Oral Answers to Questions

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Can I join the Prime Minister in his comments about Windrush, and pay tribute to everyone who is serving and has served in our armed forces? Can I also pay tribute to everyone standing for election tomorrow and in particular the plucky Conservative candidate for Wakefield? He is standing, even though his own colleagues think he is so useless that they held a vote of no confidence in him. Does the Prime Minister hold any personal interest in seeing if the public will vote for a Tory who even his own side do not think is up to it?

[The Prime Minister]

I have absolutely no doubt that the people of this country, and the people of Wakefield and of Tiverton and Honiton, would much rather vote for a solid Conservative Government than a Labour party and its enablers and acolytes in the Liberal Democrats—the karma chameleons of British politics—when the leader of the Labour party has not even got the gumption to speak out against the rail strikes that have caused so much damage to the people in the north of this country and up and down the country. There is unbelievable silence from the leader of the Labour party.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister has obviously not been to Wakefield recently. He has crashed the economy and he has put everybody’s tax up. The last Tory he sent up to Wakefield was convicted of a sexual assault. That is not much of a pitch, Prime Minister. Talking of people not up to the job, while the Transport Secretary spends his time working on his spreadsheet tracking the Prime Minister’s unpopularity, thousands of families have had their holiday flights cancelled, it takes forever to renew a driving licence or passport and now we have the biggest rail strike in 30 years. If the Prime Minister is genuine—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Both sides, let us calm down. We have only just started. The problem is, it will go on forever, and nobody wants that, I assure you, whoever is speaking or asking questions.

[Keir Starmer]

If the Prime Minister is genuine about preventing strikes, will he tell this House how many meetings he or his Transport Secretary have had with rail workers this week to actually stop the strikes?

[The Prime Minister]

This is the Government who love the railways and who invest in the railways. We are putting £96 billion into the integrated railway plan. I am proud to have built Crossrail, by the way, and we are going to build Northern Powerhouse Rail, but we have got to modernise our railways. It is a disgrace, when we are planning to make sure that we do not have ticket offices that sell fewer than one ticket every hour, that yesterday the right hon. and learned Gentleman had 25 Labour MPs out on the picket line, defying instructions—[Interruption.]

[The Prime Minister]

There were 25 Labour MPs and the shadow deputy leader out on the picket line, backing the strikers, while we back the strivers.

[Keir Starmer]

I am surprised the Prime Minister is giving me advice about my team. If I do need advice, let us say, about a £100,000 job at the Foreign Office, I will ask him for a recommendation.

There you have it, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister of this country and his Transport Secretary have not attended a single meeting, held a conversation or lifted a finger to stop these strikes. But I did note that on Monday they found time to go to a lavish ball, where the Prime Minister sold a meeting with himself for £120,000 to a donor. If there is money coming his way, he is there. When it comes to the country, he is nowhere to be seen. Rather than blame everyone else, why does he not do his job, get round the table and get the trains running?

[The Prime Minister]

We are making sure that we do everything we can to prevent these strikes. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, it is up to the railway companies to negotiate—that is their job. We spent £16 billion looking after the railways throughout the pandemic. That has cost every household £600. We know why he takes the line he does; we know why he will not condemn the strikes; and we know why, even now, he does not have the gumption to call out his MPs who are going out to support the pickets. The reason his authority is on the line in this matter is that the Opposition take £10 million from the unions. That is the fee that he is receiving for the case he is failing to make.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister cannot help himself. There is a huge problem facing the country, and all he is interested in doing is blaming everyone else. Can he not hear the country screaming at him, “Get on with your job!”? While he blames everyone and anyone, working people are paying the price. This week, his Chief Secretary to the Treasury said that there is a “society-wide responsibility” for people to take a pay cut. At the same time, his chief of staff, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), is trying to change the law to get bankers’ bonuses increased. So come one, only one of them can be right: is it his Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who says that every worker needs a pay cut, or is it his chief of staff, who says that every banker needs a pay rise?

[The Prime Minister]

Actually, under this Government, 5 million public sector workers are getting a pay rise. We have increased the living wage by £1,000 and we have increased universal credit so that people get £1,000 more. Thanks to the fiscal firepower that we have, we are putting £1,200 more into every one of the 8 million most vulnerable households in the country. That is what we can do because of the tough decisions that we have taken. But meantime, what we are also trying to do is cut the cost of transport, which is a big part of people’s weekly outgoings, by reforming our railways. That is what we are trying to do, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman is standing with the strikers and lifting the cost of transport for everybody. That is the reality.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister’s chief of staff says that removing the cap on bankers’ bonuses is

“reflective of the new approach”.

Pay rises for city bankers, pay cuts for district nurses—that is the new approach. I did not see that on any leaflets in Wakefield. But this has not come from nowhere, because according to the Financial Times, on 7 June last year, the Prime Minister was directly lobbied for the cap to be lifted. Rather than help working people, he has rolled over on bankers’ bonuses, has he not?

[The Prime Minister]

What we are actually doing, thanks to the decisions we have taken, is putting more money into the pockets of people up and down the country—£1,200 more for the 8 million most vulnerable households. The reason we can do that is because we took the tough decisions necessary to come out of the pandemic faster than any other European country. That is why we have unemployment at or near record lows. None of that would have been possible if we had listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. We have more people now in payrolled employment than we had before the pandemic began. That is what the British people know, and that is what this Government will continue to deliver.

[Keir Starmer]

Fifteen tax rises, high tax, low wages, low growth—that sums the Prime Minister’s Government up. Working people are paying more tax under this Government, and now they are told to take a pay cut. He is having meetings about increasing bankers’ bonuses, but he cannot find time for a single meeting to end the strikes crippling the country.

It is Armed Forces Week. Under this Prime Minister, those serving our country are facing a real-terms pay cut. Why are his Government more focused on increasing bankers’—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr MacNeil, your voice is not quiet—it is like mine; it carries. The best thing to do, if you want it to carry, is to try standing on the Terrace for a while.

[Keir Starmer]

It is Armed Forces Week. Under this Prime Minister, those serving our country are facing a real-terms pay cut. Why are his Government more focused on increasing bankers’ pay than the pay of those who are running the country?

[The Prime Minister]

How absolutely satirical that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should talk about our support for the armed forces when we have increased our funding for our armed forces by a record sum since the end of the cold war, and when eight of the shadow Front Bench team—eight of the shadow Front Bench—actually want to get rid of our nuclear deterrent, including the shadow Foreign Secretary. [Interruption.] Yes, it is true. We are helping people up and down the country: £1,200 will be coming into the bank accounts of the 8 million most vulnerable households. The cut in national insurance will be coming into their bank accounts as a result of the steps my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has taken. But what we are also doing is reforming our systems so that we cut costs for people up and down the country; reforming our energy markets, building a new nuclear reactor every year rather than one every 10 years; getting people off welfare into work—half a million people off welfare into work—because we have cut the time people are waiting on benefits; and cutting the costs of transport for working people by delivering reforms. We are doing that while they are out on the picket line, literally holding hands with Arthur Scargill. That’s them: it is worse than under Jeremy Corbyn. This is a Government who are taking this country forward; they would take it back to the 1970s.