Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Jones and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can certainly assure my hon. Friend that I will do everything I can to champion companies such as Rolls-Royce, whether in civil aerospace or defence aerospace. I try to take it on as many of my trade missions as possible, because it is an absolutely world-class, world-beating company. Obviously, it is disappointing that it plans to reduce the number of people it employs. It is not yet clear how many of those job reductions will be here in the UK. Of course, Rolls-Royce employs over 25,000 people in the UK. If we look at what has happened to the aerospace industry over the past four years, we see that employment is up by 10%, exports are up by 48% and turnover is up by a fifth. This is a successful industry that is being backed by our modern industrial strategy, but we need to do everything we can to make sure this company, and others like it, continue to succeed in the years ahead.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Q7. In 2010, Warrington had 127 full-time equivalent GPs. At the last count, it had 97, and some of my constituents are waiting up to two weeks for an appointment. Is the Prime Minister’s failure to provide access to basic health care a result of deliberate policy, or is it simply carelessness?

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, there are 1,000 more GPs across the country than there were in 2010. If the hon. Lady wants to know what has happened in Warrington under this Government: when I became Prime Minister, 130 people were waiting a year for an operation; today, that number is zero. That is what has happened under this Government. Because we are making the money available, it is possible to have more GPs coming into an area, alongside the 1,000 we have already introduced.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Jones and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what she says. She is right that stalking is an appalling crime. It can destroy lives and we need to do as much as we can to crack down on it. We have, of course, introduced a new offence to make absolutely clear the view that we take of it. The new stalking laws are also equally applicable to online, cyber-stalking and harassment, and the Crown Prosecution Service has published guidelines for involving communications sent via social media, so we tackle this in the online world as well as the physical world. However, I am very happy to write to my hon. Friend with all the detail of all the things we are doing and to see whether there are further steps we can take.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Q10. When the Prime Minister was asked about the bedroom tax last year, he said:“what we have done is to exempt disabled people who need an extra room.”—[Official Report, 27 November 2013; Vol. 571, c. 254.]Now that we know that people with terminal illness who cannot share a room, those who have to store equipment such as dialysis machines and families with severely disabled children who need occasional respite are all subject to this pernicious tax, would he like to revise that answer and to apologise to the disabled people to whom he gave false hope?

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me repeat—this is a basic issue of fairness—that people who are renting in the private sector do not get additional money for rooms that they do not use, so it is not fair to have a different set of rules for the social sector. But we also have a large discretionary payment system in order to help families such as the ones the hon. Lady mentions.

Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust (Inquiry)

Debate between Helen Jones and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend packed a lot into her question, but I agree that we need greater clinical leadership across the system. When we look at Francis carefully, what he is saying is that things such as targets and better financial management were important. We cannot have an organisation such as a hospital, which is a multi-million-pound organisation with thousands of staff, without proper management, proper finances and the rest of it. We have to make sure that there is proper clinical leadership, and that the focus is on care and quality, as her father said.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that what happened at Mid Staffs was not just a failure of regulation but a failure of basic humanity? Apart from a few whistleblowers, ward sisters, nurses, doctors and consultants must have seen what was happening on those wards day after day, and did nothing, although their professional duty obliged them to speak up for their patients. Will he therefore look at any issues that need to be addressed in the regulatory bodies to enable such failures among staff to be tackled, because people who do that should not be working in the NHS?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady speaks for everyone in saying that, which is why all these organisations, including the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the Royal College of Nursing and the General Medical Council have to think about taking action when behaviour is not appropriate or professional codes are seriously breached. People should be struck off and should not be able to work again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Jones and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly pay tribute to all those who took part in the British transplant games and to the many volunteers who made the games such a success. Gillingham did a fantastic job in hosting the games and my hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. They are a testament to the benefits of transplantation and I would encourage people to do as he says.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Q14. Seventy-seven of Warrington’s young people with the most complex special needs face being without places next year because of Government cuts to post-16 high-needs funding. Why should the most vulnerable young people in my constituency pay the price for the Prime Minister’s economic failure?

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, let me make the point to the hon. Lady that the reason we are having to make cuts is because of the mess left by her Government. No one wants to have to make the difficult decisions that we have had to make in government, but I would argue that, when it comes to helping the disabled and the most vulnerable, this Government have always looked after them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Jones and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The point my hon. Friend makes is very important. If you look at the figures and include all of the financial sector, you will see that there are more people employed in the private sector today in Britain than at any time in our history. [Interruption.] Oh, the shadow Chancellor says that that is because we are in recession. It is because companies are choosing to employ people and the private sector is getting larger, which is good news. Employment is up 201,000 this quarter; unemployment is down 46,000 this quarter; the claimant count has fallen; the rate of unemployment is down; youth unemployment is down—I would have thought that the whole House would welcome those figures.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Q5. Last Sunday the Prime Minister told us that there should be no more excuses for failure. Given that his policies have produced the longest double-dip recession since the war, with output down, borrowing up and a collapse in consumer confidence, is his failure to apologise because he does not take his own advice, or because he considers that a record of astounding success?

[The Prime Minister]

This comes from an hon. Lady who served in a Government who, after 13 years, delivered us the longest and deepest recession since the war and who gave us the biggest budget deficit of virtually any country in the developed world. Of course, it takes time to get yourself out of a hole as deep as the one that was dug by the shadow Chancellor and the leader of the Opposition.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Jones and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend speaks up for an iconic and important British business that has given people a lot of pleasure over the years. I have asked the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to give me a report on what is happening at Thomas Cook, because it is important to ensure that it is in a good, healthy state.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Q12. Recent research has shown that the NHS achieved the biggest drop in cancer deaths and the most efficient use of resources among 10 leading countries. Will the Prime Minister accept that he did not inherit an NHS in crisis, but one that was rapidly improving? Will he stop using dodgy 10-year-old statistics to justify his wasteful and destructive NHS privatisation?

[The Prime Minister]

I am a huge supporter and fan of the NHS. There are many things that are truly wonderful about our NHS. We should celebrate that, but under the last Government, the number of managers in the NHS doubled—the number of NHS managers was increasing six times faster than the number of nurses—and NHS productivity was falling. If a Government inherit a situation like that, it makes sense to make some changes. That is why we see, since we have come in, 14,000 fewer non-clinical staff, but more doctors and midwives, and more operations taking place. If the hon. Lady wants something to celebrate in the NHS—[Interruption.]

Public Disorder

Debate between Helen Jones and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As I said earlier, there are parenting orders. They can be used, they can involve parents paying quite hefty fines, and I very much encourage their use at this time.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister is quite right that our first duty is to ensure that people are safe and to bring criminals to justice, but when that has been done there are serious issues to be considered, not only about policing, but about employment and education, the values we transmit as a society and the direction in which we are going. These cannot be considered by one Select Committee, so will he rethink his view on setting up a commission of inquiry into what lies behind these riots, so that we will ensure that they are never repeated?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said earlier, this is only a week from the very starting event that triggered the process, so having a Home Affairs Committee inquiry to start with is right. The hon. Lady mentions the economic circumstances, but I checked this morning and in a three-mile radius from Tottenham more than 1,300 apprenticeships are available for young people. That is yet another example of attempts to try to link this to economic circumstances or to try to find some excuse for it, which is completely wrong.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Jones and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. and learned Friend makes an important point, which is that to make an unfunded cut in VAT right now, when the concerns are about debt and deficit, would actually be the height of insanity. What is now clear is that Labour’s plan B stands for bankruptcy.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Q6. The Prime Minister frequently tells us that we are all in this together, so can he explain why banks have been rewarded with a £2 billion tax cut on their obscene bonus pools while parents of disabled children are being penalised with a benefit cut of £1,400 a year? How is that fair?

[The Prime Minister]

I will tell you what this Government have done, and that is to put in place a £2.5 billion bank levy, raising more than Labour’s bonus tax every single year, but I have to say that, if Opposition Members want to see irresponsible people who are earning a lot of money pay proper taxes, perhaps they will explain this: why did they vote against the measures on disguised earnings in the Finance Bill which will raise £800 million from people who are giving loans to themselves to dodge taxes? [Interruption.] Well, I think that that is probably a detail that the leader of the Labour party was not really aware of.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Jones and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend puts it extremely well. Far from standing on the shoulders of the suffragettes, or whatever nonsense we heard at the weekend, the fact is that the Leader of the Opposition is sitting in a great big pool of debt that was his creation, and he has got absolutely no idea what to do about it.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Q15. In 2009, the Prime Minister promised families with disabled children, in his own words, “a crack team of medical experts—doctor, nurse, physio—”to“act as a one-stop-shop to assess families and get them the help they need.” Can he tell the House how many of these teams have been set up?

[The Prime Minister]

What I can tell the hon. Lady is that it was very much something based on my own experience of having repeated assessments when you are trying to get help, benefits and social work, and in the special educational needs Green Paper that precise idea is rapidly becoming Government policy.