Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Let me thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks and congratulate him on the role he played in the campaign. As for what MEPs and others have said, people should judge them by the remarks they make. I have made clear what I felt about Nigel Farage and that appalling poster in the campaign. I think the motive was absolutely clear and everyone can see what he was trying to do.

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

Q7. My constituency of Torfaen has received substantial amounts of EU funding. The leave campaign in the referendum promised that that funding would continue even if we left the European Union. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that if my constituency loses a penny piece of its funding under his successor, that would be a gross betrayal?

[The Prime Minister]

It is the case that Wales as whole is a net beneficiary of EU funds. As I said throughout the campaign, if the vote was a no vote, I would want to do everything I could to make sure that we continued to help disadvantaged regions and our farmers. Obviously it is difficult for anyone to give guarantees, because we do not know exactly what will happen to our economy in the event of a leave vote, and our economy does face challenges. It will be a matter for my successor as we leave the EU to make good on what they said at the time.

European Council

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in doing that. I had the huge privilege of going aboard one of Her Majesty’s ships when it is was in Malta. It had recently been taking part in combating the people-smuggling operations and picking people up. It had saved literally thousands of lives, and we could see—whether it was the medical teams, the Royal Marines or the royal naval personnel—that there was huge pride in what they had done.

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

The Prime Minister’s tagging on of the events of recent days to a statement on international affairs reminds me of when one of his predecessors, Harold Macmillan, unsuccessfully tried to explain chaos in his own Treasury as “a little local difficulty”. Does the Prime Minister accept that, with the revelation that the Chancellor does not care about vulnerable people because there are not enough Tory voters among them, his own little local difficulty means that compassionate conservatism is completely dead?

[The Prime Minister]

If I had come to the House and not mentioned these issues, which has enabled colleagues on both sides of the House to question me about them, I think there would have been justifiable outcry, so I wanted to give the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to do so. When it comes to people casting their vote, we won the last election because we won the support of working people, and we did so because we were creating jobs, cutting taxes, reforming welfare, improving schools, investing in our country and making the economy stronger and our society fairer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

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.