Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. I know that this will be a difficult time for the community and all those who care about this Penrith college. May I propose that he and I have a proper conversation about what we can do to help, with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, and see whether we can find an appropriate solution? I thank him very much for the work that he is doing.

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

The Prime Minister does not want to talk about the numbers of job losses, so let me give him some: British Airways, 12,000 jobs potentially to go, including in the Vale of Glamorgan, in Llantrisant and in Blackwood; GE, 1,400 jobs potentially to go at Nantgarw; Rolls-Royce, nearly 6,000 to go in Derby, Solihull, Glasgow, Rotherham; and, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition has pointed out, Airbus, with 1,700 jobs potentially to go in north Wales and in the south-west, affecting my own constituents. Workers at those plants do not want to hear slogans. They do not want to hear bluff and bluster. They want to know from the Prime Minister what he is going to do to save those jobs in the long term. They have had the furlough scheme; what is he going to do to protect them going forward?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not wish to accuse the hon. Gentleman of failing to listen to what I have been saying over the past few days, but in addition to the £120 billion of support that we have put into the economy, we have to recognise that people now are, as he says, worried about their jobs. That is why we have a plan to build, build, build with a £600 billion programme of investment and to deliver jobs, jobs, jobs. For sectors across the country where we need to keep young people in particular in employment we have offered, as he knows, an opportunity guarantee so that they will have either an apprenticeship, an in-work placement or the opportunity for training.