Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Keir Starmer and Kirsty Blackman

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend rightly and powerfully raises the broken promises of the Scottish National party on mental health services. This is important, and we will have positive discussions with the devolved Governments to work on addressing mental health waiting times. The SNP promised to invest in frontline mental health services, then cut them by £54 million in real terms this year. With a record settlement in the Budget and two decades in power, the SNP is out of excuses and out of ideas. Scotland deserves better than that.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Q12. If the Prime Minister agrees that the Israeli Government starving children to death is monstrous, why does he think it is okay for the UK to continue to sell Israel the equipment for the fighter jets to drop bombs on those starving children?

[The Prime Minister]

What we contribute into a pot is parts for fighter jets, and if we were to stop that, they could not be used by other countries in other conflicts, including those in which we are involved—[Interruption.] The hon. Member does not know the detail at all. They are not sold directly. They go into a pot. If we were to stop that, they would not then be available to others around the world who desperately need them in the conflicts they are engaged in, and that is why we will not do it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Keir Starmer and Kirsty Blackman

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We are delivering on our commitment to bring railways back under public ownership, putting passengers first. Today, we have announced that South Western Railway services will be the first to transfer into public ownership next year, so that we can turn the page on decades of delay, fragmentation and failure.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Q15. Veteran Anne Puckridge is in the Gallery, and I urge the Prime Minister to meet her to talk about her frozen pension. Yesterday, the Daily Record reported that Scottish Labour MPs are very “upset”. Apparently, that upset is caused by their Scottish leader’s diktat that they now have to support the very winter fuel payment that they voted against in this place. As the Prime Minister comforts his upset MPs, will he remind them that the only people with the right to be upset are the 900,000 Scottish pensioners who were left in the cold by Labour’s cuts?

[The Prime Minister]

I work very closely with Scottish Labour in a harmonious way. We ran a fantastic campaign earlier this year, which is why the hon. Lady is sitting on the Benches at the back, not the Benches at the front.