Lilian Greenwood
Main Page: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)Department Debates - View all Lilian Greenwood's debates with the Leader of the House
(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Lansley
I am happy to say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport is in his place on the Front Bench and will have heard what my hon. Friend said. I know that he and his colleagues in the Department feel strongly about reducing the duration of motorway incidents to keep traffic moving and, through the so-called CLEAR programme—collision, lead, evaluate, act and reopen—are working with the agencies and responders to deliver exactly that.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Nottingham now has 12 food banks, as hundreds of families, many in work, are forced to rely on charity to feed themselves and their children. Yesterday we found out that the Chancellor aims to hit those poor families even harder. Is it not time that we had a debate on child poverty?
Mr Lansley
The hon. Lady is of course free to raise this issue, and it might be appropriate for her to do so at Department for Work and Pensions questions on Monday. Child poverty has been falling, according to the last Labour Government’s definition, but we want to ensure that children move out of poverty and improve their conditions in the absolute sense. That is about work, and reducing the number of workless households has been a significant step in the right direction.