Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

Childcare is an important issue. Since 2010, we have doubled childcare to 30 hours for working parents, with a universal offer of 15 hours, and covering 85% of childcare costs under universal credit. We have also had much discussion in recent weeks about childcare ratios. I will ensure that the relevant Minister writes to the hon. Lady with more detail.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

One workplace where women need support is the other place, where an eighth of the seats are reserved for men only. Will the Minister support my Hereditary Titles (Female Succession) Bill and get that anomaly changed?

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank my hon. Friend for her impressive campaigning on this issue. I was privileged to be in the Chamber when she made some of her speeches about it this year. I will look into the matter and ensure that I write to her about it.

Tributes to Her Late Majesty the Queen

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Saturday 10th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

It is with great humility and sadness that I rise to pay tribute to Her late Majesty the Queen on behalf of my constituents in West Worcestershire. When we think of the sadness that we are feeling, we can only imagine how much grief her family members must be feeling, and we send them our heartfelt condolences. I think so many of us had hoped that Her late Majesty would reach her 100th birthday, like her mother, and that she would have to decide whether to send herself a telegram.

During her reign, Her late Majesty made four official visits to Worcestershire, most recently during her diamond jubilee tour, when she opened her faithful city of Worcester’s new library, The Hive. It was an honour to meet her on that occasion. On her first visit to Worcestershire as Queen, in 1957, she came to Malvern to see the Royal Radar Establishment and Malvern College. Radar was invented in Malvern and it played such an important role in our winning the second world war.

As many colleagues have said, Her late Majesty took a particular interest in our work here in Parliament. She invited all new MPs to meet her after the election in 2010. It was on that occasion that I learned of her fondness for Malvern water. It was on that occasion that I learned of her fondness for Malvern water. Since then, many of us have always thought that it was perhaps Malvern water that had given Her Majesty her wonderful complexion and helped her enjoy such a long life.

Many tributes have made it clear how close the Queen’s relationship has been with this Parliament, but as Chair of the British group in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, I wish to highlight her role in supporting international parliamentary democracy, human rights and the rule of law around the world. The Inter-Parliamentary Union brings together almost the whole of the world’s parliamentarians, and as our Head of State, the Queen opened three of the organisation’s conferences in London—those in 1957 and 1975 and, notably, the centenary conference of the IPU in 1989. As she addressed those hundreds of parliamentarians from around the world, she underlined the core values of multilateralism and the importance of bringing parliamentarians together to find peaceful methods of solving disputes and to understand each other. In this time of grieving, let us reinforce that wisdom that lasting peace must come through words.

Our late Queen is now at peace and, in the words of our daily prayer in this Chamber, may she attain everlasting joy and felicity. God save the King.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

As I said in response to an earlier question, the net zero strategy is not what has been quashed. Obviously the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will look to respond to the judgment.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for his amazing service as COP26 President. Will he make it his objective to ban the sale of Chinese lanterns across the UK? Across our tinder-dry land they are simply acting as unguided flamethrowers.

[Alok Sharma]

I thank my hon. Friend for her kind comments. I will make sure that the issue of these lanterns is raised with the appropriate Department domestically.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

One of the most unequal workplaces in the land is the other place, where an eighth of the seats are reserved for men only. Will the Minister support a rapid change in the law, so that hereditary peerages go down through the first and oldest child, as the Crown does, rather than the oldest son?

[Kemi Badenoch]

My hon. Friend is referring to the reform of succession to the hereditary peerage, to which I am sympathetic, but which raises a variety of complex issues. Various approaches have been proposed in both Houses to address the issue of male primogeniture for hereditary peerages, but there is not yet a consensus on the way forward. I am happy to work with her to look at the issue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change (Greg Hands)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. Floating offshore wind is a key part of the energy security strategy announced by the Prime Minister last week with a 5 GW target ambition by 2030. On securing and improving the UK supply chain, floating offshore wind is still a relatively nascent technology, but I will make sure that I take the point that he raises to the supply chain taskforce.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

T6. As the Foreign Secretary writes her international development strategy, what conversations is the COP26 President having about the importance of international climate finance for the very poorest countries in the world?

[Alok Sharma]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We need to make sure that we honour the $100 billion pledge, but, as I said earlier, we are also working with countries to ensure that they have funding for clean energy transition, and I am off to the World Bank meetings shortly to take that work forward.

Covid-19 Update

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What we are doing is supporting hospitals in Greater Manchester and up and down the country with record investment and, as I said in an earlier answer, by making sure that we supplement the staff by calling doctors back to the colours and with volunteers, new therapeutic treatments and all the extra things that we are doing. But fundamentally, there is also a job for this country: to follow plan B and the guidance that we put in place and get boosted. That is the most important thing we can do.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the boost that the Prime Minister gave to the “Get Boosted Now” programme. Over the recess, almost 1 million boosters a day were given to people and I thank everyone involved. I also welcome the leadership that he showed on the COVAX facility and in making sure that vaccinations have been spread around the world. Given the risk of variants emerging in places where vaccination rates are not as high as in the UK, is there more that we can do to boost vaccination rates around the world?

[The Prime Minister]

The UK can be proud of what we are doing—my hon. Friend knows this area well—to support vaccination around the world. Thanks to the deal we did with Oxford-AstraZeneca, 1.5 billion doses were administered to people who needed them around the world at cost—that was thanks to the deal negotiated by the UK Government. We put £478 million into COVAX and we have a pledge to deliver 100 million surplus vaccines around the world by June this year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Local government has a key role to play in tackling climate change and meeting net zero targets, and we are keen to ensure that there is representation at the summit from cities and regions across the UK. My hon. Friend will know that, following the G7 in June, the Government have backed a major drive to make Cornwall the first net zero region in the UK. I am sure that she will be leading on getting the maximum impact for her constituents from the town deals for Penzance, St Ives and Camborne, worth £65 million, up to £1 million of innovation funding and energy efficiency, power generation and energy storage for Cornish businesses, and the opportunities for Cornwall to pilot the new e-bike support scheme.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The COP26 President (Alok Sharma)]

Last week, we set out our high-level two-week programme for COP26. The conference will open with a world leaders’ summit followed by a range of themed days of activity, including on finance, energy, youth, nature, adaptation, gender, science, transport and the built environment. These days will also be an opportunity to showcase specific global action on tackling climate change. I look forward to welcoming parliamentarians to Glasgow and we will very shortly be inviting Members of both Houses to formally register their interest for attendance at COP26.

[Harriett Baldwin]

As the president-designate says, it is not just world leaders and Governments who are needed to make COP26 a success, but parliamentarians from around the world. As chair of the British Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, we will be hosting events for parliamentarians around the world, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will encourage his officials to accredit as many parliamentarians from international delegations as possible.

[Alok Sharma]

Obviously we want to ensure that we have a physical event and that those who apply have an opportunity to try to get accredited. As I said, for parliamentarians in this and the other place, we will be opening a registration process shortly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

We are only following what the Labour party does. It was the Labour party that introduced the requirement for voter ID in Northern Ireland, as the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) pointed out earlier. It is also the case that one can vote in internal Labour elections only by using voter ID. I do not know whether there is an internal Labour election coming up soon. The shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), will be better informed on that question than me—[Interruption.] Sorry! Anyway, to vote in a Labour election, you need voter ID.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I know that my right hon. Friend and his colleagues are all passionate feminists, and I am sure that he would agree that it is difficult to justify the fact that an eighth of the seats in the upper House are reserved effectively for men, because of the laws of primogeniture and the hereditary peers. Does he have plans to reform that anomaly?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We do not currently have plans to do that, but she makes a fair point. As everyone knows, for the remaining hereditary peerages in the House of Lords, when an hereditary peer in any one of the party or Cross-Bench groups passes away, there is a by-election among those who are eligible, but at the moment in nearly every case the franchise and candidacy is restricted to men. That is something we should definitely look at.

G7 and NATO Summits

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Again, what I did hear from leaders around the world was massive, overwhelming support for the objective, which the hon. Member supports, of girls’ education. The G7 committed $2.75 billion, I think, towards the Global Partnership for Education, with the UK increasing our commitment by 15% in spite of the pandemic. I hope the message she will give to pupils in Vauxhall is that we are absolutely committed to that end.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I congratulate the Prime Minister and his whole team on delivering such a wonderful G7 summit. I welcome the announcement on the replenishment of the Global Partnership for Education. As our economy recovers and we return to the promised 0.7%, will he put at the forefront of his work in his time in Government ensuring that we really boost the efforts to educate every child in the world through UNICEF, Education Cannot Wait, the Global Partnership for Education and, of course, our wonderful UK Girls’ Education Challenge?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for her support for female education. I remember discussing it with her many, many times. I know how much she cares about it. The programme we are embarked on will mean 40 million more girls in school by 2025 and 20 million more girls reading over the next five years. We are going to do even more than I was saying to an hon. Lady on the Opposition Benches, when President Kenyatta of Kenya comes here in July for the Global Partnership for Education.

Covid-19: Winter Plan

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The Treasury has already updated its Green Book, which is a significant step, and I know that the Chancellor has been discussing this further. The levelling-up agenda is even more critical after the pandemic than it was before. It is the agenda on which all Government Members were elected with enormous enthusiasm about a year ago, and we look forward to putting it in place with renewed vigour once this pandemic is over.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I heard the Secretary of State say some welcome things about sport. Given the importance of maintaining fitness to the ability to deal with this illness, can he confirm whether people will be able to go to indoor swimming pools and play golf?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, golf is back. Outdoor sport will be available under all the tiers, and we will publish all the details for each tier imminently.