Business of the House

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

It may help my hon. Friend if I explain that if a club whose application is currently on hold because it does not meet the current eligibility conditions to be a community amateur sports club is found to meet the new requirements for registration, or has to make only minor changes, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will be able to backdate registration from the beginning of the accounting period in which the club made its application. I hope that is clear. For registration to be backdated, the club will need to meet all the other conditions of the scheme from the date of its application.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Yesterday I asked the Prime Minister about the worrying rise in child malnutrition and the links to food poverty, which have been identified by a number of reports. He avoided answering the question, as I think he has whenever I have asked him about food poverty and food banks. May we have an urgent debate on the public health consequences of people not being able to afford to feed their family and what the public health response should be?

[Mr Hague]

Again, I cannot offer an additional debate next week. The Opposition regularly have time available to them to bring forward these issues. The hon. Lady says that the Prime Minister did not answer the question, but he did point out that far fewer people are in relative poverty now than there were at the time of the last general election, including 300,000 fewer children in relative poverty than in 2010. Also, very importantly, there are now 50,000 fewer households stuck in the trap of never having worked. This is how we are addressing poverty, and we are doing so a lot more successfully than the previous Labour Government.