Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham(2 days, 5 hours ago)
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Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
On this Armistice Day, we remember the courage and sacrifice of those who served our country and those who gave their lives for us. We owe them and their families an enduring debt of gratitude.
The Prime Minister entered Downing Street promising a 10-year plan to reverse 40 years of neoliberalism. Is it really true that he has so little vision for this country that he needs the Boston Consulting Group to write it for him?
The Prime Minister
I did walk into Downing Street promising a 10-year plan for this country, because I am determined to give this country the stability that the Conservatives failed to provide, and I am determined to give the leadership that this country needs. I can say to the right hon. Lady that we will present our plan for Britain to this House before it rises for the Christmas recess.
Mrs Badenoch
I am not surprised that the Prime Minister has asked management consultants to help him write his 10-year plan—he needs all the help he can get. We have heard one thing that will be in it: he is merging the DVLA with the DVSA. [Hon. Members: “Ooh!”] Exciting stuff, Mr Speaker. It is no wonder that Labour MPs are already telling The Guardian that it is a “tragic joke”. This Government are adrift. Two weeks ago we had a “do nothing” Budget. It pushed all the big decisions, like funding our defence, into the spending review, but we have no idea when that will be. He has talked about the 10-year plan. Can he assure the House that the spending review will come before next summer?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Lady mentions the Budget—the most popular Budget for a number of years, I have to say—which helped people with the cost of living crisis. Can she explain why the Conservatives voted against a bank levy that will deliver a council tax cut for 20 million households in January? It was a big decision to oppose that, and she needs to explain why she took that decision.
There will be a proposal for a national care service in the 10-year plan. The covid inquiry recently said that social care was an “afterthought” for the Conservative party. We will also present the Milburn report to this House next week. We will put forward a plan to this House and the country for a safe and sustainable way to bring the welfare bill down and get young people into work.
Mrs Badenoch
I think it was popular compared to the former Chancellor’s Budget. I asked the Prime Minister to confirm when the spending review will be, and we did not get an answer. All the waffle he gave us there was kicking everything into the long grass. Meanwhile, the Iranians are threatening our bases today, but he cannot tell us when his Government will properly fund our defence. But he has so much time on his hands that last night he attended a speech by the head of the civil service. He is supposed to be telling her his plan, not sitting in the audience while she tells him hers.
There was one worthwhile thing in the Budget: the Rosebank oilfield. The Chancellor has already banked the tax revenue, but there is just one problem: Rosebank has not been approved. If it is not going to be approved, why was it in the Budget?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Lady knows that the Rosebank decision is a quasi-legal decision and it will be taken in due course. She stood at the Dispatch Box a moment ago and said that this Government are not taking big decisions. We did approve the Jackdaw gasfield. Today £12 billion is going into renewable energy. These are big decisions. Yesterday she put forward what she considers a big decision: £36 billion of cuts. Does she accept that so many of the people affected by what she announced are working people—people whose incomes will be hit hard in a cost of living crisis? I think the right hon. Lady needs to answer why she would make the cost of living crisis harder for people through the cuts she has just announced?
Mrs Badenoch
I asked the Prime Minister about Rosebank. He says that it is a quasi-judicial decision. It is a political decision. Why else did it take the Labour Government two years to approve Jackdaw while the Foreign Secretary was in charge, but now he is gone it happened just like that? This is the real reason they did not do it: the Foreign Secretary instructed Government lawyers not to fight the court case. He called Rosebank “climate vandalism”—but then he also thought that cosying up to Russell Brand would make him Prime Minister, so I do not think we need to trust his judgment. [Interruption.] Labour Members are saying “Shame”—they are right, the Foreign Secretary should be ashamed. Meanwhile, the Chancellor is already banking the tax revenue from Rosebank in his calculations. Why will the Prime Minister not just approve Rosebank?
The Prime Minister
Correct me if I am wrong, but the Jackdaw decision that the last Government tried to take was struck down, because they made it overtly political—that was why they could not take that decision. The right hon. Lady comes to the House handing out lectures week after week, but maybe she needs to look a little closer to home as to why the last Government failed to take that decision. We will take a further decision on Rosebank in due course, as well as building a renewable energy future, which is what we are also announcing today. We are facing the big issues and we will lay that out in the 10-year plan. This country was going backwards under the Conservative party. We are leading it forward. We are bringing people back together. We are giving people hope. She is voting against the help that we just announced in the Budget. When will she directly address the cost of living crisis in this House?
Mrs Badenoch
I ask the questions here and I am asking about Rosebank—it was literally in the Budget. The reason why the Prime Minister will not approve it is because Government Members are all squabbling, or maybe he does not want it hanging over his head at COP. It is not just the Foreign Secretary, because 50 of his MPs do not want it either, led by the current Energy Secretary, and she is only in the job because the Culture Secretary turned it down.
Today the Government are in court defending our right to drill oil and gas off the Falklands. At the same time, they are passing legislation to ban drilling off Scotland. This is ludicrous. Why is it acceptable to drill oil and gas in the Falklands but not in the North sea?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Lady has not been paying attention. We recently approved the Jackdaw gasfield in the North sea—something that she failed to do when she was in government—and through the energy wealth fund created by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, we are using the proceeds to accelerate the delivery of renewables. Today we are announcing two offshore wind projects—off the coast of East Anglia and off the east coast of Scotland—in part funded by the National Wealth Fund.
If the right hon. Lady wants to address energy policy, perhaps we can talk about why energy bills went up and up under the Conservatives. Perhaps we can discuss how they lost public control, lost control of people’s bills and left people paying more and more. We are removing standing charges from gas bills, which will bring people’s bills down, and we are going to do the same by looking at reforming standing charges on electricity bills. We have taken VAT off electricity bills. Also, through all those efforts, we will speed up the delinking of gas and electricity prices, getting bills down over the long term. That is an energy policy, and the Conservative party could have done with one when they were in office.
Mrs Badenoch
There was a lot of waffle there, but I did not hear why it is all right to allow oil and gas drilling in the Falklands but not in the North sea. The Prime Minister sounds confused: he did not seem to know that he is legislating to ban oil and gas drilling. The Government are totally adrift—they need consultants to tell them what to think and civil servants to tell them what to do—so we are left with a “do nothing” Budget, a spending review delayed and a 10-year plan outsourced. Meanwhile, the whole country is in limbo. Labour MPs want to pretend that Keir Starmer simply walked off into the sunset, but in reality this man knifed him in the back and now does not know what to do. Is not the truth that they are all sat there shaking their heads, wondering whether it was all worth it?
The Prime Minister
I have told the right hon. Lady today what I am doing. Whether she was listening or not, people at home will have heard that I am bringing forward a national care service, when the Conservatives ignored social care for years and years. I am acting to get people’s energy bills down, when the Conservatives did not. I listen to her talking at the Dispatch Box as though they got everything right. A quarter of a million young people became NEETs—not in education, employment or training—between 2021 and 2024, when she was in the Cabinet. The welfare bill rose by £33 billion in her last year in office, when she was in the Cabinet. When will she come to this House with real proposals to address those things, rather than repeating more of the same? Next month, she will see our plan for Britain presented to this House. It will lay a new path for this country to go forward, breaking with the failed policies of the Conservative party. She is going to have to come up with better than that if she is going to take on what we are putting forward.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
May I also give my thanks to the Clerk of the House and convey to him, on behalf of those on my side of the House, our very, very best wishes for the future?
There has been a bit of confusion this week, and I hope that the Prime Minister can clear it up. Does he or does he not want a referendum on rejoining the European Union?
The Prime Minister
There is no confusion at all. The Government have a collectively agreed position, which I have set out today. It is entirely consistent with everything I have said, including what I said at the time of the by-election.
The red lines in our manifesto, including those on freedom of movement, will stay firmly in place for the whole of this Parliament, but what I will not do is defend the deal negotiated by the right hon. Lady and the Government she was in, which, in my view, gave us a harder Brexit than was promised at the referendum, and has been bad for growth and bad for control of immigration.
Mrs Badenoch
It sounds as if the Prime Minister does not know whether he wants another EU referendum. I certainly do not. It is the Chancellor’s big week, and the Prime Minister popped up on telly and opened his mouth without engaging his brain, not for the first time. Can he explain why he decided, during Budget week, to reopen a debate on freedom of movement?
The Prime Minister
It may have escaped the right hon. Lady’s notice that we are three weeks away from a UK-EU summit. It is an opportunity to improve the poor deal that the Conservatives negotiated and to get a better deal in place for Britain—a deal that backs British farmers and British food producers, and that removes red tape from our businesses. If we get the right deal, it will protect our car industry, protect our steel industry and allow better co-ordination on migration. The Tories used to stand for these things. If they still do, will she back Britain’s negotiating position as we go into that summit?
Mrs Badenoch
The Prime Minister keeps talking about our deal, but he is using our deal. He is using our Brexit freedoms to take VAT off energy bills. He used those Brexit freedoms just yesterday to scrap import taxes on hundreds of goods. What he should be saying is thank you.
I asked the Prime Minister about freedom of movement. I do not think he has been talking to his Cabinet colleagues, because I will tell him who does not want a debate about freedom of movement: the Home Secretary—she has been very clear on that. The Business Secretary does not want it either. The Culture Secretary and I do not agree on much, but even she does not want the Prime Minister to restart this debate. What about his Back Benchers? Let’s have a show of hands—who wants free movement? I know the Prime Minister does not want to look behind him, but nobody raised their hand.
There was someone else who did not want to reopen free movement: an ambitious candidate fighting a by-election earlier this year. He said
“the last thing we should do right now is rerun those arguments.”
Does the Prime Minister still agree with himself?
The Prime Minister
I do, because I am not. I am trying to get a better deal for Britain at the summit that we are about to go to. The right hon. Lady has mentioned things said in the past. Can I remind her of what she said? [Interruption.] Well, I am going to—I am sorry. She said it was a mistake for the Conservative party to
“leave the European Union before we had a plan for growth outside the EU.”
She has just nodded. She may as well have said it was a mistake to leave the EU without a plan in place to control migration, because that is what led to the Boriswave under the Government she was in, when migration into this country changed and went away from revolving-door migration and towards long-term settlement. It is why my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is having to reform indefinite leave to remain. She has my support in making those changes, but let us have a little humility from those on the Conservative Benches, who left Britain with low growth and migration out of control.
Mrs Badenoch
It sounds like the Prime Minister does not know if he agrees with himself or not. He wants to remind me about my words. I stand by my words. Where we make mistakes, we own up to them. Labour pretends that it never does anything wrong. [Interruption.] Yes, yes, yes. Indeed, that is the difference between him and me. He wants to remind me about what I said; I think it is worth reminding him what he said just this May about the Brexit referendum:
“It’s going to undermine everything I’ve said about strengthening democracy if we don’t respect that vote.”
But he does not respect that vote, does he?
The Prime Minister
I think I have answered that very clearly by saying that the red lines in the manifesto are firmly in place. The right hon. Lady stood there a moment ago and said that she admits mistakes. She was asked twice by BBC London during her conference whether Brexit, and the deal she negotiated with her colleagues, was good or bad for London, and twice she could not bring herself to answer that question. Perhaps, before she finishes today, she will answer it now.
Mrs Badenoch
I have said many times that, yes, it was, and the Prime Minister is using those freedoms today. He is using those very freedoms, but he does not want to admit that. He is the Prime Minister, not me. He wants to ask me questions. I am very happy to swap places with him, if that is what he wants.
I am not talking about something that he might have said 10 years ago, although I can read out those quotes if he wants. I am talking about something that he said just a few months ago. The Prime Minister was not here for the 2017 Parliament, but many of us were. We do not want to go through that again. The country was paralysed—it was miserable, regardless of which side of the debate you were on. [Interruption.] It was, because Labour Members would not respect the result, and they are doing it again. Does the Prime Minister really think the country wants to reopen that debate?
The Prime Minister
Yes, yes—now the right hon. Lady is speaking the truth. The country was paralysed by the Conservative party: low growth, insufficient control on migration. That is what this Government is dealing with, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will stand up and show that we have a plan to get that growth going across the country.
Where I am focused is getting a better deal for Britain. That is my responsibility, and I will lead from this Dispatch Box over the next few weeks. I will do everything I can to get a better deal for Britain—a better deal for farmers and food producers, less red tape on our exporters, more support for our steel and our car industries, more control of migration. I will stand here and defend doing that, as well as being true to our manifesto. That is the difference between this side and that side of the House: we stand up for the British interest. Where is the Tory party of old that used to stand up for those things? The reason she could not answer in this House today on whether or not she was backing the position that I have set out is that she is too worried about the threat to her right to stand up for Britain. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]
Mr Speaker
Order. Just to remind everyone, it is Prime Minister’s question, so I would not worry about the answers. I call Kemi Badenoch.
Mrs Badenoch
I cannot believe that the Prime Minister actually said at that Dispatch Box that he wants to reopen the Brexit debate. He is in a different place from where he was in Question 1. Let me tell the Prime Minister: the country does not want to rerun this debate; neither, as it happens, do his Back Benchers. This country voted to leave the EU, and we should respect that decision. The Conservative party always has done.
Our economy is facing serious challenges. The Prime Minister needs to get borrowing down, because of their stupid decisions. [Interruption.] One of them asks, “Why?” It is because of their stupid decisions. They need to get borrowing down. He needs to get welfare down. He needs to get people’s taxes down. All of this can be done without reopening a debate on the EU, so instead of leaving it to his team again, I will give him one last chance to clear up the mess he has made: will he rule out, after his extraordinary comments, any referendum on the EU or the single market?
The Prime Minister
I have repeatedly set out the red lines of the manifesto, and can I just say this one final time? I am doing what I can to get a better deal for Britain, and getting a better deal for Britain, I can tell the right hon. Lady, is part of this job. I am standing up for British business. Can I tell her who supports what we are doing? The CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Retail Consortium, Asda, Morrisons, Marks & Spencer, Salmon Scotland—they all support what we are trying to do. Why does she not join us, with other colleagues across this House, and send a strong message that Britain is calling for a better Brexit deal, so that we can get growth going again, as my right hon. Friend will shortly show to this whole House?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
May I associate myself with your remarks, Mr Speaker, and those of the Prime Minister on the 60th anniversary of the Aberfan tragedy? We express our heartfelt and continued condolences to that community.
Last week I asked the Prime Minister to stop faffing about, so can I thank him for finally approving the Jackdaw gasfield? [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I notice that there were no cheers from Members on the Government Benches. The Conservatives first approved Jackdaw in 2022. Rather than fighting the leftie activists who tried to block it, Labour appointed one of them as Energy Secretary. So many jobs lost, and so much time and money wasted. Britain cannot be a serious player on the world stage if the Government dither for two and a half years over approving a single licence. We have the resources, the expertise and the people; what we have lost is the confidence to make tough decisions. Will the Prime Minister now overturn Labour’s ban on all new oil and gas licences?
The Prime Minister
Can we get something straight at the start of Prime Minister’s questions today? We have made a decision that the right hon. Lady’s Government messed up. That is why there was the delay: because they did not do the process properly. We have made a pragmatic decision that will allow us to do two things. First, it will allow us to build a bridge to a renewable future, because the resources that come in from this decision will allow us to invest in renewables, bring forward clean energy and, in this Parliament, substantially delink gas and electricity prices so that we can bring bills down. It will also allow us to do more to help people with bills. I can tell the House today that I have asked the Chancellor and the Energy Secretary to look at whether we can remove standing charges from gas bills and to report back to this House at the earliest opportunity.
Mrs Badenoch
I was surprised to hear the Prime Minister mention process—it almost felt like Keir Starmer was still standing there. The Prime Minister talks about renewables. Of course we need renewables, but we live in the real world—the world that still depends on oil and gas. If we do not produce it, Britain and Europe will buy it from Russia. In July, the Prime Minister said:
“The question isn’t whether Britain will still be using oil and gas, the question is where does it come from.”
He was right. Does the Prime Minister accept that every barrel of North sea oil that we produce is a barrel that Europe will not buy from Vladimir Putin?
The Prime Minister
Can I find a point of agreement with the right hon. Lady? This decision does strengthen our energy security. It will release gas into British homes and British industries, starting in the next few weeks, and it supports us in a difficult time. I appreciate that she wants us to take further decisions that she messed up when she was in government, but can I make something really clear? The reason why they messed up those decisions is because they are quasi-judicial decisions. We will run those decisions properly. The Energy Secretary considered that decision against our climate obligations and concluded that it was consistent, and she will oversee the same process in relation to future decisions.
Mrs Badenoch
The Prime Minister says that this decision strengthens our energy security, so that means that he should approve all new oil and gas licences. He blames the process and our decisions, but he is the Prime Minister now, and we are facing a global energy crisis. Drilling more oil and gas in the North sea would give us more energy, more jobs and more tax revenue, which is something we desperately need. There is a red warning light flashing on the economy. Just this morning, total Government borrowing hit £3 trillion, its highest level ever. That is £100,000 for every household in the country. Even the Prime Minister’s former economic adviser, Andy Haldane—not someone I always agree with—has warned that Britain faces a “precarious fiscal backdrop”, so what is the Prime Minister doing to get borrowing down?
The Prime Minister
On energy, can I just say to the right hon. Lady that she is displaying for the House and the nation today why the Conservatives got those decisions wrong, because she and they did not give any regard to our climate obligations? These things have to be considered in the round, and they have been considered in the round. That is why the decision the Government have made is the right decision.
On the economy, I am not sure that the right hon. Lady has read last week’s report from the International Monetary Fund, because if she had read it, she would see its clear conclusion that Britain is the stand-out nation for deficit reduction and the joint fastest growing country in the G7. Britain is the country that, only yesterday, saw unemployment down and improved labour market statistics. It is time that the right hon. Lady talked the country up, rather than constantly talking it down.
Mrs Badenoch
I asked the Prime Minister how he was getting borrowing down—he did not answer. He is talking about the IMF report. I have looked at it, but I do not think that he has, because it downgrades the forecast for next year. It also talks about deficit reduction plans in 2029, which is after an election. The Government are not going to be here after that election. They have not made any cuts. We are spending more on interest payments than we do on schools, the Army and the police combined. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister is worrying about loud music on trains. This is not serious. The only solution to the challenges facing our country is to cut spending and cut borrowing. The out-of-work benefits bill is set to rise by £50 billion under this Labour Government, so will the Prime Minister get a grip and cut the welfare bill?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Lady asks me about cutting spending. I did exactly that on my first day in office with the digital ID programme, so that we could take action to support people and remove VAT from electricity bills, which is what we have delivered—a tax cut.
The right hon. Lady asks about the big decisions, and I want to come directly back to what she is saying. I am not going to apologise for doing the small things that help people have better lives, but I also take the big decisions that the Conservatives have avoided for many years. Let me go directly to one: social care. I grasped the nettle in a way that nobody on their side ever has. I made a difficult spending decision to lay a path towards a national care service. Have they had the time to read the covid inquiry report yesterday about the appalling state of social care as it went into the pandemic, the hundreds of thousands of British people who suffered as a result of that, and the lives that were lost? I need no lectures from the Conservatives about taking tough decisions on social care. I suggest they go away from this PMQs, read that report and have a period of reflection.
Mrs Badenoch
I asked the Prime Minister about welfare—he did not answer the welfare question. That is because he is not planning to cut welfare. This morning, The Telegraph exposed that the reforms he is talking about will not save any money before 2030; in fact, the Prime Minister’s plan is to save money on welfare by spending more money on welfare. This is ridiculous. He is talking about big decisions, but he has not made any decision on social care. Talking about it is not making a decision. He is going to keep spending more, and that means he is going to keep borrowing more. We know where that leads. This morning, inflation rose to 3.5%, the third rise in a row. Families are paying higher bills and more for their weekly shop, and it is leading to higher mortgage rates. Does the Prime Minister accept that his failure to control borrowing is contributing to higher inflation?
The Prime Minister
I do not think the right hon. Lady was listening to what I said. I did take a difficult decision to lay a path to the national care service, and it involves a change to the triple lock. I am happy to stand at this Dispatch Box and defend that, because I am confident that we should support older people financially, but with better social care support in later life. That is my decision. I am happy to stand here and defend it. Where is the Conservatives’ decision on social care? When are they going to respond to what the report said yesterday?
On welfare, I will do the same. I do not want to see anybody in their 20s on benefits in this country; I want to see them in work, in training, in education. That is the reform that we will bring forward on the back of the Milburn report. The right hon. Lady mentions inflation. She may notice that there is a situation ongoing in the middle east of which we do not have full control. What I can say to her is that the fundamentals of the British economy are getting stronger and stronger under this Government. We will take the right long-term decisions. She should wait for the Budget, when she will see that laid out in this House.
Mrs Badenoch
We are waiting for the Budget, and next week at the Budget the Prime Minister has a choice: he can cut spending, he can cut the deficit or he can cut tax. There is no other way. That is why that is the Conservatives’ plan. It is a plan that even his former economic adviser Andy Haldane says is the better way. Will he follow that plan, or will he bottle it just like Keir Starmer did?
The Prime Minister
As I have said, there are signs of growing strength in the British economy. Before the Budget next week, we will have a new book published about the mini-Budget of a few years ago. Opposition Members have gone quiet, because the authors of that mini-Budget are sitting on the Opposition Benches, including the shadow Chancellor. Does anybody on this side or anybody around the country believe that party, of all parties? The Conservatives have the audacity to come to this House and lecture us about how to do a Budget. People in this country—British households—are still paying the price of their disastrous Budget.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham(4 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the Prime Minister for the words about Sir David Amess. We on this side of the House miss him dearly, as do his family. He was a fellow Essex MP and a very good friend to me and to so many across this House, and I know that he is still very much loved by his constituents in Southend.
The Prime Minister has had a busy few weeks: tying himself in knots explaining why national security should not come at the expense of social security, and bumbling into a row—still ongoing—about Manchester City. I do not think that his carefully worded answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) will suffice—it does not sound like that one is going away. He also spent the last 48 hours trying to unsay that Russia influenced the 2016 referendum when we all heard him say it. Does he ever get tired of putting his foot in his mouth?
The Prime Minister
I am glad that the right hon. Lady raised my comments, because it gives me an opportunity to say to the whole House how I intend to lead this country. We have lived through a decade of division, and we know that hostile actors have been seeking to interfere in our democratic process. That is a matter of fact. We need to call that out and look straight at it in a way that the Conservatives did not.
I have a quote here from the right hon. Lady when she stood at this Dispatch Box when she was responsible for steering through the Elections Bill. She said:
“I have not read the Russia report”.––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 26 October 2021; c. 384.]
They did not want to see it. They wanted to look in the other direction. I will not do that. I will draw a line. I will defend our democracy, and I will lead this country forward with positivity, unity and hope in the next decade.
Mrs Badenoch
It sounds like the Prime Minister is digging in, but you cannot fight misinformation with misinformation. This is the first time I have ever heard the head of MI5 slap down a Prime Minister for doing Russia’s dirty work for them. Either the Prime Minister knew what he was doing on that podcast—trying to undermine the 2016 referendum—or he opened his mouth on a matter of national security and said the first thing that came into his head. Does the Prime Minister agree with the director general of MI5 that talking up Russian interference was a mistake?
The Prime Minister
I could ask the Leader of the Opposition whether she has even read the Russia report yet. I also wonder whether she has read the full comments from Sir Ken McCallum or whether she heard the comments from the former head of MI6. If she had, she would not have made the statements that she just made in this House. I think it is important that we are clear-eyed about what happened in the past. There is incontrovertible evidence that outside actors—enemies of this country—have interfered in our democratic processes, and it is inconceivable that that was not taking place across the whole of the last decade.
Mrs Badenoch
Still digging in—it was not me that MI5 was talking about. The fact is, this Prime Minister will say anything instead of dealing with the tough decisions that only he can take—like on Britain’s energy security. In July, he said that he would approve the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields in the North sea. What is he waiting for? If he had approved them back then, we would have British gas warming British homes this winter. Will he now—[Interruption.] It is true: all the gas from Jackdaw goes on to the British grid. Will he now stop faffing about and approve Rosebank and Jackdaw?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Lady asked me what I am waiting for. I have had to wait for the Government process, which was struck down by the courts under the Conservative Government, to be fixed. They messed it up, and we inherited that situation. I will take a pragmatic approach on oil and gas. We will set out our decisions shortly.
Mrs Badenoch
So much time wasting. This is a Government who approve importing oil from Russia and approve new drilling off the Falkland Islands but will not approve new drilling in the North sea. The truth is that the Prime Minister is delaying a decision on energy to avoid a row with his Back Benchers, just as he is avoiding another row on cutting welfare.
The Times reports that 2 million people are being paid sickness benefits, and they may not even be sick. Billions of pounds are being paid to people who should not be getting that. The last time a Prime Minister tried to cut welfare, Labour MPs stopped him. They are still chuntering now—look at them. Is the Prime Minister afraid to cut benefits because he does not want a fight with his Back Benchers?
The Prime Minister
We commissioned the Milburn report because we do not want to see a country where young people in their 20s are stuck on benefits. I want a system where we give the right support to young people up front so that they can be in training, education or employment from 16 onwards. They do need better mental health support, and I have argued for a different education system that gives parity to technical education alongside the university route. We will bring forward the Milburn report soon. We will set out our response to it. We will bring down the welfare bill.
Mrs Badenoch
I did not ask the Prime Minister about the Milburn review, but, if he wants to talk about it, I spoke to Alan Milburn and he said that the review was due before the Budget. The Prime Minister has kicked it into the long grass.
The Budget is in two weeks. Let me tell the Prime Minister what should be in it: cutting welfare to fund defence. In a BBC interview on Sunday, the Defence Secretary refused to commit to spending 3% of GDP on defence by 2030. People used to resign over this. I see that he is not here today—he is still not doing his job. That is the money that Britain needs to keep us safe. Now, the Prime Minister will not even tell us what his plan is for another year. Why will he not announce a date for 3% in this month’s Budget?
The Prime Minister
As I said, I am meeting President Zelensky this afternoon. We will honour our commitments to him and his country, and we will honour our NATO commitments, as I have said every time that I have appeared at this Dispatch Box. The right hon. Lady will have to wait for the Budget.
The right hon. Lady comes here every week and poses as the world-leading authority on defence. She talked about interviews. I recall a recent interview she gave about the Conservatives’ plans for an iron dome. Then she said, “It isn’t our plan.” Then it emerged that it was briefed by her team, which does not sound like she is in control of her own policy on defence. Then, under questioning from Mr Ferrari on LBC, she said
“you’ve got to speak to a defence expert about exactly how it works.”
Obviously, we worked out in that interview that she was not a defence expert, and I think Mr Ferrari is still waiting for an explanation.
Mrs Badenoch
A month ago, the Prime Minister was boasting that it was time to engage in problem solving rather than point scoring. It seems that is another thing that he said without thinking.
The Prime Minister wants to talk about defence, so let us talk about defence. The Conservatives are the only party that actually has a plan to get to 3% by 2030. I asked him about the Budget, and he said he is meeting President Zelensky. President Zelensky is not writing the Budget; he is. The last two Labour Budgets have been a total disaster.
Yesterday I met a beauty salon owner who is struggling with the impact of Labour’s tax rises. She told me that she is dipping into her pension to pay the young people she employs. That is the brutal reality for tens of thousands of small business owners after just two years of Labour. The Prime Minister entered Downing Street promising the biggest change in 40 years. Now Labour MPs are briefing journalists that they hope this Budget
“does as little harm as possible”.
Is he not too busy appeasing his MPs, excusing his own mistakes and avoiding difficult decisions to give the country the leadership it needs?
The Prime Minister
I used my conference speech to face up to difficult decisions. I faced up to a difficult decision on supporting older people in later life, related to adjusting the triple lock so that we can lay the ground for a national care service. I took a difficult decision about developing closer ties with Europe, supported by a majority of people in this country. Why? Because we have the chance to do a deal before the end of the year that can add growth to the British economy and support our farmers and our food industry.
Let me finish today in a spirit of problem solving, not point scoring; in a spirit of unity with the right hon. Lady. I will make one further point about her conference speech. I commend her for drawing a line under a decade of division when she drew a line between her and Reform for suggesting that her children were not British. That is wrong in every single respect. She was brave and she was right to call it out. That is what I want to see more of in the next decade, as we go forward.
International Update
Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham(1 month ago)
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Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement. Since we last met, Iran has sponsored an attempted terror attack on a British military base; President Trump has withdrawn support from President Zelensky; and Saudi Arabia has been bombarded with Houthi missiles and asked Britain to come to her aid. UK household energy bills are set to rise by nearly £300 in January, and diesel prices have hit £2 a litre for the first time ever. Against that backdrop, the Chancellor will deliver a Budget in two weeks.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that there is a £35 billion black hole in the public finances. More borrowing or more taxes are on the way, because we know that the Prime Minister will not cut spending. This is at a time when families and businesses are already suffering under the weight of £70 billion in Labour’s tax rises. So what has the Prime Minister chosen to focus on today? Brexit. His exact words earlier this year were that
“the last thing we should do right now is rerun those arguments”,
yet here he is, unpicking the deal that this country signed with the EU, a decade after the referendum. He is not going to get a better deal. Not only are the EU tough negotiators, but he has already revealed his entire negotiating hand. He has just blurted out everything he wants in this statement. I will tell him now, as a former Trade Secretary, that that is not how you conduct negotiations. He has told them everything, and negotiations have not even started—unbelievable!
Over the weekend, on “The Rest is Politics” podcast, the Prime Minister implied that the referendum result was illegitimate because of Russian interference. Where has that come from? We all remember that in 2018, the head of MI5 said that there was no evidence that Russia had influenced the EU referendum result. Even this morning, the Prime Minister’s own Foreign Minister could not say if the evidence existed. Will the Prime Minister confirm, here and now, whether he believes that the referendum result was legitimate? If he does not, will he publish the evidence that Russia swung the result of the 2016 referendum? From my perspective, this is just another example of him trying to distract the country, rather than solving the immediate challenges we face.
Just as some people thought that all Britain’s problems would be solved by leaving the EU, some now think that all our problems will be solved by rejoining it. Neither of those are serious positions; they are lazy thinking from people who do not have solutions to the real problems that we face, such as on defence. The Prime Minister told us that he would set out a target date for spending 3% of GDP on defence at the spending review in the spring. That spending review has now been delayed until next autumn. Labour delayed procurement by a year to hold the strategic defence review, then the defence investment plan took another 18 months. The armed forces now have to wait at least another 12 months to find out what they are getting. The defence of the realm is the first duty of any Government, and kicking it into the long grass is a dereliction of duty.
I welcome the support that the Prime Minister has set out for our allies in Saudi Arabia and Ukraine, but they will require money, and serious questions on defence still need to be answered. The United States has withdrawn its bombers from RAF Fairford. Can the Prime Minister tell us why? What does that mean for the safety of our British aircraft and, more importantly, British personnel at that base?
The Prime Minister said in his statement that we will not tolerate threats from Iran on our soil, so were he and his Foreign Secretary aware of those threats before the Foreign Secretary met and shook hands with the Iranian Foreign Minister at the UN? Does the Prime Minister now think that the Foreign Secretary was wrong to do that?
On 18 July, we were told that the Prime Minister would grant licences for the Jackdaw gas field and Rosebank oilfield. We are still waiting for a decision nearly three months later, as a global energy crisis is looming. Can the Prime Minister now confirm exactly when he will approve those licences? Britain cannot afford to wait until the end of the decade for him to act—he is the Prime Minister for today. Rather than promising things on the never-never, here are some things that he could do right now: cut welfare, fund our defence, drill in the North sea, bring down people’s taxes, get young people into work, build new prison places and put more police on our streets. He could do all those things today if he cut spending. That is what I would do. Instead, he is trying to reopen yesterday’s arguments to avoid today’s decisions. What this statement shows is the difference between Labour and the Conservatives. We have answers to today’s problems; they are living in the past.
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Lady. She started on the right point, which is the situation in the middle east, and the extent to which it is affecting cost of living pressures here at home—the cost of filling up at the pump, and the costs that people are feeling more broadly. She is absolutely right to say that that is where our focus should be. It is where my focus was when I had all my meetings in New York, and it is why I have taken action to remove VAT from electricity bills this month. We are acting quickly on the cost of living, and we will continue to do that.
I was listening carefully to what the right hon. Lady said about the European Union. One could only conclude from what she said about unpicking the deal—the deal that is supposedly so good for Britain—that she will be defending the status quo. I am sure that I heard her say at her conference that increasing growth would be the operating principle of any Government that she leads, so how can she justify turning her back on a deal, which is potentially on the table now, to add billions to the UK economy? How can the Conservatives justify turning their backs on farmers and the food industry, who are finding it hard to export to Europe? I think they need to reflect on that. She says that I have revealed what I want to do, and that this is no way to negotiate—because the Tories were so good at negotiating deals with our partners, weren’t they?
To address the right hon. Lady’s point, I implied no such thing in my comments on “The Rest Is Politics” podcast. I think she should go back and look again. It is a matter of record that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 general election, and we think it is inconceivable that this was the first time. I have a question for her. I listened carefully to what she said at her conference last week. Twice, she was asked directly whether she thought Brexit had been good for London. Twice, she could not answer—she could not even address the question. That is not going to be good enough for a party that wishes to lead this country once again. It is not leadership to turn your back on growth and on building the British economy.
On defence, this Government are already spending £14 billion more every year than the Conservatives did in their last year in government. We will continue to work with our US counterparts on RAF Fairford. Can I say to the right hon. Lady that every single Foreign Secretary, including David Cameron as the last Conservative Foreign Secretary, met representatives of the Iranian Government? She should look back at that, as well as at her own record in government.
The Leader of the Opposition stands there today and says that she will build new prison places. Why is there a crisis in our prisons? It is because the Conservatives did not build those places when they were in office. We are dealing with the issues that she left behind. We are the ones providing leadership in difficult times. It is about time that she faced up to some of those realities about the mess they left behind.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham(2 months ago)
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Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
After last week’s session, the country was thrown into confusion over whether the Prime Minister was or was not going to fund 3% for defence by 2030. After today he will have another five weeks off PMQs, but there are some serious threats to national security that cannot wait. His Chancellor resigned as Defence Secretary because the Labour Government would not increase defence spending to 3% by 2030. Does the Prime Minister think that he was right to quit?
The Prime Minister
As I said last week, I appointed this Chancellor because of his strong commitment to the defence of this nation—that was the reason—and we will honour our NATO commitments: 3.5% by 2035, and a target date for 3%. That will all be set out in the spending review. I do not feel, though, that the right hon. Lady gets the right to come to this House and claim the moral high ground and point fingers wherever possible, when defence spending was 2.3% of GDP and fell during 14 years of a Conservative Government. On this issue, I think we should do more problem solving than point scoring, and I say to the right hon. Lady that we would do our armed forces well if we could agree more on this crucial issue across the House.
Mrs Badenoch
The Prime Minister wants to talk about the past on defence spending, so let me refresh his memory and that of the House. I remember when he was the shadow Home Secretary, when the then Labour leader wanted us to leave NATO, disarm our nuclear deterrent and defund the Army, so I will not be taking any lectures from him.
The Prime Minister says the target is 2035. That is a decade away. If he cannot get to 3% by 2030, why should we believe he will get to 3.5% by 2035? The spending review is next year. Last week, I set out how we would get to 3% by 2030. The threats are now. Argentina is threatening the Falklands—now. Russia is threatening us in the North sea—now.
The Prime Minister did not answer my question. I asked him if the Chancellor was right to quit. The Chancellor was right to quit, which is why it is so wrong that he is not sticking to his principles. The Chancellor used to say that not hitting 3% by 2030 would put our troops at risk. He also said that Keir Starmer was “unable”, and the Treasury “unwilling”, to provide that funding. So is the Prime Minister unable, or is he just unwilling, to get that money by 2030?
The Prime Minister
This Chancellor, of all Chancellors, will be willing to provide that funding to our armed forces and back our defence investment plan. This Government’s commitment to the defence of this country is absolute. We have taken the strongest possible stance in supporting President Zelensky and Ukraine. We are playing our role around the world, and we will continue to do so.
The right hon. Lady mentions the plan that she has set out, and this is why I say that we should have an honest conversation across the Dispatch Box; I looked at it, and I do not think that taking £4 billion out of housing benefit is going to get the right consensus around this issue. That would create levels of homelessness in this country that we would not have seen before, with hundreds of thousands of children in temporary accommodation.
I say to the right hon. Lady that, yes, we do everything to support our national security, but it cannot come at the expense of social security. Having strong national security also depends on resilience in our communities. We on the Labour Benches will not be forced to choose between the two, and we will set out a plan to get to 3.5% by 2035 at the spending review.
Mrs Badenoch
It is unbelievable that the Prime Minister would say that. He is clearly unwilling. We need to fund our defence, not spend all our money on welfare. I cannot believe that he would actually say that. He is clearly unwilling, but there are ways to do this—he is not unable.
On Monday, Chris Rokos, Britain’s third biggest taxpayer, announced that he was leaving the country. That is £330 million of taxes walking out the door because of this Labour Government—every year, £330 million. His taxes could be going on defence. The Prime Minister is talking about spending more on welfare. The benefits bill is set to rise by £32 billion under him—that is not all of it; that is the rise. That money could be going on defence. The Prime Minister will not approve the Rosebank oilfield—£1.4 billion of tax revenue that could be going on defence. So, will the Prime Minister tell the country: where is he going to find the money to fund our defence?
The Prime Minister
I cannot comment today on quasi-judicial decisions, but we will take a pragmatic approach to oil and gas, as I have said before at the Dispatch Box.
Let us get to the heart of this question, as the right hon. Lady invites me to do. What is the right way to fund defence and, yes, bring the welfare budget down? She would make crude cuts to housing benefit. As I have said, if £4 billion is taken out in the next few years, families will be made homeless and rough sleeping on our streets will increase. So here is the Labour way—the way that we do it on this side of the House. We have set out plans for the biggest council house building programme this country has seen in a generation. If the right hon. Lady looks at research from the National Housing Federation, she will see that that is the route to save billions from housing benefit.
We will shortly respond to the final report of Alan Milburn, who is looking at the issue of young people not in education, employment or training—again, something left behind by the last Government. We will take the Labour way: change education, support our young people, and provide more mental health support. That is the Labour way to get the welfare bill down, and I say to the right hon. Lady that that is the right way to fund defence.
Mrs Badenoch
No, it is not. The truth is the Prime Minister does not know where he is going to find the money. He is talking about anything except defence, including council housing. He will not fund the military. I will tell you what he is funding though, Mr Speaker—Keir Starmer’s £35 billion surrender of the Chagos islands and its crucial military base. That is British sovereign territory. That is a weak decision, and it is no wonder that Argentina is now threatening the Falklands. We need to project strength. We need to show that British sovereign territory is non-negotiable. So why, just like Keir Starmer, is he planning to surrender the Chagos islands?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Lady has to do better than that. They are the worst kind of points to be scoring when the country is watching. We will not surrender our base at Diego Garcia—we are in discussions with the United States about that—and we will always respect the rights of the Falkland Islanders to choose to be British. That will never change under this Government, and we will be relentless in defending that.
Mrs Badenoch
We are talking about paying £35 billion to give away British territory, and all of that is happening while the Prime Minister’s Government are cancelling £30 million of vital training for British soldiers. He may be new to the job, so let me tell him what may not be in his briefing paper. Last year, defence funding fell in real terms—that is on this Government. To govern is to choose, so why is he choosing to send £35 billion to Mauritius when they cut the money to train our troops?
The Prime Minister
I do not think the right hon. Lady is on strong ground when it comes to defence spending. It was 2.5% of GDP when the last Labour Government left office. It was 2.3% of GDP when the Government she was in left office. It is now set to be 2.7% in the next year. That is the reality of the situation—a Government who are strong on the defence of this country. That is what we are doing. It is why we have set out a defence investment plan that will be fully funded. I say to her again: it would be better to work across the House to get a fully and securely funded path to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 that will not change under any Government. That would send the strongest possible message to our armed forces. This is an area for problem solving rather than point scoring. I invite her to work with us on that, so that we can set out that clear path.
Mrs Badenoch
The Prime Minister seems to think that the last Government were a Conservative Government. The last Government were a Labour Government and they failed, which is why Keir Starmer resigned. He keeps talking about their record as if it was fantastic. If it was, then why is Keir Starmer not sitting there? Where Britain needs leadership, what we have at the moment is just vibes. He said he appointed the Chancellor because he cares about defence, but he will not fund it. Other countries are making claims over our sovereign territory. They smell weakness. He is pretending that he is the change candidate, but the fact is he is still failing to cut welfare, he is still paying to hand over a sovereign territory, and he is still not funding defence. On the issues that really matter, is he not just continuity Keir?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Lady mentions leadership. Let me tell her and the whole House where Britain is showing leadership. There have been Conservative politicians at this Dispatch Box—Labour politicians, too—for decades who have talked about the importance of the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. Words from any politician about a two-state solution will be only words if they are not backed with action. Leadership is about taking action where there is injustice, where we need to correct unfairness: people being driven out of their homes, losing their homes, being intimidated in their daily lives. I credit the Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who yesterday applauded the action that this Government are taking.
In this difficult and dangerous world, Britain has to stand for something. Britain has to show leadership. Britain has to stand for fairness against injustice. [Interruption.] Where people are being bullied out of their homes and intimidated, we will always stand with the underdog and take what action we can to support them. That is leadership on the world stage; Britain being true to what it has always been about. That is what the British people expect of us and that is what this Government will do.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
May I congratulate the Prime Minister on his stamina? Three hours! [Laughter.] Yesterday, he faced 125 questions from MPs across the House. Of course, Labour and the Lib Dems just wanted more Government spending—that is, taxpayers’ money—but can he name a single spending request to which he answered no?
The Prime Minister
What I can say to the right hon. Lady is that I was quite clear in my statement about the need to get the welfare bill down. I do not want to be a Prime Minister who sees a situation where we have so many people in their 20s not in education, employment or training. I cannot defend that, and I want to change it by giving more support to young people, so that we start investing in their success rather than paying for failure, as we have done for many years under successive Governments. This seems to me to be one area where both of us can engage in problem solving rather than point scoring, and I hope that the right hon. Lady will take up my offer on that.
Mrs Badenoch
The Prime Minister avoided the question. He did not say no to a single spending request. Personally, I think it is delightful that he wants to make everyone happy, but a Prime Minister needs to be a leader, not a people pleaser. He is talking about working together on welfare. I already made that offer, but it does mean cuts—he wants to bring the welfare bill down by spending more money. Yesterday, the Prime Minister told the House that his summer of promises would be paid for by “reprioritising within Government”, so what exactly has he cut?
The Prime Minister
In terms of “what has he cut?”, tax is the simple answer to that question. Within days of taking office, I indicated that we would remove VAT from electricity bills. That will help people with the cost of living. Then, days later, with the support of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, we said that there would be a cut in business rates for pubs, social clubs and live music venues. This Government are lowering the cost of living and lowering the cost of business, and that is what we will continue to do. I say to the right hon. Lady that that has to be fully funded, and those commitments are fully funded. We made an early decision to be clear about our priorities. Digital ID is not a priority for me or for this Government. We reallocated the funding, and we made those commitments as a result.
Mrs Badenoch
I asked what the Prime Minister cut. He says tax cuts. He has not said where the money is coming from. He talks about digital ID—[Interruption.] Yes, I know he said digital ID, but the Chief Secretary to the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), said that there was no money allocated to digital ID. You cannot cut something that never existed in the first place.
Lord O’Neill, a close friend of the Prime Minister, said yesterday’s statement in the Commons was
“the last thing investors wanted to hear”.
Lord O’Neill is a serious economist. He knows what he is talking about. Sure enough, yesterday the cost of Government borrowing rose to its highest in 18 years. How does the Prime Minister plan to tackle the Government’s rising debt costs?
The Prime Minister
I say to the right hon. Lady that I have worked with Jim O’Neill for 10 years. Jim O’Neill always gives me candid advice. We do not always agree, but he and I worked together to turn Greater Manchester from a former industrial heartland to the fastest-growing city region in the country. [Interruption.] Conservative Members complain, but where are their ideas about growth? When they were in government, we saw 14 years of stagnant growth. We saw 14 years of debt rising as a percentage of GDP. I say to the right hon. Lady that the turbulence on global markets is because of that exposure that they left behind. We are turning the corner. In the first half of this year, we have had the fastest growth in the G7. Borrowing fell to its lowest level in six years. We are cutting the deficit faster than any other G7 country. I say to the Conservative party and particularly to the right hon. Lady: that is problem solving rather than point scoring.
Mrs Badenoch
I do not know what any of that has to do with tackling the cost of increasing debt. Collaborating with Jim O’Neill is not how we are going to get debt costs down, and he said yesterday that the markets would be worried. The markets are clearly worried that we now have a spendthrift Prime Minister who wants to say yes to everyone but cannot tell us where the money is coming from. He needs to pay for all his new promises, and he has a choice: higher taxes, more borrowing or spending cuts. Yesterday he said, “Change begins with honesty”, so will he be honest and tell us: is he preparing to raise taxes again—yes or no?
The Prime Minister
I say to the right hon. Lady that I have already indicated that my first moves were to cut tax, but like any Prime Minister, I am not going to write the Budget here. That will be a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. I also say to her that he and I took a deliberate decision to set an early date for the Budget, so that we reduced the period for prolonged speculation of the kind that she wants us to indulge in today.
I also say this to the right hon. Lady and, indeed, the whole of her new shadow Cabinet, the majority of whom were part of a Government that lasted for 49 days—a short-lived Government that crashed confidence in the economy and hammered people’s mortgages. She took a decision at the weekend: she removed a shadow Chancellor who said that the Truss mini-Budget was a mistake and replaced him with one who helped to write the Truss mini-Budget. Dare I remind the House that the Leader of the Opposition herself is on record as saying that Liz Truss was “100% right”? What else can I say in response to all that, other than, “God help us!”?
Mrs Badenoch
The whole House will have heard that the Prime Minister did not rule out tax rises. Instead, what he did was lots of point scoring. He says he wants a new politics; he says he wants honestly, so why is he pretending that a junior Minister wrote that Budget? The fact is that gilt yields now, the cost of borrowing now—[Interruption.] Labour Members are laughing; I do not know why they are laughing. The cost of borrowing now is far more than it ever was under Liz Truss. The reason why that Budget failed is that spending was announced before the money to pay for it, which is exactly what the Prime Minister is doing right now. He says it is the new politics; it is the same old Labour politics—tax and spend. He did not rule out tax rises, and what markets see is a Government that cannot control their spending, so the markets will charge us more to borrow. That means higher mortgage rates for families. It makes life more difficult for businesses, and that pushes up the cost of living for everyone. Higher borrowing costs are the biggest threat to family finances, so will he rule out any more borrowing that will make people poorer?
The Prime Minister
May I say to the right hon. Lady something I said earlier? Debt was rising as a percentage of GDP under the Government that she, and her new shadow Chancellor, served in. He was hardly some PPS to the DEFRA Secretary, with all respect to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; he was a senior Minister in the Treasury on the day of the Truss Budget. The right hon. Lady mentions mortgage rates, and that was the day they spiked; that was the day the British public were hammered by the previous Government. We are taking the action needed to get debt down. This will be a Government grounded in fiscal responsibility. We will stick to the fiscal rules, but at the same time we will help to reduce cost of living pressure on our constituents. That is the approach we will take, and that is the approach that I suggest the Conservative party should follow, too.
Mrs Badenoch
The right hon. Gentleman is the Prime Minister now and he needs to answer the questions, instead of spending time attacking someone who has more private sector experience than his entire Cabinet. I asked him whether he would rule out more borrowing. He did not do so. We spend more servicing our debt than we do on defence—almost double. There is war in Europe. Yesterday, Germany confirmed that Russia was behind the attack on Leipzig airport. Tensions are so high that the director of the CIA flew to Moscow. We need the plan to hit 3% of GDP on defence now, but the armed forces will not know what they will be getting until next July’s spending review. There is a simple answer to this: cut welfare spending and invest that money in our defence now. Mr Speaker, the honeymoon is over. Isn’t it time for the Prime Minister to ditch the vibes and get serious about defending our nation?
The Prime Minister
I will start with the serious point made by the right hon. Lady, which is the announcement by the German Government yesterday in relation to the attack in Leipzig. That should unite the House in sending complete condemnation of that attack by Russia, and complete solidarity to support both Germany and Ukraine, and that position will not change.
That takes me to defence. The very reason I appointed this Chancellor to his position is because of his strong commitment to the defence of our country and to defence spending. We will fully fund the defence investment plan. At the spending review we will set out a plan to meet our NATO commitments by 2035. There is no problem with our commitment to defence. More broadly, the right hon. Lady has made a lot of accusations about what went wrong, but I go back to the position that she left. The country was not heading in the right direction. Now, we are heading in the right direction. Yesterday, I laid out a clear, coherent, credible plan for growth, based on 10 years of delivering it myself. This is grounded in reality. I want to take it to all parts of the country. It is all about bringing back a sense of positivity, a sense of possibility, with growth in every postcode. Let this country believe in itself again; let people have some hope. That is what this Government will do.
Direction of Government
Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Andy Burnham(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
Can I welcome the Prime Minister to his place at the Dispatch Box and take this, my first opportunity to congratulate him on becoming Prime Minister? He has been in office for 43 days, during which I have learned how he puts the milk in his tea and exactly what he thinks about pork scratchings, but I have not had the pleasure of asking him any questions. We are all grateful that he has finally found time to come to Parliament to answer some.
It is only fair to be gentle with someone on their first day at work, so I am only going to ask the Prime Minister a few very simple but very serious questions. I hope that he can provide me with some simple and serious answers. I genuinely wish him well as he seeks to live up to the dignity and importance of the role. I was pleased to see him in Ukraine over the summer, continuing the Conservatives’ world-leading support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. That being said, I am also very relieved to see that he has not brought his guitar with him today. His predecessor stood at that Dispatch Box two years ago sounding very triumphant, having just won a landslide victory. What went wrong? Where is he now? Gone. That job is not as easy as it looks from the outside. Labour MPs have not explained why they got rid of him. [Interruption.] They are laughing, but they have not explained it.
We on this side of the House understand that the country’s problems will not be solved by lofty promises alone. In the end, the Prime Minister will be judged on what he actually delivers. This is a very different job from being Mayor of Greater Manchester—a job where he did not have to pick winners and losers, make difficult trade-offs, or have to worry about our national security. He does now.
A Government’s first and most important duty is keeping the country safe. The last Prime Minister and his Chancellor left an enormous hole in Britain’s defence budget. We know that because the current Chancellor quit as Defence Secretary over that black hole, saying that it could put British troops at risk. He said that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030, and that not funding the defence investment plan reduces the readiness of our forces. Let me ask the Prime Minister very clearly: will he provide the funding that his own Chancellor said was necessary to keep British troops safe? That means 3% by the end of this decade.
Keeping this country safe also means defending our borders. The Prime Minister mentioned boat crossings, but we must be honest: boat crossings have not gone down because of anything that Labour has done. [Interruption.] They have not. We have to be honest. Boat crossings are down across all of Europe, and have been down for much longer. Let us be honest: the problem is still not solved.
The Prime Minister will have seen the extraordinary scenes in Ceuta over the summer, in which more than 70,000 people tried to cross into Europe. Many of those people would like to end up in the UK. This is not just a British problem; it is a growing global problem. Even Denmark is starting to send illegal migrants to other countries as a deterrent. That is exactly like the Rwanda scheme that the Conservatives put in place and Labour scrapped. We now hear that the Home Secretary is thinking about reviving a Rwanda-style scheme, so can the Prime Minister tell me—yes or no—if that is the plan?
Next, the Prime Minister must keep British people safe from dangerous criminals. It was interesting to hear the comments in his statement about early release. Before the summer, I sat with women who had experienced some of the most horrific crimes imaginable, and the perpetrators of those crimes were about to be let out of prison early. The Prime Minister told those women that it was too difficult to keep their perpetrators in jail. Then he changed his mind. The family of PC Andrew Harper appealed to the Prime Minister not to release his killers early. Again, the Prime Minister told them that it was a non-starter. Then he changed his mind. The Conservatives told the Government to create new spaces in the existing prison estate, and to get foreign-born criminals out of our jails. The Government said that we were wrong, but now they are doing both. The Prime Minister has had five different positions on early release in six weeks, putting the victims through hell with his indecision. Will he now set out a timeline for his promise to get more foreign national prisoners out of British prisons?
As well as keeping the country safe, the Prime Minister’s next big challenge will be making people in this country feel richer. The biggest mistake that Labour has made in office so far, and there have been quite a few to choose from, is that it has crushed our economy under the weight of nearly £70 billion in new taxes. The Prime Minister was not here for that, so I will give him the list: the jobs tax, the family farm tax, the family business tax, taxes on pensioners, taxes on workers and taxes on businesses. That is £3,500 a year for every working family. He says that he cares about the cost of living; Labour’s taxes have made that worse. Those taxes have cost people their jobs—thousands of jobs in oil and gas, and thousands of jobs in industry across our country. The recruitment market for new graduates is the worst it has ever been. There are 50% fewer vacancies than last year, which was already the worst on record. If the Prime Minister does not change course, he too, like every other Labour Prime Minister, will leave office with unemployment higher than it was when he came in. Can he guarantee, here and now, on the Floor of the House, that there will be no more tax rises in the autumn Budget?
The year is 2026, yet the Prime Minister said in his statement that everything has gone wrong since the 1980s. He is still complaining about Margaret Thatcher. I am 46 years old, Mr Speaker—I may not look it, but I am. He is talking about a woman who became Prime Minister before I was born. He is living in the past, and he wants to take us back to the 1970s. We Conservatives are for the future, not the past. That is the difference between them and us. His ideas are all about more Government control, more spending, more tax and more politicians. The Conservatives want people to keep more of their own money. We want businesses to grow, invest, expand and create more jobs. That is the difference between the Labour party and the Conservative party. His diagnosis is completely wrong. His theory of growth is completely wrong. He thinks that if the Government spend more money, we will all get richer, but that is not how this works. Companies are not leaving our shores because there is not enough government.
Another difference between us is in dealing with the ballooning welfare bill. Up and down this country, hard-working people are fed up of going to work and paying for their neighbours to sit at home with mild health conditions that do not stop them working. They are fed up of hearing, as we did this summer, that working in Boots is not good for your mental health—ridiculous. We are on the side of those hard-working, fed-up people. I ask the Prime Minister: will he stand up to his Back Benchers in a way that his predecessor never could and cut the benefits bill? It is a simple question.
The Prime Minister engineered it so that he could have as long a summer holiday as possible, so he should be ready with some answers. I am even hearing rumours that he does not want to do Prime Minister’s questions next week, but it is my job to ask him serious questions, and it is time for him to start answering. [Interruption.] I know Labour Members do not like hearing the questions, but they are going to hear them. It is my job to speak on behalf of all the people out there who want to know what he has planned, and it is time for him to start answering some serious questions. Governing is hard, but the country needs the Prime Minister to succeed. Where it is in the national interest, I will help him. He may find that Conservative votes come in handy when Labour MPs are too scared to do the right thing.
Britain faces many serious challenges to our national and economic security. There are difficult decisions to make, and they will show whether the Prime Minister is serious about governing. On defence, his own Chancellor said that 3% spending was needed to keep British troops safe; now, apparently, he does not believe that. On illegal migration, Labour scrapped the Rwanda scheme; now it appears to be considering a Rwanda-style scheme of its own. On prisons, the Prime Minister said that dangerous criminals could not be exempted from early release, and then he changed his mind. This country cannot afford a Government swerving all over the place. Labour has already tried government by U-turn, and it does not work. If he wants to be different from his predecessor, and wants to live up to the optimistic vision that he is painting, he is going to have to start taking this job seriously. That is not what we heard from the Prime Minister today, but that is what the Conservatives are offering.
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Lady for the welcome that she gave me and her kind words; I appreciate the tone of some of what she had to say. I do want to try to work with her across the Floor of the House where we can. She mentions my summer. I notice that she spent hers travelling all the way to Rome to be told by the Italian Prime Minister not to do a deal with Reform. If she had called me, I would have told her that and saved her the trip.
The right hon. Lady was right to start with Ukraine, as I did. I mentioned the work of previous Prime Ministers in setting the right tone. Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak—everybody played a role in setting that tone, and it has been carried on by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). It is a very challenging situation, but I was there to send a very clear message that with a change of Prime Minister there does not come any change in Britain’s approach. I hope that I speak for the vast majority of Members of this House in making that completely plain.
The right hon. Lady said that the job of Prime Minister is different from the job of Mayor of Greater Manchester. I can vouch that I know that now, after six weeks in the role. She was wrong, though, to say that in that role I did not have to worry about national security. I did. Within two weeks of taking office, I had to deal with the appalling terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena.
I send all my best wishes to those who gathered last night at the Heaton Park synagogue to remember our friends who lost their lives and the incredible efforts of Rabbi Daniel Walker and others to hold the attackers at the door. We all send them our very best wishers and reaffirm again, hopefully from all sides of the House, that antisemitism is a scourge that we should work together to remove from our society.
The right hon. Lady mentions defence. She is right to, because it is a changing and challenging world in which we live, but I say to her directly: I appointed this Chancellor of the Exchequer precisely because of his commitment to the defence of our realm and the arguments that he has made. He will set out at the spending review the path to honouring our international commitments in full, as I said that we would when I was before the steps of Downing Street.
Those listening at home will find it hard to accept what the right hon. Lady said about the boat crossings, which are significantly down—halved on last year. She said that had nothing to do with anything that this Government have done. That is plainly not the case. I heard an Opposition spokesperson on the radio this morning trying to find any excuse to justify the numbers going down—the weather and all kinds of things. Can they not just accept that the action that we are taking is making progress? That includes the co-operation with the French that I mentioned. The Home Secretary and I will continue to look at all measures, and will be relentless in making sure that we continue to make progress, but the Conservatives would do well to recognise that significant progress has indeed been made.
On the early release of prisoners, I do not think there is any moral high ground for any party in this House. The Justice Secretary will shortly make a statement and lay out the timeline for the return of foreign national offenders. I hope that we can work together on the question of imprisonment for public protection sentences. Too often, issues in this House just get left. I left 10 years ago worried about this issue, and I come back to find that it is not resolved. Social care was something that I spoke about a lot when I left. I come back, and it is not resolved. We have to do better, don’t we? We have to find more ways of working across the House and not just leave issues unresolved with all the harm that that causes.
On growth, I cut tax twice in my first week. I say to the right hon. Lady that I am committed to bringing down the welfare bill not through crude cuts but in a way that provides the right support for people—particularly young people—whom, in my view, the education system has let down.
The right hon. Lady mentioned the 1980s, the legacy of which, I have to say to her, we are still struggling to reverse. It is the reason why—[Interruption.] Well, let us have the argument in this House. Why are people paying such high water bills, while the infrastructure is crumbling before our eyes? Why are energy bills in this country the highest in Europe? Why do Opposition Members represent constituencies where, year after year, bus services have been cut and the fares have gone up? They know the truth of what I am saying. Let us have some honesty so that we can deal with these issues properly.
The right hon Lady raised an ideological point. I noticed that yesterday she appointed a new shadow Cabinet, with a new shadow Chancellor—the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith); I welcome him to his position—who I believe was the author of the mini-Budget. [Interruption.] I think at least half the shadow Cabinet supported the Liz Truss Government. The right hon. Lady said that I have been in my position for 43 days. Well, may I turn that around? In six days, this Government will have outlived the Truss Government, and we will be here for a lot, lot longer.
I will work with the right hon. Lady where I can—we should make that commitment to each other today—but I will still point out where she is wrong. We will not take lectures when the country is moving in the right direction. You can see that on the economy, on small boat crossings and on the cost of living. We will continue to do that to turn this country around.