Business of the House

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Thursday 20th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The hon. Gentleman knows that an election has been called, and that makes a difference to the allocation of time for business, particularly as we have to make provision—I think that this is agreed across the House—for emergency legislation in relation to Northern Ireland, which will take time that might otherwise have been available for other purposes.

On personal independence payments, if the hon. Gentleman looks at what is actually going on, he will see that the number of successful appeals against PIP decisions is only 3% of cases that have reached a decision, and that the number of people with mental health conditions who are getting additional help under PIP is significantly higher compared with the disability living allowance. PIP represents a big improvement on the previous situation.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman is on very dangerous ground in praying in aid the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, because all political parties in Gibraltar detested and resented the previous Labour Government’s proposals for their territory.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I echo the comments made about our colleague and friend, Jo Cox? Of course, Jo was a huge champion of international development. Although I am pleased that there will be a memorial to her here in the Commons, one of the greatest memorials would be for all parties in the upcoming election to recommit to the cross-party agreement on 0.7% for international development. It would be a great tragedy if that was abandoned.

Jo was also a great champion of the situation of older people in this country. We have a surprise general election, so I wonder whether we could have a surprise Government statement in the next few days on righting the historic injustice facing the WASPI women and so many other pensioners across the country, including Allied Steel and Wire workers in my constituency, who have been led down paths that have resulted in them not receiving what they expected to receive in their retirement.

[Mr Lidington]

It will be important, as we leave the European Union, that the United Kingdom is even more outward looking on the world than it is already. I am certainly proud of the way in which we use our very generous aid programme to give humanitarian assistance to people in need in parts of central and eastern Africa, and to people both inside Syria and who have taken refuge in neighbouring countries.

On the state pension age increase for women, transition arrangements are already in place and the previous Government committed more than £1 billion to lessen the impact of those changes. No one will see their pension age change more than 18 months compared with the previous timetable. The problem with what the hon. Gentleman seeks is that to reverse the Pensions Act 2011 would cost more than £30 billion, and neither he nor his party has any plan as to how they would find that money.