(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberAs the House will be aware, I have previously exercised my discretion regarding the sub judice resolution to allow references to the Northern Ireland protocol on the grounds of national importance. Although there are relevant live legal proceedings, I am further exercising that discretion today in relation to the urgent question.
We are pursuing a negotiation and the hon. Lady will have to wait and see.
Finally, but certainly not with the least of questions, I call Jim Shannon.
Thank you, Mr Speaker. You are most kind. The good wine always comes last.
I thank the Paymaster General for his answers to the urgent question. Back in July, the Government published a paper in which they stated clearly that conditions to trigger article 16 had already been met. He referred to M&S, which has indicated this week that extra costs and extra bureaucracy on products crossing the border will cost it £9 million. Speaking as the MP for Strangford, who has got his feet clearly on the ground and knows what is happening and what the people are saying, I want to put it on the record that some businesses face going to the wall as a result. The Prime Minister repeated that assertion recently. He said that time was of the essence and that, if the current negotiations with the EU failed to arrive at an agreed outcome in a short period, the Government would move and must move immediately to take decisive action to remove the barriers to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I urge the Paymaster General to do just that: initiate article 16 and remove the barrier.
I like hearing from the hon. Gentleman, but his questions have to be shorter. If he wants to make speeches, I am sure that he will catch the eye of somebody in the Chair later.
The hon. Gentleman is right, Mr Speaker; you have saved the best till last.
The hon. Gentleman is right that Marks & Spencer makes a powerful point. Time is of the essence. Her Majesty’s Government will move to remove barriers if necessary. The article 16 application has already been met and we are alive to the time sensitivity involved.
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberI am sure the hon. Lady will have seen the net zero strategy, which was published the week before the Budget. I am sure she will also know about the significant progress that the Chancellor has made on bringing other countries together to increase the international effort on climate finance. Yesterday, we set out our commitment to increase our international climate finance by £1 billion by 2025, on top of the £11 billion that we have already announced. The Chancellor, together with other Finance Ministers, is making sure that we help to reduce to net zero emissions through a number of measures. I am very happy to—
COP26 is under way in my constituency, and the Scottish Government have set an ambitious target to reach net zero by 2045. In contrast, the Minister has completely failed to justify the cut to air passenger duty on internal flights while allowing the already eye-watering price of train tickets to rise again at the turn of the year. This is no pro-Union policy, as the Government like to pretend, because 62% of Scots think that cutting APD is entirely the wrong priority. So, in this week of COP, will the Minister do her bit for the planet and scrap this climate-damaging policy once and for all?
(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent 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
Before we come to the urgent question, I have a short statement to make. I have repeatedly stated in the clearest possible terms that important announcements should be made by the Government first in this House rather than outside it. I did so again yesterday in relation to the briefings issued to the media about the Budget. I was therefore disappointed to see more stories in the media today with apparently very well-briefed information about what will be in tomorrow’s Budget. The Government do not just have to take my word for this; their own ministerial code says:
“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance, in Parliament.”—
in this House.
As I said yesterday, I do not have to give a reason for my decisions about urgent question applications, but in this case I want the House, and especially the Government, to be clear that if the Government continue to treat this House in this discourteous manner, I will do everything in my power to ensure that Ministers are called here at the earliest opportunity to explain themselves. I personally have nothing against the Minister and I feel sorry for the person who has to answer at the Dispatch Box but, once again, this House will not be taken for granted. It is not right for everybody else to be briefed. It is not more important to go on the news in the morning; it is more important to come here. Let us get the message across that these elected Members represent this United Kingdom. It is not done through Sky TV.
I do not know whether to congratulate the Minister on his promotion, as he has come here to give us the Budget a day early. What he has not given this House is an apology. He should not be announcing things on Twitter; we should be waiting for the Budget to see the full detail. This has been going on since September—it is not new. There have been daily announcements drip-feeding the entire Budget ahead of time. Of course, the Government hold all the cards, along with the Office for Budget Responsibility, because we cannot tell what the detail actually means. For Scotland, we cannot tell what the Barnett consequentials —if, indeed, there are any—will be.
We know what is going to be in the Budget speech and we know what is not going to be in it, because the Government have not done things such as carbon capture and storage in Scotland. Of course, none of it is what the Government and the Chancellor should be doing in the Budget speech. They should be reinstating the £20 universal credit cut; scrapping the national insurance tax on jobs; tackling the spiralling cost-of-living crisis; and supporting hospitality and tourism with a VAT cut to see them through the winter months and into next year.
If the Government cannot be responsible with the powers that they hold and if they cannot be trusted to give us the actual truth on Budget day tomorrow, all the financial powers—I call for this again—should be given to the Scottish Parliament so that we can make the decisions that are right for the people of Scotland.
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He is absolutely right that levelling up is a core theme of this Government. It is something of which I am very proud, as a north-eastern MP, to have the chance to help deliver, and it is going to be one of the golden threads of the Budget and spending review tomorrow. I wish that I could start plucking rabbits out of the hat for him now, but he will have to wait just a few more hours to get some, hopefully, very welcome news.
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. It has taken me nearly 30 years, but I now find that I agree with the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) in his question. This is serious. As an Opposition, we cannot look in detail at the slew—the blizzard—of Budget announcements that have been going on week after week, because we do not have the OBR report and we do not have the detail. This is treating parliamentary democracy with utter contempt and the Minister should be completely ashamed of himself. He should have come to this House and apologised. His boss should have come to this House and apologised.
I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is of course one of the most assiduous Members of this House. Clearly we all look to make sure that the Budget documentation is as full and as frank as possible—we have the work of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility as well—to make sure precisely that the Budget debate that follows can be as fully informed as possible as to the full implications of all the measures that are announced.
Can I just ask for a little clarification from the Minister? He has made an announcement to the House that I am not sure is correct: he said that it is a five-day debate, but I thought it was only four days.
(3 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend is absolutely right to point that out. That is an unfairness in the system that the Government have shown no compulsion to tackle at all. We must look at that unfairness, particularly for those in the most rural parts of Scotland who find it hardest to afford their energy bills.
I seek an assurance from the Government that those who have money sitting in their energy accounts just now will see that swiftly transferred over to any new company, as people tend to pay in more over the summer to meet their bills in the winter. In his statement yesterday, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy could not guarantee that the warm home discount would be paid to customers transferring. I also want to know what assistance will be possible for those transferred customers who are living with existing arrears. It is an uncertain and very worrying time for them all.
As an aside, my hon. Friends the Members for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) and for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) have been pursuing the ridiculous transmission charging regime, which makes it more expensive for us to connect the clean, green energy produced on our doorstep in Scotland to the national grid. It feels as if Ministers could not be less interested in fixing that disproportionate scandal.
We all know households that already struggle to pay their energy bills. Households relying on electricity for their energy needs pay £600 more on average than households with both gas and electricity. In the areas that are off the gas grid completely, particularly those relying on liquefied petroleum gas, those costs can be even higher.
In addition to food banks, fuel banks are springing up around the country to meet this need, but given the soaring fuel prices we face, it will just not be enough. The price of food in the shops is also going up. Inflation stood at 3.2% in August, which I understand is the highest month-on-month increase since records began in 1997. Some have predicted that it might reach 4.5% by November. The Bank of England target is 2%. That means that goods in the shops will get ever more expensive. There is the prospect, too, of the national insurance hike being passed on to consumers. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has suggested that companies may try to cover the increase on employers’ costs by passing it on to consumers, so as well as being a tax on jobs, this is a tax at the till.
In addition to having an impact on people’s food bills and their ability to feed themselves, this cost increase is having an impact on charities that are already trying their best to support those in need. Audrey Flannagan at the Glasgow South East food bank in my constituency tells me that food donations to it are down 30%, at a time when she is planning for an influx of people due to the cuts to universal credit. I say “cuts” because, for many who claimed benefits for the first time during the pandemic, they have known nothing else. Audrey tells me that people she has spoken to have been horrified to receive a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions informing them that their money is getting cut, because for them it is not an uplift; it is quite simply what they have been managing on for months now.
The Minister talked about living wages, but his living wage is not a real living wage, as set by the Living Wage Foundation; it is a pretendy living wage. It is not enough for people to live on, and it is not available to everyone. As he knows well, age discrimination is baked into the living wage. Younger people, who face the same bills at the checkout and on their energy and rent, are getting short changed by this Government through their pretendy living wage.
The impact on families of this cut has been well repeated, but I would like to mention the impact on single people. Twenty pounds is around a third of a single person’s income on universal credit. Glasgow South East food bank has seen a significant drop in single people coming for emergency food assistance in this past year, from 601 people in January to March 2020, to just 151 people in the same period this year. Audrey Flannagan believes that the additional £86 per month—UC is paid monthly—was enough to make a difference to those people. It pays for the gas and electric, it puts food on the table, and without that £86 a month, many will return to her service in just a few weeks’ time.
Many people have been in touch with me, as they have with my colleagues, to protest the cut to universal credit, but I want to read this email from John, because he puts it so well. He says:
“I wanted to write you a short note to tell you that cutting back on the U.C. uplift is going to have a very hard consequence on me. I was laid off at the start of the pandemic when the company I was working for closed down. With the uplift I’m receiving about £300 to last me nearly 5 weeks! The government talks like this was a favour done us! Firstly, I and all those on Universal Credit are not responsible for a pandemic! Secondly, the pandemic is not over yet! There could be further strains and further lockdowns! What then for people like me! Also benefits did not go up before the uplift for years and years, while prices and the cost of living have. This therefore is actually a benefit cut! It will be the difference for me between just getting by and crushing poverty!”
That choice will be faced by people up and down this country. Every single person in this House has a responsibility to think of each and every one of them when we vote on this issue, because it is the difference between just getting by and crushing poverty, as my constituent John pointed out.
There are global issues, of course, driving the cost-of-living crisis, but the political choices being made by this UK Tory Government are making it worse. Yet again, they have chosen to balance the books on the backs of the poor—to repeat the mistakes of the previous crash by choosing austerity over stimulus. My constituents did not choose this. The people of Scotland did not choose this. Even many Tory voters did not choose this, as those on the Government Benches break promise after promise to their own supporters. The first duty of Government is to protect its people, and this UK Tory Government have failed repeatedly on all counts. There is no Union dividend, only a Union dead end. Scotland needs the full powers of a normal independent country, to look after all of our people and seek a fairer, just and more prosperous recovery for everyone.
We now come to the maiden speech of Jill Mortimer. I remind people that they cannot intervene.
(3 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberGood morning to you, Mr Speaker. It is great to be in a Chamber that is 100% full strength after so many months. If I may make a personal note without undue deference, Mr Speaker, I will say that I thoroughly appreciated your remarks about standards within the Chamber.
To date, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has not initiated insolvency proceedings against any taxpayer for a loan charge debt. No estimate can be provided for the number of people who have fallen into debt or who have been declared bankrupt and are subject to the loan charge because, where debts arise, HMRC is not always the only creditor. Some individuals are declared bankrupt as a result of a non-HMRC debt and some may choose to enter insolvency themselves based on their overall financial position.
My hon. Friend is right to highlight this issue, which he and I have discussed on many occasions. In July I chaired a roundtable on it across Government, and it is prioritised across Departments. We have a manifesto commitment that the Chancellor and I are committed to delivering on. As my hon. Friend knows, we have a £200 million cost to this that we need to tackle. But at the same time we also need to be true to the manifesto, which was not about tackling those on low incomes who had high pay-offs because of the way their pension benefits were structured and those proprietary claims. We need to differentiate between that and the real ill that he is concerned about, which is those on six-figure salaries who are receiving pay-offs. That is something we are prioritising.
I am not quite sure if that related to the original question, so we are going to have to watch out for that in future.
Scottish hospitality and generosity is world-renowned, but could the Minister explain to us why he thinks that Scottish taxpayers should pay for England’s social care crisis?
It is a slightly odd question, because through the broad shoulders of the United Kingdom, it is Scottish jobs that have been protected through the furlough, it is Scottish businesses that have been supported through the self-employment income support scheme and it is the block grant that has provided additional funding to the Scottish Government. The oddity is that they are choosing not to use those uplifts in the Scottish grant to prioritise the things that they come down to Westminster and say they care about.
Can I just suggest to the Minister that it might be easier if he speaks through the Chair?
It would be good if the Minister answered the question, as well. The Prime Minister’s hike in national insurance has been roundly panned, not least by his own Back Benchers and the Chair of the Treasury Committee, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride). People in Scotland are already feeling the pain of a decade of Tory austerity cuts and the harms caused by Brexit, with the devastation of the £20 a week cut to universal credit still to come, none of which they voted for. Why should my constituents pay for the Prime Minister to break his manifesto pledge with a new poll tax on the poorest who can least afford it?
(3 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberI can commit that we will look very carefully at the evidence on the best possible interventions to make. I am pleased that, as of March 2020, 98% of the population could access free cash within 3 km, but we have to come to terms with the fact that from 2009, when 56% of transactions were by cash, we were down to 17% by last year. We have to come up with appropriate legislation to meet that change.
We now come to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Dame Meg Hillier.
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
More than 1 million people still use only cash, and approximately 4 million use cash regularly, so it is vital that they have access to it. This is now the second consultation that the Treasury is going through, but as the PAC has seen, all the distribution of cash is in the hands of private providers. Can the Economic Secretary give any indication of the type of legislation that he can introduce to ensure that if people are very poor, they can get cash? That does not mean going to the supermarket and getting it out when they do not even know what is in their own account.
I can assure not just my hon. Friend, but Keith and Dave from the Titanic brewery, that we have consulted industry on the prospect of such a lower rate as part of our ongoing alcohol duty review. The team and my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary are working closely with HMRC to further understand the practicalities and the cost of the proposals; we will provide further updates in due course. My hon. Friend is right about securing hospitality in the meantime. The temporary VAT cut, the business rates holiday and, indeed, freezing beer duty at the last two Budgets are all helping in the short term.
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Whether on social care, on Northern Powerhouse Rail or on tackling climate breakdown, there is a growing gap with this Government between what is promised and what is actually delivered. The Treasury’s response to the net zero review was first due to be published in autumn last year, yet it is nowhere to be seen. The COP26 climate summit begins in November. While the UK is hosting, the Government cannot lead with authority, because the fact is that we cannot have a climate strategy without a sustainable economic plan behind it. Will the Chancellor please tell the House on what date he will publish the final report of the net zero review?
I congratulate Elddis, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on giving Elddis profile, on fighting the campaign that he has, and on the outcome and its very successful results in this case. I have it on very good authority that the Chancellor would be delighted to visit Elddis, so I am in a position to make a binding commitment from the Government side, and I am sure that he looks forward to it very much.
I am now suspending the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements for the next business.
(3 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberI congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on bringing the matter forward. The House is very much united behind him. It is not just the scale of the aid cuts, but the speed of the enforced shutdown of operations that is hugely harmful. Aid and development are not a tap that we can turn off and on whenever we like. It is time for the Government, on this occasion, to step up to the spot and make sure that they reinforce the aid budget and increase it back to what it was in the past.
May I just gently say that we have a lot of speakers and I want to hear from everybody? If you are going to intervene, I am sure that you will understand if you go down the speaking list.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Of course, what he says has been reinforced by every single member of his party who serves in the House, and it is the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, a former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, was making: if we turn this expenditure on and off in this way, the taxpayer does not get proper value for money.
Nor is this about party politics. All 650 of us elected to this House at the last election promised to stand by the 0.7%. The Bill enshrining the 0.7% in law was passed unwhipped in this House, with just six dissenters. Outside the House, in every single constituency in the country, there are people taking action as part of Crack the Crises, the growing environment and development group. Each and every one of us is accountable to those constituents, who are taking action in their local schools, colleges, churches, mosques, charity shops, women’s institute branches, congregations and community groups.
Twelve million people—an average of 15,000 per parliamentary constituency—are supporters of the member organisations of that coalition, and they must be heard. The people who sponsor children through development organisations, the members of churches that are twinned with others in the developing world, the people who were there for Jubilee 2000 and for Make Poverty History—they do not forget when we break our promises to them; they organise.
I can assure the House that, were it not for the covid restrictions, the same people who made the human chain around the Birmingham G8 summit and the quarter of a million people who marched on Edinburgh before the Gleneagles G8 would be preparing today to descend on Cornwall to make their views known at this G7 and to protest this unethical and unlawful betrayal. They would be joined by a whole new generation of young people who are watching this Government break our promise to the world’s poorest. They do not like what they see. This weekend, they may not be on the streets, but they will be watching, and they will remember.
For two decades, the UK has been a development leader, not just because that is morally right and accords with our values, but because it is in our own national interest. By making the countries we seek to help safer and more prosperous, we make life for ourselves here in Britain safer and more prosperous.
May I just say that brevity from everybody will allow more Members to get in? Those who intervene will not mind being moved down, because that is the way we are going to help each other.
I cannot help but reflect, given what the Minister has delivered, that in the phrase that is often used, he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Let me begin by commending the efforts of all those who have made it possible to have this emergency debate, including those who requested the debate, led by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), and you of course, Mr Speaker, for granting time today.
As we know, it has not been an easy task getting to this point—a point where this Government have finally been held accountable for their actions and made to answer for what is a callous cut to overseas aid. Let us be very clear: this Tory Government have been shamed into coming to the House today. Ever since announcing this disgraceful decision to slash aid for the world’s poorest, the Government have been on the run on this issue. For weeks now they have avoided questions and dodged accountability, but they have been dragged to the Dispatch Box today.
As usual with this Government, the person most responsible for the decision to cut aid is the person first to hide and the last to face accountability. On an issue of this importance and a policy this fundamental, it tells us everything we need to know about this Prime Minister that he does not even have the guts to come before this House to justify his Government’s decision to cut support to those most in need. He is a Prime Minister who casually signs off on these devastating decisions, but a leader who always fails to take any responsibility for the consequences of such decisions.
No damaging decision appears to be off limits for this Government. On overseas aid, living up to our legal responsibilities—our legal responsibilities, Minister—to those most in need should unite various strands of political opinion across this Parliament. Instead, the moral mission of 0.7% spending has been shamefully undermined by a morally bankrupt Government.
It is important to put the decision into a broader context, because cutting the aid budget is not only cruel and counterproductive in its own terms, but an isolated act from a UK Government increasingly alone on the world stage. The UK is virtually the only country that has cut its aid spending. Nearly every other wealthy country has recognised the greater necessity of helping those in need at this unprecedented time of a humanitarian crisis.
The Government’s timing could not be worse. International opinion on these cuts is crystal clear. It is rightly seen as a disgraceful abdication of the UK’s international responsibilities in a year—in a year, Minister —when we should be showing some international leadership at the G7 and COP26. Let us simply take a look at what some G7 countries are doing in comparison with the UK. This year, Canada’s aid budget will see an increase of 28%, France will contribute a 36% increase and, under the Biden Administration, the US will see a 39.4% increase. Yet this Tory Government think it is somehow morally justified to impose these cuts. It is morally and ethically flawed, it is intellectually flawed and it shames all of us that this is done in our name. But I say this to the Minister: it is not done in the name of the majority who have been sent to this House.
The harsh reality is that this decision will cost lives—it will cost lives, Minister. Brexit Britain is rapidly exposing the future it offers of being out of step and out of influence on the world stage, because one thing is for sure: if the Tory Government dig in their heels and slash the aid budget, they are adding insult to injury to those dwindling few who still desperately cling on to the notion of global Britain.
Digging into the details of these cuts reveals what is at stake if they are allowed to continue. The headline figures are stark enough in themselves, with aid spending amounting to £10 billion this year, compared with £14.5 billion in 2020, but it is the impact of where exactly the cuts will fall that tells the real story and exposes the real damage. Almost unbelievably, conflict zones face some of the worst cuts. Syria, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Nigeria and Lebanon: all are poised to lose more than half their funding. Is that where we stand? Is that where the Minister stands? Is that where his Government stand?
Children are the next target. The United Nations Children’s Fund faces a cut of 60%. This is harrowing; this is heartbreaking. I ask the Minister: where is the Government’s humanity at a time of need?
Some of the most established and impactful projects are equally at risk, with cuts of £12.5 million to the UN agency that fights AIDS and HIV. That is more than an 80% cut to a programme to fight AIDS, condemning people to an early death that could be avoidable.
Much has already been made of the fact that, by imposing these aid cuts, the Government are brazenly breaking their own manifesto commitment. In particular, I want to draw attention to the fact that they are breaking a very specific commitment that they made to voters about girls’ education right across the globe. It is worth putting that on the record of the House. In 2019, the Conservative party manifesto promised to
“stand up for the right of every girl in the world to have 12 years of quality education”,
and yet that promise has been broken.
Analysis by Save the Children shows that spending on education for girls will be reduced by at least 25%, compared with 2019-20 levels. That is horrific. Not only will these cuts impact now, but the damage will reverberate into the future for those young girls and young women, their hopes and fears crashed on the dogma of the desire to cut UK aid spending. Only this weekend, a letter from 1,700 charities and academics said that families are going hungry and girls are missing school as a direct result of these decisions. I can see that the Minister is nodding. I ask him please to reflect and change the Government’s policy and what they are doing.
Whether the promises are broad or specific, they are apparently all the same to the UK Government, who are telling people that they think their promises are only there to be broken. I acknowledge and give credit to the courage of the many Conservative Back Benchers who have stood against their Prime Minister, who is reneging on the very manifesto that he stood on. Their stance has given us at least a chance to face down the Government on this issue and hopefully force a U-turn.
Frome a Scottish perspective, I cannot hide my genuine disappointment that we cannot count the Scottish Tories among the Conservative Back Benchers with a backbone. For weeks, they have maintained a deafening and shameful silence, but even at this late stage, they have the chance to do the right thing. Whatever our differences, I think they know that cutting international aid during a pandemic does not represent the values of Scotland and our people. That is why the Scottish Government are doing what they can with the powers they have at Holyrood. We have increased international aid spending by 50%—that is what should be done in a pandemic, Minister. The Scottish Conservatives have a choice: either fall in behind their Prime Minister, no matter what he decides, or join us in saying that these cuts to the world’s poorest are not done in our name. If they fail to oppose these cuts, the Scottish Tories should be well warned: it would be not only an inhumane act against the most vulnerable, but an act of sheer hypocrisy.
Today’s debate on aid spending is all the more significant because of the place and the context in which we find ourselves. Morally, we have a responsibility to help protect the most vulnerable around the world. It is also self-evident that if the UK Government were serious about the eradication of covid-19, that must include a commitment to help eradicate covid-19 around the world, because until all of us are safe, none of us is truly safe. These aid cuts are severely undermining that commitment and limit our power in meeting the covid challenge.
There is a broader point, too. As we attempt to emerge from this pandemic, the values we live by and the choices we now make become even more important. Covid has affected every country and every person around the world. We have all faced the same threat; we have all been in it together. If we did not know that before, we should know it now. But the truth is that just because we have experienced the pandemic together does not mean that our challenges are in any way equal. We are privileged. We can live in the hope and expectation that the crisis of the pandemic will pass, but for too many millions in this world, the pandemic is only one more disaster to deal with, in countries that suffer under constant crisis and struggle. Now is not the time to turn our face away from those countries and those people in need. Now is the time to redouble our efforts and our commitment to them.
The World Bank predicts that the pandemic will push an estimated 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty, and in the world’s poorest countries, hunger and the causes of malaria are rising. Unless we act now, one crisis will be followed by another, and the cycle will go on—and on, and on. We simply cannot break the poverty cycle by breaking our commitment to overseas aid. This is a choice for the Government; it is the choice for every Member of this House. On these Benches, our choice is clear. It is time to live up to our commitments on aid spending. It is time to live up to our responsibilities to the world’s poorest. It is time to break the cycle.
If we can try and help each other now with brevity, that would be very helpful.
(3 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent 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
The ministerial code is clear: there must be no misuse of taxpayers’ money, nor actual or perceived conflicts of interest, but time and again Ministers act like the rules are for other people—none more so than the Prime Minister himself. Last year, he declared £15,000 from a Tory donor for his sleazy jet trip to a private island. This weekend, we read that the real cost was double that, and paid by someone else entirely.
People might ask, “Why is this important?” It is important because it goes to the very heart of our democracy. Who do our Government answer to: the public, or private interests? We learned only from the media that the Prime Minister has blocked the publication of the independent commissioner’s report. Can the Minister tell us why the delay? Does she accept that the rules apply to everyone, even the Prime Minister, and will he accept—
Order. This case is with Standards, and really we ought to keep away from it until Standards has been able to deal with it.
Okay. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
The list of Ministers’ interests is also mysteriously delayed, I assume while the Prime Minister tries to remember who paid for his flat, but does the Minister accept that if the Prime Minister can block the independent adviser from investigating he cannot in practice be fully independent, because the code clearly is not preventing actual or perceived conflicts of interests?
When the Home Secretary lobbies on behalf of a former adviser flogging substandard face masks, who lands a £100 million contract without tender and at double the going rate, who cannot perceive that as a conflict of interest? It is something that we know not from the Home Secretary declaring it, but because it was revealed in an admin error. Then there is the Health Secretary, who appears to have ordered an official to recommend a bid that he had not even read from a former Tory MP, who pocketed another £200 million of taxpayers’ cash. Surely the independent adviser must investigate those cases with no prime ministerial veto.
Finally, there is the Prime Minister’s own top adviser, Lord Lister. He concealed being paid by a luxury developer owned by yet another Tory donor, which was granted a record-breaking taxpayer-backed loan by the very public body that Lister chaired—money that was meant for affordable homes, but given out at mates’ rates for luxury flats and private profit. Will the Government release the loan agreement, along with the correspondence on that decision, and hand it to the independent investigator, and when will they publish their report on officials’ second jobs? When Ministers and advisers use the public purse as a personal cashpoint, the public have a right to know.
Order. Before we start, the supplementary was meant to be two minutes. I did interrupt, so I allowed some leeway. I will therefore also allow some leeway for the reply. When we mention Members of the other place, it is meant to be on a substantive motion. I know that seems strange, but these are the rules of the House, which I do not make; the House has made them and adopted them. We must stick to the rules. We do not criticise individual Members of the other House except on a substantive motion.
I am sure that the Cabinet Secretary will respond to the hon. Lady. He takes his responsibilities very seriously. The problem is that the matter is now the subject of a review—it is a subject for someone else to look at. I think, in all honesty, that there is nothing I or the Prime Minister could say at the Dispatch Box that will satisfy people until someone independent says it. I have to say, again, that this is a sideshow. I very much encourage the hon. Lady to return to the matters of substance, which I am sure are the issues that her constituents care about.
I will just say for the record that I expect MPs’ letters to be answered. MPs on all sides have a job to do, and they can only be helped by early answers to their correspondence.
Over the past few weeks, I knocked on hundreds and hundreds of doors in my constituency during the local elections, and not a single constituent mentioned the wallpaper of the Prime Minister or his holidays. What they were concerned about was welcoming the implementation of Brexit, how the Government were handling covid and the success of the vaccination programme. Does the Paymaster General agree that unless the Labour party gets its act together and starts listening to the people and their concerns, it will remain the Opposition party?
I have a high regard for the Minister, but I am afraid I struggle with her explanation on this issue. On 22 February, inadvertently or not, the Prime Minister made a misleading statement to the House regarding PPE contracts. He stated that they were all published. They were not. That is based on a High Court ruling and is irrefutable. His lack of apology and correction of the record is clearly a breach of the ministerial code. That this happens with seeming impunity—
Order. A criticism is only on the substantive motion. This cannot be used. It has already been tried earlier. The rules of the House must be obeyed. I know it is not what Members want to hear, but I am in charge of ensuring that the rules are kept to. Unfortunately, we cannot continue with that question.
We all know that Government procurement is a long, clunky and expensive process. It was therefore of clear national importance for the Government to fast-track some procurement decisions, particularly in relation to PPE, to protect people and keep people safe. Does the Minister agree that the recent elections in Teesside, where we gained a new Member of Parliament and a landslide for the Tees Valley Mayor, show that the public support our decisive decision making over the Labour party’s political point scoring?
I have said several times this afternoon that the public do care about that and they are right to do so. We should be here to answer questions about those issues. What I am not going to put up with is decent colleagues, decent businesses and members of the public being smeared by innuendo. I think that I have made my views very clear on that, and I hope that Opposition Members, including the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner)—and I do wish her well—reflect on that.
I will now suspend the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements to be made for the next business.
(3 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend is absolutely right. I salute the people of Carlton and I rejoice in the businesses of Mapperley. I encourage businesses across the constituency of Gedling to take advantage of the Government’s unprecedented package of support, including the £5 billion-worth of grant support that the Chancellor announced at Budget, which is providing a lifeline for businesses as they relaunch their trading safely.
I am now suspending the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements to be made for the next business.
(3 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe Government are committed to encouraging business investment in Doncaster and its surrounding area, and at the Budget we confirmed £23 million funding for Goldthorpe’s town deal—just due west of the town—and that will boost economic growth and encourage business investment in the area. MHCLG is currently assessing the remaining 49 towns fund bids, including those from Doncaster and Stainforth; we will make further announcements on those in due course.
I am suspending the House for a few minutes to enable the necessary arrangements for the next business to be made.