Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend. It is absolutely true that, through our careers strategy, we have so far invested £2 million to support career-related learning in primary schools. As Members of the House will know, we get the most extraordinary questions from primary school children and they are often very ambitious for their futures.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Q11. The father of Jane Roche from Erdington, Vince, died of covid. Five days later, her sister died of covid. She is devastated and appalled by the recent revelations as to what has gone on in Downing Street. She asks this question of the Prime Minister: does trust in British politics matter?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, it does. That is why it is absolutely vital that we should get to the bottom of whatever may or may not have taken place on 18 December last year, but we need to focus on what is happening this year. I urge the hon. Gentleman’s constituent and everybody else to get their booster jab and to look after themselves.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

I hear the hon. Lady’s question and absolutely recognise the importance of the matter. It is also of course important to go through the proper processes in selecting possible chairs, appointing one and so on. I know this will be given the considerable importance it deserves, and as I said, it will be disclosed before the end of the year.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

For the covid-19 bereaved families two things matter above all: that the inquiry begins as soon as possible, with the families at its heart; and that the national covid memorial wall opposite Parliament must be preserved. The Government have indicated that they support a national memorial at St Paul’s cathedral instead, but this is not an either/or choice and the families’ agony must end. Both memorials deserve their place: will the Minister therefore support the bereaved families’ request to preserve the memorial wall, because it is their wall, their memories, their love?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

My right hon. Friend is a long-standing advocate for victims in his community. I hope he will be reassured that we will consult as soon as possible on how we best guarantee victims’ rights in law and the level of support that they can expect. We will want to hear from a wide range of individuals and stakeholders to inform that process and shape policy, getting it right from reporting the crime through to the courtroom experience.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Sarah Child, aged 26, was run down and killed by a driver doing 64 mph on the Walsall Road. Poppy-Arabella Clarke, aged three, was run down and killed on the Walsall Road by a driver who could no longer see and had been warned never to drive again. With RoadPeace, we have campaigned for tougher penalties for those who kill with a car, and some welcome progress has been made. However, does the Minister not understand that changing and strengthening the law is one thing and that helping to enforce the law is something different? With 1,000 police officers cut in the west midlands and huge cuts to Birmingham city council’s budget, they are unable—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Minister.

G20 and COP26 World Leaders Summit

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for everything that he has done with ASEAN—Association of Southeast Asian Nations—partners. He has absolutely been leading the charge for us in that region, particularly with Indonesia, and they are great partners of ours. What is coming out of COP is the idea that countries who are finding it tough, as he said, to move beyond coal need a coalition of countries to help them, with a portfolio of programmes that they need to get done, whether it is hydropower or carbon capture and storage—whatever it is—that we can help to finance and de-risk, in order to leverage in the trillions from the private sector, as we did with wind power in our country. People are seeing this model as the way we can do it—not with endless grants and handouts from Governments in the richer countries around the world, but through stimulating the private sector to come in and deliver a quantum leap in the infrastructure concerned.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

GKN-Melrose has announced its intention to proceed with the closure of the Erdington plant, which employs 519 loyal, long-serving workers in an area with the fifth-highest level of deprivation in Britain, and to export production to Poland, which is still burning coal on a grand scale for years to come. Does the Prime Minister therefore understand the dismay of the workers concerned? With the automotive industry in transition to an electric future, does he agree that we need a supply chain here in Britain, employing workers here in Britain, manufacturing here in Britain, as part of a green industrial revolution here in Britain?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I passionately agree with that. GKN does an amazing job across the country, particularly in delivering some of the most difficult solutions, such as sustainable aviation. We need to ensure that we have the ecosystem of gigafactories and electric vehicle manufacturing capabilities, and all the supply chains here in Britain, but with an energy cost that allows those businesses to be competitive. That applies to steel, automotive and everybody else, and I am afraid that, at the moment, the differential between our domestic users’ electricity costs and industrial energy costs is too high, and we have to fix it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

The hon. Lady is right to raise the York Central site, which I know well. We must ensure that the local authority works with the Government so that that site comes into use. It has massive potential. I really hope that City of York Council gets its act together and works with us, because it could be a stunning opportunity for jobs and infrastructure in the city of York.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

In welcoming the new ministerial team to the Front Bench, may I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on Chorley becoming the epicentre of global parliamentary democracy?

Three of the 10 most deprived constituencies in England are in Birmingham, and 42% of children in Birmingham are growing up in poverty. However, rather than supporting hard-working families in Birmingham, the Government are hitting them with a £1,000 a year cut to universal credit and a national insurance tax rise. On top of that, they face soaring energy costs, increasing food costs, increasing childcare costs and increasing housing costs. The Government say that they want to level up, but is not the simple truth that the only thing that gets levelled up under the Tories is the cost of living?

[Nigel Adams]

I politely remind the hon. Gentleman that the Government have invested £400 billion in supporting the country, its businesses and public services through the pandemic. He is right to raise Birmingham, which has seen quite a transformation in recent years. I also remind him of the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund, the shared prosperity fund and the national skills fund. The Government are taking action on levelling up.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

You could register Wilfred. I call Jack Dromey.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

For more than half a century, the GKN factory in Erdington has produced high-quality parts for the automotive industry. Now, following the hostile takeover by Melrose, the company has announced its intention to close the factory, sack 519 workers, and export jobs and production to continental Europe. There has been some welcome engagement with Ministers on this issue, but does the Prime Minister agree that, in one of the poorest parts of Britain, if the levelling-up agenda and support for British manufacturing mean anything, this factory cannot close? Does he therefore also agree that it would be a betrayal of the British national interest were this great, historic factory to become history?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Business Secretary is working with GKN to do whatever we can, but I believe that the future of the UK automotive sector is incredibly bright. That is because—to go back to the question of the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse)—we are the Government who took the historic step, ahead of every other European country, to move towards electric vehicles by 2030. We want this country to be in the lead. We are making sure that we get the investment in the UK that will drive new technology, drive growth, and drive high-wage and high-skilled jobs in this country.

Health and Social Care

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend deeply; in that intervention, he has summed up the heart of the issue that I was trying to explain in my statement. It is the anxiety of millions of families up and down the country who face this uncertainty—about the finance, but also the proper setting for their relatives—that we are addressing today.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The backbone of the social care system is an army of underpaid and hard-working home carers and carers. How does the Prime Minister begin to justify to them a tax rise that not only breaks a promise, but hits them hard in their pockets?

[The Prime Minister]

Because we are investing massively in the sector. We are putting half a billion pounds into supporting care workers and investing in 700,000 training places. We are lifting the living wage by record amounts. Above all, we are valuing care workers and showing the respect to them and their careers that I do not believe has been properly shown before, by any Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. A statutory inquiry is obviously the right way to ensure that all the right questions are asked and that full answers are arrived at. To ensure that the inquiry works, the experience, voices and views of those who have suffered so much must be a critical part in ensuring that it is set up appropriately.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Jane Roche from Erdington tragically lost her father Vince and her sister Jocelyn within five days of one another last April. This devastating loss has driven Jane and thousands like her to be tireless campaigners for justice for those who lost their lives. Does the Minister agree that it is imperative that the public inquiry has the full confidence of the relatives who are grieving to this day? Will he therefore commit to ensuring that the bereaved families groups are fully consulted on who is the chair of the inquiry and the inquiry’s terms of reference? Finally, will he commit to the Prime Minister meeting personally the covid-19 bereaved families? They want to meet with him. Will he meet with them?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the case of his constituents who have suffered so much and who, understandably, want to ensure that the inquiry provides them with answers at a time of grief and not only contributes to the healing process but ensures that appropriate lessons are learned. I look forward, as everyone in the Government does, to working with victims’ groups to ensure that the inquiry can command their confidence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

The original assumptions that were made about numbers of people that we would need either in customs or of vets, for example, were overestimated, because having looked at it we now have a much clearer understanding of what is actually required. We have obviously, through securing this agreement, been able to mitigate a lot of those things. A great deal of these things are, as I say, about people not understanding how things should be implemented, so a large part of our work is about ensuring that businesses, agents and others understand how these processes need to be operating. With the problems that genuinely remain, we now have a framework in place where we can work through those things.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab) [V]]

The Food and Drink Federation reported this week that exports are down by 75%, salmon has collapsed by 98%, and beef is down by 91%. The industry is suffering a total loss of £750 million, and much of that collapse is down to the bundles of red tape introduced by the Government’s Brexit deal. Indeed, the British Meat Processors Association has said that the extra paperwork will cost its members £120 million a year. This is not what British business was promised by the Government. What do the Government now propose to do to help the industry though a crisis not of its own making but which threatens jobs, livelihoods and indeed businesses up and down our country?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the case of the firm in his constituency and will look specifically at that firm’s challenges, and the position of both the firm in Poland that supplies all those fabrics and the courier he mentions, in order to make sure that any interruption in the free flow of produce from Poland to Dundee is dealt with.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab) [V]]

A Make UK survey shows that 61% of manufacturers are suffering disruption to their supply chain; one car company is parking hundreds of cars because of problems with its supply chain; road haulage in Northern Ireland is in chaos; the Road Haulage Association survey shows that more than one in two of its members throughout the UK are swamped by red tape; and Government officials are even advising companies to set up hubs on the continent, when we should be building British and buying British. What will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster do finally to ease such burdens on business on our great British companies, which are deeply damaging, at the worst possible time?

[Michael Gove]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman on the need to build British and buy British. The procurement Green Paper that the Cabinet Office Minister Lord Agnew produced enables us to do just that. The hon. Gentleman mentioned a number of examples of disruption. There have been some challenges, but there have also been some reports, including, I regret to say, in The Observer, that have not been wholly accurate in their depiction of the challenges our exporters face.

[Jack Dromey]

Does the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster begin to recognise the scale of the mountainous problems confronting British business? The Government left them with one week between Christmas eve and 1 January to adapt to new rules running to hundreds of pages. Then, when companies all across the UK raised their concerns, the Prime Minister dismissed them as “teething problems”. Will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster take this opportunity to apologise to British business for the disruption the Government have inflicted on them?

[Michael Gove]

I know the hon. Gentleman has dedicated his life, both before he came into this House and in this House, to supporting British manufacturing, so I take seriously the concerns he raises. We meet business representative organisations every week through the Brexit business taskforce in order to deal with any challenges and to explore additional opportunities. I should have welcomed him to his new role in the shadow Cabinet Office team. I look forward to working with him, because I know that he is dedicated to making sure that British manufacturers, the best in the world, have all the opportunities they need. I hope to work pragmatically with him to achieve just that.