Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Richard Burden

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right: the five-year plan does include that proposal for more local input in care at a local level. It is absolutely right that in looking at, for example, the future of minor injuries units, local people are considered and local concerns taken into account. I understand that there is due to be a meeting in Ely later this month to consider this. I hope that she and her constituents will be able to make their views known at that meeting.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

Q7. Tomorrow I will be helping to launch a programme at the engineering company ADI Group in my constituency to boost the interest of 14 to 16-year-olds in engineering skills. No doubt the Prime Minister would like to join me in congratulating ADI Group, but will she take it from me that her words of congratulation would mean rather more if they were not accompanied by cuts of between 30% and 50% in apprenticeships funding—a programme that the Institute of the Motor Industry has described as a “car crash”?

[The Prime Minister]

I am of course happy to commend the company that the hon. Gentleman has referred to. Of course, the west midlands is an important driver in terms of engineering skills in this country. But I simply do not recognise the situation that he has set out in relation to apprenticeships. We have seen 2 million apprenticeships created over the last six years, and we are committed as a Government to seeing more apprenticeships being created. That is giving young people, like the young people I met when I went to Jaguar Land Rover, opportunities to learn a skill to get into a job, to get into the workplace, and to get on where their talents will take them.

Prime Minister

Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Richard Burden

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Commons Chamber

The Prime Minister

- Hansard -

My hon. Friend is right: the five-year plan does include that proposal for more local input in care at a local level. It is absolutely right that in looking at, for example, the future of minor injuries units, local people are considered and local concerns taken into account. I understand that there is due to be a meeting in Ely later this month to consider this. I hope that she and her constituents will be able to make their views known at that meeting.

Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)

- Hansard - - Excerpts

Q7. Tomorrow I will be helping to launch a programme at the engineering company ADI Group in my constituency to boost the interest of 14 to 16-year-olds in engineering skills. No doubt the Prime Minister would like to join me in congratulating ADI Group, but will she take it from me that her words of congratulation would mean rather more if they were not accompanied by cuts of between 30% and 50% in apprenticeships funding—a programme that the Institute of the Motor Industry has described as a “car crash”? (906345)

The Prime Minister

- Hansard -

I am of course happy to commend the company that the hon. Gentleman has referred to. Of course, the west midlands is an important driver in terms of engineering skills in this country. But I simply do not recognise the situation that he has set out in relation to apprenticeships. We have seen 2 million apprenticeships created over the last six years, and we are committed as a Government to seeing more apprenticeships being created. That is giving young people, like the young people I met when I went to Jaguar Land Rover, opportunities to learn a skill to get into a job, to get into the workplace, and to get on where their talents will take them.

Border Force Budget 2016-17

Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Richard Burden

1st reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I say to the hon. Gentleman that, of course, in terms of border security and stopping people crossing the border, what is important is not just that we have a border control, as we do by not being a member of the Schengen border-free zone, but that information is exchanged between the parties when that is available. That is exactly what we are working on to ensure that information is available at our borders when we want to be able to stop people.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

May I put it to the Home Secretary that I do not think that she has yet fully answered the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee about 100% checks on trucks? I accept the issue about flexibility, as we might have different situations in different places, but does she accept that there is genuine concern about security in ports up and down the country? How is the cumulative cut to the revenue budget of the Border Force compatible with providing the necessary level of security?

[Mrs May]

On that last point, I must say to the Labour party, as we have said before regarding a number of other areas, that it is about not how much money we have, but how we spend it. It is about ensuring that we are using money as effectively and efficiently as possible. Ensuring that we have an operating mandate that means that 100% checks on individuals are undertaken at primary checkpoints is something that this Government have introduced and that the previous Labour Government failed to do. All the trucks going through the juxtaposed controls are indeed screened.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Richard Burden

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Again, I extend congratulations and welcome the work of the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner in reducing crime in Lincolnshire. It is not the only area where crime has fallen, but the fall in Lincolnshire is particularly significant.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

Given the Home Secretary’s reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), has she seen the statement from the Northamptonshire police and crime commissioner to his police and crime panel on 2 February in which he says of the new funding formula:

“It is expected that this will transfer funding from the urban areas to more rural areas and Northamptonshire may benefit”?

Does that reflect Government policy, or is he just letting the cat out of the bag?

[Mrs May]

As I would have thought the hon. Gentleman would be aware, we have clearly said that the funding formula changes that we were proposing before Christmas are not going ahead. We are pausing that process and looking again at how we can develop a funding formula that reflects needs. If the hon. Gentleman looks at police forces across England and Wales, he will see that everybody—including the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, who is sitting next to him—has been very clear that the funding formula needs to change.

Refugee Crisis in Europe

Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Richard Burden

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but there are alternative routes for those who are looking for family reunion here in the UK. Under current family reunion provisions within the immigration rules, those who are granted asylum or humanitarian protection in the UK can sponsor immediate family members to join them here. We have arrangements in place that are helpful to those who wish to join family here in the UK.

I want to make another point about the perilous journey. An important point was made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) yesterday. He said:

“If we are genuinely to help refugees, this cannot simply be about helping the fittest, the fastest and those most able to get to western Europe. We must help those who are left behind in the camps, who are sometimes the most vulnerable.”—[Official Report, 7 September 2015; Vol. 599, c. 34.]

Indeed, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has made that point herself—she made it on one occasion when we discussed the issue last year. She said:

“There has always been cross-party agreement that the majority of refugees should be supported in the region”.—[Official Report, 29 January 2014; Vol. 574, c. 881.]

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary is clearly right about Britain’s record, both on reaching 0.7% and on the camps in Syria and surrounding areas. However, she will know that there is still a crisis of funding in those areas. The World Food Programme, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and others are talking about the strains on their resources to deal not only with the Syrian crisis, but with other crises. The Government have decided that the refugee resettlement programme on which they are embarking will come from the overseas aid budget. I understand the reasons for that, but has there been an assessment of the impact that funding it in that way will have on other programmes elsewhere?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman is correct that the United Nations is looking at how to reach the funding it requires to provide support. As he says, there has been an impact on the World Food Programme. Yesterday, I was able to speak to Stephen O’Brien, who a few months ago took up his new role in the UN. He has been spending some considerable time on the issue and talking to potential donor countries. He is looking actively at how it is possible to increase that funding. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), has alerted me to the fact that the UN General Assembly will focus on the issue in the not-too-distant future. The UK has a commitment to 0.7%. Because of our growing economy, that aid budget is increasing—it is not the case that there is simply one pot of money that is being distributed. We are seeing an increase because of that growth in the economy, because the target that we have set and reached is based on a percentage of national wealth rather than on a specific figure.

I said in response to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) a couple of minutes ago that I would comment on the issue of criminality. Our work pits us against the callous criminal gangs that exploit the suffering of vulnerable people by selling them false hope. They are taking their life savings in exchange for a place in a rickety vessel, or cramped in the back of an ill-ventilated lorry. The tragic death toll in the Mediterranean—not just in recent weeks, but over the past two years—illustrates the great risks people are running and the vile disregard for human life of the gangs who encourage them, and so do appalling cases such as the 71 bodies found abandoned and decomposing last month in the back of a lorry on an Austrian motorway.

We have seen people taking dangerous risks in their attempts to cross not only the Mediterranean but the English channel. That is why we are working—not just alone but with our international partners—to smash these criminal gangs and break their disgusting trade. In Calais, the joint declaration I signed on 20 August with Bernard Cazeneuve, the French Interior Minister, cements and builds on the close working relationship of our two Governments. It builds on the important collaboration between our law enforcement agencies and establishes a joint gold command structure ensuring that UK and French officers work hand in hand, sharing intelligence and reporting jointly on a monthly basis to both me and Mr Cazeneuve.