Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ian Mearns and George Freeman

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

My hon. Friend has been active in making representations on this issue, which we hear loud and clear. Following the announcement, I look forward to talking to him, to councils, and to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, about the proper integration of housing, rail, and the A1 junction.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), I am a little surprised that the Secretary of State did not make a statement about taking back Northern rail into public ownership. It only affects in excess of 15 million people, so it cannot be that important and need a statement from the Secretary of State! The new publicly owned railway will have the same problems of poor infrastructure across the north. We need significant new investment—when will it come?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ian Mearns and George Freeman

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Life Sciences (George Freeman)]

The accelerated access review that we have launched is about unleashing the power of the NHS to support 21st-century drug development and the test beds putting technology into practice in our health system. As my hon. Friend says, this has benefits not just for patients, but for industry, and not least for the north-west. During my visit to the Alderley site with my hon. Friend in the spring, I saw at first hand the power of that cluster in advanced medicines manufacturing and technology, and I think it has a very bright future in 21st-century life sciences.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

T8. With only 6% of 16 to 18-year-olds going into apprenticeships, may I ask the Secretary of State what specific steps he is taking to ensure that the 3 million apprenticeships that the Government hope to create are of good quality, are quality assured and have proper qualifications that will lead to increasing the trainee’s career prospects and are not used, as we are currently seeing in the north-east, as a ruse by less scrupulous employers to employ young people on cheap wages?

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Ian Mearns and George Freeman

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. The bigger point is that in the 1980s the Conservative party launched a historic renaissance of saving and wealth creation whereby more and more people, through ISAs and PEPs, were able to own shares and save. That was wilfully destroyed by the former Labour Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), through his stealth taxes. It has long been necessary for us to restore a culture and a set of incentives for a genuine renaissance in savings, and that is key to the resilience that the Chancellor set out today. That was the most important set of measures in today’s Budget, and it will stand the test of time.

What did we hear from Labour Members? I came here genuinely wanting to hear the Opposition’s response to this package. I wanted to hear the alternative economic policy that Labour is going to put to the British people next spring. For all the noise we hear on the Government side of the House, the real test, as we know, is the silence from the Opposition Benches. What we heard today was an embarrassing descent into business bashing and class war. If that is what the Leader of the Opposition defines as his “new socialism”, I wish him luck. I will be sending a copy of his speech to all the businesses in my constituency, because it fails the business test in spades, and it is the business test that will drive the growth and investment on which the public sector always depends.

[Ian Mearns]

Will the hon. Gentleman also be sending them a copy of the noise that was being generated by Government Members during the speech of the Leader of the Opposition today?

[George Freeman]

I will have a chance to read Hansard. I am not surprised there was noise. It was a shameful performance. When, 12 months from the election, this country needs a choice, and Her Majesty’s Opposition are supposed to set out an alternative economic policy, it was woeful. It gives me no pleasure to say it. The result is that the choice is now clear: a Chancellor, a Government and a Prime Minister with a long-term plan for resilience and recovery, led by the real economy and investment, and a Leader of the Opposition who seems now committed simply to going into the election on a ticket of partisan politics and gesturing to his trade union funders. It was not a Budget response that merited his title. It did not set out a serious economic programme for recovery, and I am afraid that it deserves the response that I think it will get at next year’s general election.