First Aid Techniques: National Curriculum

Debate between Nia Griffith and Julie Hilling

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Julie Hilling]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. For me, it starts in schools. If only we could have—I will go on to talk about this more—a generation of life savers coming out of school. We have millions of people in the community who will not have had the benefit of being trained in schools. I applaud his organisations and the organisations in my constituency and across the country that do amazing work to raise money for defibrillators and for training individuals in how to do CPR.

Survival should not be down to luck. There are far too many other examples of people who suffer cardiac arrest and are not saved because the people around them do not know what to do: children such as Ciaran Geddes, who died aged 7; 12-year-old Oliver King; 16-year-old Daniel Young; or 17-year-old Guy Evans. Their mums are campaigning for defibrillators and emergency life-saving skills to be taught in schools.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Before I became an MP in 2005, I taught in a school where every single pupil in year 8 did a 12-week first aid course as part of their personal and social education. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is the type of programme that should be implemented so that every single child coming out of school would have those skills?

Cost of Living: Energy and Housing

Debate between Nia Griffith and Julie Hilling

Thursday 5th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to have an opportunity to speak in the debate. I wish that I could talk about the Gracious Speech, but in truth I do not believe there is very much to talk about, although I must say that I welcome the announcement of action on plastic bags.

My constituents cannot afford another year of complacency. They cannot afford another year of a Government who do not understand their situation and simply tinker at the edges. They cannot afford a year in which the Education Secretary proceeds with his plans to take our schools back to the 1950s, and in which the Government ignore the cost of living crisis faced by the people of Bolton West and do nothing to ensure that having a job means that people can afford to live, nothing to tackle the abuse of zero-hours contracts, nothing to address the widespread concerns about immigration, nothing to stop care workers being exploited, nothing to stop the privatisation of the national health service, the scandal of people being unable to see their GPs or the scandal of missed cancer and waiting-time targets, and nothing to freeze energy prices.

The Gracious Speech did not even include Bills that the Government have already produced in draft, such as the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill and the Bill to prevent smoking in cars. And what has happened to the legislation to regulate the taxi industry following the inquiry that the Government asked the Law Commission to undertake? Commentators have described this as a zombie Government, and I think that perhaps they have a good point. Government Members who spoke yesterday welcomed the next 11 months of lots and lots of general debates, but, much as I welcome the opportunity to discuss issues that are really important to the people of Bolton West, such debates are pointless if no action is taken to deal with those issues.

Members on the other side of the House talk proudly of the actions taken by their Government. They seem to think it is okay for there to be food banks in the fifth richest country in the world, and that it is okay to talk about jobs that are being created without any acknowledgement or understanding of the fact that they include unpaid jobs provided through Government schemes, jobs involving zero-hours contracts, jobs that have been transferred from the public sector, jobs that were created and then failed, and jobs in which people are self-employed. The fact that 30% of people who use the Atherton food bank in my constituency are in work provides evidence of the quality of some of those jobs. It shows that the quality of a job is important, rather than merely having a job.

Government Members make claims that they cannot back up with reliable evidence. Five million workers—one if five of us who are lucky enough to have a job—are paid less than the living wage. That is an increase of 400,000 in the last year alone. The situation is not just bad for those people, but bad for the rest of us. It costs the Exchequer £3.23 billion a year in in-work benefits and tax losses to support employers who do not pay their employees a living wage. Low pay is bad for the economy, and it is bad for the taxpayer as well. However, the Government have no plans to improve the national minimum wage.

One group of workers who are caught by both zero-hours contracts and abuses of the minimum wage are care workers. People who are doing one of the most precious jobs in our country, and whom we entrust to look after our elderly and disabled loved ones, are treated appallingly. Studies show that between 160,000 and 220,000 care workers are unlawfully paid less than the minimum wage.

[Nia Griffith]

When we talk about raising the minimum wage, we often hear scaremongering stories about jobs being offshored. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as care workers’ jobs cannot be offshored and will continue to be done here, there is no danger in raising their wages?

[Julie Hilling]

A great deal of nonsense is talked about raising the minimum wage. When we consider the cost to the people who are employed and the cost to the Exchequer, it is clear that we cannot continue to subsidise employers who could pay their employees a living wage.

Badger Cull

Debate between Nia Griffith and Julie Hilling

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I rise to speak about a serious problem that I know causes great consternation in the farming community. We know how serious it is to be faced with having to slaughter cattle, so Labour Members are determined to continue to make progress toward eradicating bovine TB. We commissioned the randomised badger culling trial, the largest scientific project on the effects of culling, which reported in 2007. That trial, which provided the most extensive scientific evidence on the impacts of culling badgers and which lasted 10 years and cost £50 million, examined the effects of culling at 10 high-risk sites across England. The report of the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB stated:

“After careful consideration of all the RBCT and other data presented in this report, including an economic assessment, we conclude that badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain.”

Lord Krebs, the foremost expert on bovine TB in badgers has called for a twin-track approach of developing an effective vaccine in the long term and improving biosecurity and cattle management to prevent herds from coming into contact with badgers and passing on the disease. He was one of 30 scientists who stated in a letter to the press:

“As scientists with expertise in managing wildlife and wildlife diseases, we believe the complexities of TB transmission mean that licensed culling risks increasing cattle TB rather than reducing it.”

They added:

“We are concerned that badger culling risks becoming a costly distraction from nationwide TB control.”

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

The Government use evidence from other countries’ culling other animals, such as possums and deer. Does my hon. Friend agree they are wrong to say that the situation would be exactly the same here, when those animals do not leave the area of perturbation in the same way as badgers do?

[Nia Griffith]

It is indeed difficult to make comparisons with other countries, where ecological patterns are very different. Perturbation has been mentioned by other speakers, so I will not go into great detail on that; instead, I want to talk about cattle vaccination, because that is what will put the farmer in control, and we should put a lot of effort into it. I am therefore saddened that whereas we spent £3.5 million on this in 2009-10, this Government have cut the funding for that sort of research to £2 million for the next financial year—