minister has extended revoked?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said—[Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We should be bringing payment by results to all of the criminal justice system. Currently, we spend over £1 billion on probation. I want to see payment by results being the norm rather than the exception. To be fair to the Treasury, when it designed payment by results in the welfare system, it allowed the Department for Work and Pensions to spend the future receipts of lower benefit claims. I am sure the Treasury will be equally inventive and creative when it comes to making sure we get better value for money and better results in our criminal justice system.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q6. Last week from the Dispatch Box the Prime Minister said that services at Kettering hospital were safe. This week we have learned that the official review’s so-called best option is to get rid of many vital services in our hospital and to reduce the number of beds by 80%. Is it not the truth that you cannot trust the Tories on the NHS?

[The Prime Minister]

What is true is that you can always guarantee that Labour Members of Parliament will get up in Parliament and scaremonger about our NHS. What I said last week is absolutely right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Of course I welcome the decision by Pendle borough council and its executive directors to reduce the council’s wage bill. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has called on all local authority chief executives earning £200,000 a year to take a 10% pay cut, and those on £150,000 to take a 5% cut. They need to make sacrifices, just as everyone else is. On policing, of course I understand everyone’s attachment to PCSOs, but it would be a flagrant breach of the traditions of policing in this country if we were to start second-guessing chief constables. I think we all want more visible policing; it cannot be right that the system we inherited from Labour means that only 11% of police officers are ever seen on our streets at any one time. That is wrong and it must change.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q6. Tens of thousands of students have gathered outside this place today to oppose the right hon. Gentleman’s shameful policy of tripling student debt. He received a request to address the crowd, but as yet no response has been received. May I give him the opportunity to give that response now?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I meet student leaders and representatives of the National Union of Students all the time. I hope that, when he joins the demonstrators, the first thing he will do is explain what on earth his party’s policy is. We have a policy; he has no policy and no plan, and is giving no hope to future generations of students.