Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Justine Greening

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I have had to send back the plan to the Mayor of Greater Manchester because it is not ambitious enough in making changes in Manchester as quickly as possible to improve air quality for the residents there.

[Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)]

Local authorities will not be able to fix the massive air pollution that is caused by a third runway expansion at Heathrow. The new Secretary of State and I both voted against that plan, and of course the new Prime Minister is a long-standing opponent. But pollution goes far wider than air pollution—it is also noise pollution—and it is in conflict with our law on net zero carbon emissions by 2050 that this House passed unanimously. Will the new Secretary of State now insist that this project is put on hold and that a review of it is undertaken before any further work is done?

[Dr Coffey]

It is the absolute priority for the people who are developing the third runway to come forward with a plan that meets environmental targets in law. If they do not, they will not get the consent to make it happen. However, I am highly confident that the operators of Heathrow airport will be able to devise such a plan.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Justine Greening

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

2. What steps she is taking to help developing countries improve their tax systems.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)]

The UK Government are committed to ensuring that developing countries have the ability to collect the tax that they are owed. The UK is using our G8 presidency to promote tax transparency, tackle tax avoidance and ensure tax compliance.

[Justine Greening]

Addressing tax avoidance and encouraging tax compliance will be one of the key elements of the G8 agenda, and transparency sits alongside that. We will look at how we can obtain more transparency, including sectoral transparency through measures such as the extractive industries transparency initiative. All those measures together have the potential to ensure that we can help developing countries to collect the tax they are owed.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that developing countries will be able to end their dependence on aid only if they can raise enough revenues through the tax system?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we are to have sustainable development and developing countries are to have the tax revenues to fund and invest in their own public services, we need a thriving economy that creates those revenues. That is why economic development is such a key part of what my Department is now focusing on. Along with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, we are investing to ensure that developing countries have the tax expertise they need to collect the taxes that are due.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady will have been as pleased as I was to see that sanitation and water feature strongly in the high-level panel’s report passed to the UN Secretary-General a couple of weeks ago. It is really important that we keep that proposed target, which is precisely what the Government will be pressing for.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

T3. May I commend the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister for last Saturday’s Nutrition for Growth summit, which showed that improving nutrition is not only about state aid, but about bringing the private sector and philanthropists together to solve the problem of over 1 billion people going hungry?

[Justine Greening]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, because it shows that if we are to make a real difference, we need ultimately to see Governments working in partnership with business and encouraging responsible investment. If we can work together and bring in the best science, we will have a real chance of tackling under-nutrition.

UK’s Development Work (Girls and Women)

Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Justine Greening

Thursday 7th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue. It is 180 years since the House passed an Act abolishing slavery, but in reality, as he says, that is the day-to-day life that many people face. I assure him that I work tirelessly with the Foreign Secretary to combat it.

We must tackle the problem at national and international levels and at the grass roots, but if we are to tackle some of the root causes, we must also enable people to be more valuable if they stay where they are, which means ensuring that they are educated and have skills. The biggest value that they have should lie in their staying put and doing a job domestically. In future, the economic development aspect of what DIFD does will need to constitute a far bigger part of its overall work than it has in the past. Ultimately, trafficking and slavery are about money, so we need to change the money argument if we are to see a real change in outcomes.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

Last week I was a member of a Conservative Women’s Forum panel discussing sanitation and water. A representative of WaterAid said that some of schools that are now being built—and it is fantastic that girls are getting into schools—do not have bathrooms. Can we do anything about that? Should we not take all possible opportunities to achieve the millennium development goals referred to earlier by the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry)?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is right. It is often not good enough just to establish the infrastructure. We need to ensure that we have looked at every aspect of the barriers that prevent girls from going to school.

When I was visiting family members back in Rotherham the other day—I will keep it brief, Mr. Deputy Speaker—I opened the Rotherham Advertiser to see the headline “Knickers for Malawi”. Two women in Rotherham are collecting knickers and sending them to little girls in Malawi, because, as we know, one of the reasons parents are reticent about sending their girls to school is their worry about the girls not having the appropriate underwear —and who can blame them? We need to remove some of those unusual and unpredictable but important barriers, as well as investing in the obvious infrastructure.

Rail Investment

Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Justine Greening

Monday 16th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We are looking at whether there is any possibility of opening lines. Our main focus has been on whether we can improve stations, and in fact open new ones, but over time we may be able to unlock some of those local decisions through the Department’s decentralisation approach. We have just consulted on that, some very interesting responses have come through and I hope that we will make some announcements later. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point with real interest.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

May I say how delighted we are about the Ely North junction? It is great news for East Anglia and for unlocking freight from Felixstowe, and we commend the Secretary of State on it. What further junctions can we look forward to for unlocking freight?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend has raised the issue tirelessly and recently had a Westminster Hall debate on the topic, and it is campaigners such as my hon. Friend who have really powerfully put the case to Ministers for looking at the issue and seeing what we can do to tackle it. The Ely junction will be done, and it matters massively, because it creates the potential for enhanced passenger services between Cambridge, King’s Lynn and Norwich, so it will have broader benefits, including freight, which, with Felixstowe nearby in her constituency, I know is close to her heart.