Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. There is further to go, but the Government are investing more in mental health. We introduced the waiting times, most recently saying that young people suffering episodes of psychosis should be seen within two weeks. There is funding, there is parity of esteem, there is waiting time. There also needs to be a bigger culture change not just in the NHS but right across the public and private sectors, so that mental health conditions are given the attention they deserve.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

Q6. From April, a woman who works full time stands to lose thousands of pounds in tax credits if she becomes pregnant with her first child. When will the Prime Minister stop attacking working people?

[The Prime Minister]

What we are doing for women like that is making sure that this year they can earn £11,000 without paying any income tax. If they are on low wages, if they are on the minimum wage, they will get a 7% pay increase because of the national living wage. For the first time, there will be 30 hours of free childcare for those people. That is what we are doing for hard-working people. Do we need to reform welfare? Yes, we do. If the hon. Gentleman had read the report into why his party lost the election—not the one it published, of course; the secret one we all read over the weekend—he would see that, by its endlessly arguing for higher and higher welfare, the British public rightly concluded that under Labour there would be higher and higher taxes.