Oral Answers to Questions

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend asks an extremely important question. We recently announced an agreement for 50 million doses with the manufacturer CureVac because we believe that that may help us to develop vaccines that can respond at scale to new variants of the virus. As the House will have heard from the chief medical officer, the deputy chief medical officer and others, I think we are going to have to get used to the idea of vaccinating and then revaccinating in the autumn as we come to face these new variants.

[Mr Speaker]

Let us head up to Ross, Skye and Lochaber with the Scottish National party’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP) [V]]

New research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the baby bank charity Little Village has revealed that 1.3 million children under five in the United Kingdom are living in poverty. That is a truly shocking figure that should make this Tory Government utterly ashamed. The Scottish National party has repeatedly called for a financial package to boost household incomes and reverse this Tory child poverty crisis. The Prime Minister has the power to tackle child poverty right now by making the £20 uplift to universal credit permanent and extending it to legacy benefits. The Tory Government have been stalling on this for months. Will the Prime Minister finally act, or will he leave millions of children out in the cold?

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[The Prime Minister]

There you go, Mr Speaker. They believe fundamentally that it is the duty of the taxpayer to pay for more and more and more. We want to get people into jobs, and it is in that respect that the Scottish nationalist party is, I am afraid, failing—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Prime Minister, we both know that you are only teasing and trying to wind up the leader of the SNP; please, let’s drop it. Let us move on, because Lee Anderson is waiting for you.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con) [V]]

  A new freeport for the east midlands will create over 60,000 new jobs and provide a massive boost for employers such as Caunton Engineering and Abacus in Ashfield. After decades of neglect from Labour MPs, we now feel an sense of hope in the red wall seats. My mum and dad voted Conservative for the first time at the last general election and were touched when the Prime Minister acknowledged that their votes were lent. Could my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister please reassure my mum and dad, my friends, my family and all my constituents that our area will never be let down again?

[Mr Speaker]

Let us head to Meirionnydd with Liz Saville Roberts.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC) [V]]

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Llefarydd.

As we just heard, the Government claim to have a levelling-up agenda underpinned by a research and development road map. The trouble is that the Tories’ track record on this is not good: in fact, it is abysmal. Wales receives the lowest R&D spend per person of the four nations, at around 40% of spend per head in England, and Westminster’s obsession with the golden triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London shows no sign of abating. Will the Prime Minister now commit to a further devolved R&D funding settlement to the Senedd, or is he content for Westminster’s road map to be Wales’s road to nowhere?

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[The Prime Minister]

We have seen above-inflation increases in public sector pay, and that is quite right. We particularly support increases in investment in our NHS, and the hon. Gentleman will know of the package we have put in place for nurses. However, the single best thing we can do is support the living wage, which this Government introduced, and which we have now increased by record amounts two years in a row. [Interruption.] I see the Scottish nationalist party—forgive me, national. I do not know whether they are nationalists—perhaps they could clear it up.

[Mr Speaker]

We cleared it up earlier for you.

[The Prime Minister]

Are they a national party without being nationalists? It is an interesting semantic point, Mr Speaker. However, I think they are trying to claim that they pioneered the living wage. I do not think that is right. I seem to remember that it was a certain mayoralty in London that massively increased the living wage—when they were not off the starting blocks.

[Mr Speaker]

In which case, let us go down to Somerset to Ian Liddell-Grainger, who is ready on the starting blocks.

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con) [V]]

Mr Speaker, thank you as always. I am delighted my right hon. Friend is defending democracy by pushing ahead with local elections, but here in the land of King Alfred the people desperately want to give their verdict on Somerset County Council, which I am afraid has been using covid money to spend on things that have nothing to do with the pandemic. It has submitted to the Government a form that says nothing, and I fear that my right hon. Friend has been misled. We need a referendum down here to test public opinion quickly, but does my right hon. Friend—a proud man of Somerset, who understands history more than most of us—not agree that the time has come to put our county back together and that the whole of Somerset should be looked after by Somerset? I know that King Alfred would approve of that, and I know that the people of Somerset will certainly support the Prime Minister if he supports us.

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[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed. I have made it absolutely clear to our EU friends and partners that we want to make our relationship work, but it is also absolutely essential that there should be untrammelled free trade and exchange of goods, people, services and capital through all parts of the UK. We will do everything we can to ensure that that is the case, including, as I have said in the Chamber before and to the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues, invoking article 16 of the protocol, if necessary.

[Mr Speaker]

I am suspending the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements for the next business to be made.