Autumn Statement

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rushanara Ali

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to focus on this issue, because every 1% increase in interest rates is about £850 more on the average mortgage, so it is hugely important to families up and down the country. The OBR has said that the measures that we have taken today will mean that inflation is lower than it would otherwise have been. That means that the Bank of England is under less pressure to increase interest rates, which for reasons that he knows are such a worry for so many families.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

The Governor of the Bank of England said yesterday to the Treasury Committee that the mini-Budget has damaged our reputation internationally. He told us:

“People have said, ‘We did not think the UK would do this.’”

Why does the Chancellor not accept that it is because his party has destroyed our economic credibility and crashed the economy that the British people are now having to pay, in tax rises and public service cuts, the £55 billion of consolidation that he is talking about?

[Jeremy Hunt]

I have been pretty straightforward about saying that there were mistakes in the mini-Budget, and within three weeks we reversed them. Long-term gilt yields, which are the thing that really drive the cost of borrowing for the country, are down to the levels they were at before the mini-Budget, and to try to say that all the problems we face now are a result of decisions that were reversed in three weeks does not stand any scrutiny at all.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rushanara Ali

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)]

I will be speaking for rather a long time on Thursday—

[Jeremy Hunt]

May I start again and say that, subject to your agreement, Mr Speaker, I may be talking for rather a long time on Thursday, so I will be brief today? I will just say that, despite the difficulty of the package I will be announcing, I will sadly not be drinking any whisky as I do so.

[Rushanara Ali]

I thank the Chancellor for the work he is doing and congratulate him on his new post. We hope that he lasts the week, or maybe the fortnight. The Government scandalously allowed organised criminals and fraudsters to take billions of pounds of public money through covid loan fraud as a result of the lack of proper checks. Estimates suggest that that has cost taxpayers £33 billion. Why should hardworking people pay for the Prime Minister’s fraud failures when he was Chancellor, and for the mini-Budget fiasco of the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), who crashed the—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. These are topical questions and are meant to be brief.

Economic Update

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rushanara Ali

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I absolutely want to give my right hon. Friend that reassurance and I thank him, as someone who has enormous experience of how the City works, for the advice that he gave me over the weekend. One of the best things about the economic structures that we have is the interaction between institutions that have independence and that are able to give independent advice and Treasury and the Government. It has helped to create stability and I hope that what I have said today will bolster that further.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Chancellor on his appointment and I hope that he lasts longer than his predecessors. Five million people will see their mortgages go up, and the mini-Budget fiasco means, on average, £500 more on payments and, in London, nearly £900. Can the Chancellor assure us that he will look at how he will take that additional Prime Minister’s mortgage premium off people’s bills and take action to protect them in these difficult times? If he cannot, should they send the bill to him?

[Jeremy Hunt]

We have an absolute responsibility as a Government to do everything we can to hold increases in mortgage rates down as much as is possible, insofar as the Government have an influence on them through their actions. That is why I have taken, I think, very strong and quick steps to demonstrate the Government’s commitment to fiscal balance, but we are in a world in which, unfortunately, interest rates are going up everywhere and everyone is having to deal with increases in mortgage rates. We are thinking about the challenge for people who have those mortgages, but I want to make sure that that does not happen as a result of actions by this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rushanara Ali

Tuesday 25th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

This might be my last Question Time as Foreign Secretary—or indeed it might not—but one important event that will happen before the result of the Conservative leadership election is announced is the launch of a major global campaign to protect the safety of journalists around the world. The UK has joined forces with Canada to spearhead this campaign, which I will be launching next month with Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. It will be the world’s first ever ministerial summit on media freedom, here in London. We have 700 confirmed attendees from media and civil society across 98 countries and from 45 different Governments. Together we will shine a light on abuse and raise the price for those who would harm or imprison journalists.

[Rushanara Ali]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for announcing that conference. Whether he remains Foreign Secretary or becomes Prime Minister, or takes any other post, I hope that he continues consistently to champion human rights and media freedom.

I declare an interest in that last month I was part of a delegation with Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Council for Arab-British Understanding that visited the Palestinian refugee camp of Dheisheh in the occupied west bank. There we witnessed the vital work in education, health and other areas of humanitarian relief that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency does but which is now at risk because the US has threatened to defund and delegitimise the agency. Can the Foreign Secretary confirm that the UK intends to support the renewal of UNRWA’s mandate at the General Assembly later this year so that it can continue its vital work of protecting people and giving them a sense of hope?

[Mr Hunt]

I thank the hon. Lady for her good wishes. She once bought me a cappuccino in Portcullis House, and I look forward to returning the favour in No. 10, if that is what happens. I can confirm that we will continue to support the renewal of UNRWA’s mandate and the vital work it does.

Sri Lanka

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rushanara Ali

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to give my hon. Friend a personal commitment that I want to do more on this front, and also to tell him that the United Kingdom is a world leader in countering extremist disinformation online. We have developed particular expertise over the past five years or so, and we share our information widely.

My hon. Friend is right to say how coldly calculated this attack was. To co-ordinate six explosions to take place at virtually the same moment required an enormous degree of planning. Those people knew exactly what they were doing. They spent a long time planning the attacks and finding the recruits to carry them out. We have to think hard about the kind of people who would do such a thing, and I hope that will mean that we redouble our efforts to ensure that it does not happen again.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I join the Foreign Secretary, the shadow Foreign Secretary and colleagues across the House in utterly condemning these terrorist attacks. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.

Does the Foreign Secretary agree that the focus on protecting religious minorities—in this case, Christian minorities—must be redoubled? The atmosphere of intolerance towards religious minorities in different countries—whether they are Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews or Hindus—has increased, and the international community must step up to provide that protection, as well as security for minorities.

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Let me also commend her for the work that she has done in championing the rights of Rohingya Muslims in Burma; I think that my first contact with her when I became Foreign Secretary was in that connection.

It is important to understand that it is an easy first step to target and attack someone because of their religion, and that in very poor countries where many people have not had a proper education it is easy to whip up feelings in a way that can be lethal.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rushanara Ali

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am very happy to do that. It is extremely important that there is a clear red line: the use of chemical weapons, of which nerve agents are one, is totally unacceptable. The price will always be too high. The EU has already agreed to a chemical weapons sanctions regime, and we will press it to implement that regime as soon as possible.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

T5. The recent UN independent fact-finding mission on Myanmar called for the country’s top general, Min Aung Hlaing, to be investigated and prosecuted for crimes against humanity and genocide in northern Rakhine. Other Members have already referred to the situation there. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that if the UK does not use its leadership role as the UN Security Council’s official penholder, there is a real risk that those Rohingya people who remain in Myanmar will face the same consequences as others have and that the genocide will continue? We have warned the Government about this issue, and action needs to be taken now.

[Mr Hunt]

I do agree with the hon. Lady. A referral to the International Criminal Court would need Security Council consensus, and we need to discuss with our Security Council colleagues whether that is achievable. We will not stop making sure that justice is done in this situation.

Mental Health

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rushanara Ali

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State talks about the pressures on children. One in five children is in need of treatment and is being turned away, including from A&E. There is a real crisis in service provision, with £200 million reduced from the mental health budget. As he reflects on how big a challenge this is, does he not think his Government’s response is completely inadequate? That is not good enough, despite the good efforts being made. He needs to step up and improve the situation, particularly for young people.

[Mr Hunt]

I accept that we need to improve the provision of mental health services for children, but I do not accept the hon. Lady’s characterisation. She will know that in the final Budget before the general election, the previous coalition Government committed £1.25 billion over this Parliament to improving child mental health provision and perinatal mental health support. That has been honoured by this Government, and we are in the process of working out how to roll that out. It is something that the Minister for Community and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), spends a lot of time thinking about.

Before we discuss precisely what things need to happen—I think they should be done in a bipartisan spirit—we should recognise that really important progress has been made in recent years. I want to start with some of the achievements made by the previous Labour Government, who increased funding for the NHS and, within that, for mental health services. They oversaw a significant expansion of the mental health workforce and big improvements in in-patient care, with 70% of mental health patients being seen in private rooms. They increased the use of new drugs and therapies, including psychotherapy. Those were important steps forward.

Under the coalition Government in the previous Parliament, we saw a record investment of £11.7 billion in mental health services at a time of huge pressure on public finances. We passed the parity of esteem clause in the Health and Social Care Act 2012, something we Conservative Members are incredibly proud of. The first access targets were set for talking therapies for psychosis. We are starting to end the distortion that the right hon. Member for North Norfolk talked about, which saw targets for physical health access sucking resources away from local mental health provision over a sustained period.

We have seen particular progress in two areas. It is important to mention them; it provides encouragement that when we decide to focus on improving specific areas of mental health provision, we can make real progress. First, on talking therapies, the NHS is now recognised as a world leader. The number of people getting help from talking therapies quadrupled from 182,000 people starting treatment in 2009-10, to 800,000 starting treatment last year. The total number of people helped in the previous Parliament was 3 million, compared with just 226,000 people helped in the Parliament before that—a thirteenfold increase.

We are hitting the new access target to reach 15% of those needing it, although we are not quite hitting the recovery target; I hope we can put that right soon. That model is being looked at very closely by Scandinavian countries, and a pilot, based on what we have done here, is starting in Stockholm. We can be very proud of that important progress.

The last Parliament saw a 50% increase in dementia diagnosis rates, up from 41% at the start of the Parliament to 67% at the end of the Parliament—the highest dementia diagnosis rate in the world. We have 1.3 million dementia friends and 120 dementia-friendly communities. We have seen a doubling in funding for dementia research, with a new ambition to find a cure or disease-modifying therapy by 2025. In the spending round, the Prime Minister announced funding for a new dementia research institute; that will be another important step forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rushanara Ali

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

T3. Since 2010, the percentage of patients who say that they can see their GP within 48 hours has halved from 80% to 40%. Given the pressure on the NHS, and especially on accident and emergency services, will the Secretary of State explain why the Government’s reforms are threatening to close 98 surgeries around the country, including five in Tower Hamlets? Will he publish the full list today?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

Let me gently explain to the hon. Lady that she has excellent GP provision in Tower Hamlets, led by Dr Sam Everington. It is a model of what can happen under the Government’s reforms. The way in which we are going to make it easier for people to see their GP is with additional capacity. We have 1,000 more GPs during this Parliament, and we have achieved that only because we took the difficult decision to get rid of 19,000 managers, which was bitterly opposed by the hon. Lady and the Labour party.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rushanara Ali

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

It is intriguing that the shadow Secretary of State has chosen not to talk about a winter crisis, because it has not happened, despite the fact that he predicted it time after time. Let me tell him what was cavalier: the previous Labour Government’s refusal to give patients a right to opt out of giving their data to this programme, even though it was going on for their whole time in office. We believe that we should have a data revolution, but to do that we need to carry the public with us, which is why we need to have this important debate and give people the reassurance they deserve.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of the number of available mental health crisis beds for young people in England.