Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Gareth Bacon(1 week ago)
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Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
On behalf of the Opposition Front Bench, I too offer my sincere sympathies to the family of the late Lord Prescott on his passing.
On Monday, in her statement on bus funding, the Secretary of State said that a formula was being used to allocate funding. She said that the formula will allocate funding
“based on local need, population, the distance that buses travel, and levels of deprivation…This formula and the funding allocated is a fair arrangement, ensuring that every area of the country gets the service levels it needs”.—[Official Report, 18 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 43-45.]
The formula, including the weighting given to the various factors by the right hon. Lady, has not been published. When will it be?
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
Greater London is the most heavily populated and most economically active area in the whole country. It also has the highest level of bus use. In the last financial year, the level of bus subsidy in London amounted to £646 million. In the Secretary of State’s statement on Monday, of the £1 billion of funding that she indicated, £700 million will be spent on producing bus planning documents, and only £243 million is going to bus services. That will not touch the sides, will it? Is the truth not that, far from it being generational reform, it is publicly funded window dressing?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Gareth Bacon(4 weeks ago)
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Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
The Government’s impact assessment for the adult social care sector confirmed that collective bargaining will be very costly for business. If pay awards match those of junior doctors, the cost of the increased wage bill will be £5.8 billion, driving up business rates, reducing employment or hours, and imposing further costs on business. Can the Minister confirm when further collective bargaining will be rolled out, to which sectors, and by how much those businesses can expect to be clobbered?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Gareth Bacon(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
Domestic violence at its most severe becomes murder. Domestic murder is often the most shocking and brutal. With that in mind, what assessment has the Minister made of the Killed Women campaign?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Gareth Bacon(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Gareth Bacon
I thank the hon. Member for his question. Many of these issues were raised when the statutory instrument passed through Parliament. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), who is the courts Minister, has written to the Senior President of Tribunals to convey those concerns, and I think that is in part why my noble and learned Friend is meeting the Senior President of Tribunals tomorrow.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The wheels of justice certainly turn slowly under this Government, and hundreds of thousands of people across the country are paying the price in the Crown courts, the civil courts, the family courts and tribunals. At the end of 2023, the employment tribunal backlog stood at more than 460,000 cases. Those are cases affecting workers who have been bullied, workers who have been denied pay and workers who have been unfairly dismissed. Does the Minister think that workers, like the Government, should just give up on the justice system, roll over and accept what employers do to them, or is there a new magic formula to sort this out?
Gareth Bacon
The one thing the hon. Gentleman did not of course mention was the impact of the pandemic on the criminal justice system, and indeed on the employment tribunal system. [Hon. Members: “Oh, come on!”] Opposition Front Benchers do not like hearing it, but they cannot deny the impact of shutting down the system, in effect, for two years. We have massively increased the resources available and we are working through the backlog, but that will take time.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Gareth Bacon(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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