Oral Answers to Questions

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend stands up well for his county and constituency on this matter. I am very happy to confirm that we will maintain that commitment in our forthcoming industrial strategy White Paper. We do want to see a fairer distribution of infrastructure spending across the country because we know that infrastructure investment is important to unlocking economic opportunities, economic growth and productivity in our towns, villages and cities. We have backed that with ambitious commitments to increase our spending on infrastructure by 50% over the next four years, but I can assure him that we will be looking at that infrastructure spending across the whole country.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Q12. I thank the Prime Minister for her opening words on the horrific revelations this week, but can I say to her that, three years ago, I brought evidence to her in this House that Whips had used information about sexual abuse to demand loyalty from MPs. I brought that information to her in this House and I warned her at the time that, unless real action was taken, we risked repeating those injustices again today. On three occasions, I asked her to act and on three occasions she did not, so can I ask her: in this of all weeks, for the fourth time, will she finally take concrete action to tackle this?

[The Prime Minister]

I will, of course, look back at the questions that the hon. Lady said that she raised with me in this House. I assume that she raised those with me when I was Home Secretary. I am very clear that the Whips Office—I hope that this goes for all Whips Offices across the House—should make it clear to people that, where there are any sexual abuse allegations that could be of a criminal nature, people should go to the police. It is not appropriate for those to be dealt with by Whips Offices; they should go to the police. That continues to be the case.

As I say, I will look at the questions that the hon. Lady raised with me, but I am very clear that we will take action against those where there are allegations that we see and the evidence is there that there has been misconduct. I say to her that I hope that we will all send a message from this House today that we want people in this place to be able to feel confident to bring forward cases, and we need to ensure that those cases are dealt with in a way that people can have confidence on both sides that they will be properly investigated. That means I want to see a good process in this Parliament, so that people do not feel that they have to go through a party political process to have their allegations considered.