Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Edward Leigh(4 years, 7 months ago)
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The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Kwasi Kwarteng)
The Government are doing everything at their disposal to support businesses through the crisis and beyond. The Department is maintaining an ongoing dialogue with key stakeholders representing the country’s small businesses. The FSB regularly participates in the Business Secretary’s twice weekly call and regularly engages with my Department on a number of issues relating to covid-19.
Sir Edward Leigh [V]
The best way, probably, to help small business in rural areas such as Lincolnshire is to beef up broadband. That is for the long term, but does the Minister accept that, in the short term, the best way to help businesses is to let them do business, not subsidise them to close? I know we have to help vulnerable people, but it is not going to help the vulnerable in the long term if we crash the economy, so are the Government working full pelt, obviously consistent with proper social distancing, to get business back to work?
Kwasi Kwarteng
My right hon. Friend is quite right: we want to focus on getting business back to work; but these lockdown measures were introduced to protect lives. Relaxing the measures too much would, we feel, risk damage to public health, our economy and all the sacrifices we have all made. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education said last week, it is incredibly important that we create environments that are safe in which to work and learn. We will adjust lockdown measures when the scientific advice indicates that it is safe to do so.
European Council: Article 50 Extension
Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Edward Leigh(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Kwasi Kwarteng
Thank you very much for your guidance, Mr Speaker. I would also like to stress that I was not making any assertions as to the hon. Gentleman’s moral character; I was just making a statement about my view of certain things that he said.
On the hon. Gentleman’s question about the meaningful vote, it is the Government’s full intention to bring this meaningful vote to the House. We have to have a decision, and the House has to decide whether it will vote for a deal and commit to an orderly exit from the EU or whether it seeks to maintain a stance of indecision and to continue the uncertainty.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I am not sure the Minister has answered the crucial question put to him. In order to comply with the Speaker’s ruling and have a chance of getting meaningful vote 3 through the House, there has to be a substantial change in the offer. The EU will not carry on negotiating, so the only way to do that is to do so unilaterally by way of declaration. Will the Minister comment on that? Will he make it absolutely clear today, on behalf of the whole Government, not just the Prime Minister, that three years after the referendum it would be utterly intolerable were we still to be in the EU during the European elections? I want him to give an absolute commitment today that the Government would rather resign than be privy to such an appalling betrayal of the people’s trust.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am pleased that my right hon. Friend asked that question. Obviously, I cannot comment from the Dispatch Box as to what the Government will or will not do in the event of a European parliamentary election, because we are talking about hypotheticals, as my right hon. Friend always likes to do. I can only reiterate the words of the Prime Minister on this: it would be intolerable to have European elections, given that we would have had three years since the country voted to leave the EU.
Donald Trump
Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Edward Leigh(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Kwasi Kwarteng
I have been very generous with interventions, but I want to clarify that point. I do not have much time, but I repeat: the ground on which Donald Trump is banning Muslims is not their faith; it is because he believes that they constitute a danger to the United States. That is the ground—[Interruption.] I am just explaining his logic; I do not agree with it. And I am saying that any case to ban Donald Trump would be on the basis that he is a danger to our civic safety. Logically, it is exactly the same.
Sir Edward Leigh
On the point about 1.6 billion Muslims, thank God there are not 1.6 billion Trumps.
Kwasi Kwarteng
Yes, that would make our lives very difficult.
This has been a very engaging and enlightening debate, but it is no good saying, “Oh, he’s got huge publicity at the moment, so any more wouldn’t make any difference.” He was well known at the beginning of his campaign, but we have seen that there has been a crescendo of excitement and interest in the campaign. The very fact of this debate, as someone observed, is generating and stoking that excitement.