Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Heidi Alexander and Bradley Thomas(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Heidi Alexander
I do agree with my hon. Friend, who I know has expert knowledge of the charge point industry. The clarity that the ZEV mandate provides has triggered over £6 billion-worth of private sector investment in charging infrastructure, and it is one of the reasons why we have a brand-new gigafactory being built in Somerset and huge investment by Nissan in its Sunderland plant.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
Last year, 9.7% of vehicles sold in the UK were Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles—a near doubling of the market share that they had the year before, which stood at 4.9%. What assessment has the Secretary of State’s Department made of the threat that this may pose to national security and to our industrial resilience, and does she share my concerns?
Heidi Alexander
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that this Government take our national security duties very seriously. We are taking significant steps to support the UK car manufacturing sector, and we are also supporting consumers to make the transition to EVs, with over 44 models now available for the electric car grant that we announced last year, but we will continue to ensure that all the security issues to which he refers are front and centre of our minds.
Disruption at Heathrow
Debate between Heidi Alexander and Bradley Thomas(11 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Heidi Alexander
Airlines are responsible for providing passengers with a refund within seven days, or to be re-routed to their destination under the same conditions, with required suitable accommodation and food. That is the airlines’ responsibility. We have advertised the rights of passengers via the Civil Aviation Authority in recent days to ensure that people are aware. Those are the provisions that exist within our law to compensate people who have been affected by this type of disruption.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
In any modern economy, it is clear that the resilience of critical national infrastructure faces many risks and threats, and that resilience goes hand in hand with our national security. Does the Secretary of State agree that the incident and other risks we face demonstrate that the role of the Prime Minister’s national security adviser should be bolstered to more prominently cover national security and critical infrastructure resilience?
Heidi Alexander
I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government will do everything in their power to learn the lessons from this incident and ensure that our critical national infrastructure is protected and resilient as we move forward.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Heidi Alexander and Bradley Thomas(1 year, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Heidi Alexander)
As I said to the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler), we will do everything we can to ensure swift justice for the victims of Grenfell. We plan for the Crown court to sit for at least 105,000 days this financial year, and we will do more to increase the speed with which cases are heard in the Crown court.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)