Business of the House

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

First, let me congratulate the hon. Lady—or, more particularly, her daughter or daughter-in-law; I do not know which it is. A new child is a source of joy for any family. I suspect that we will have a number of opportunities to debate the various questions that arise out of yesterday’s autumn statement, as well as to put questions to Ministers in the Departments affected by the Chancellor’s announcements. As I said earlier, if she looks at the distributional analysis of the autumn statement, she will find that it works—modestly, yes—to the benefit of all income groups in society, save for the very richest; it is they who suffer a loss. I hope that she would agree that all families benefit more than anything else from having parents who are in work and able to work. The record number of people in employment is helping to drive the reduction that we have seen in the number of children who are living in workless households, and the introduction of universal credit means that people, including many mothers of young children, who may take on part-time work, will still always find that work makes them better off than staying on benefits.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

I thank all Members for their kind words about Jo Cox; her legacy of love lives on. Yesterday, the Chancellor announced additional broadband infrastructure funding. The Government’s current subsidy goes only to rural areas, but this is equally a problem for my constituents in Rotherhithe, and for people who live in former dockyards across the country. Will the Government provide time to debate in detail how they plan to improve broadband access speeds for all areas?

[Mr Lidington]

The additional money that the Chancellor announced yesterday as part of the £23 billion that he is borrowing to provide for strategic infrastructure investment is additional to the current programme of connecting up people to high-speed broadband. That current work will continue, and what was announced yesterday is additional to it.