European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Kate Green Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 2nd sitting
Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments, with which I entirely agree.

Among the amendments that have been crafted by the SNP, new clause 43 is designed to oblige the Government to negotiate an agreement so that Dublin III as a whole continues as closely as possible to the current arrangements. So far as we can make out, it is different from other Opposition amendments, which focus only on children with family here. Our purpose is to challenge the Government to explain why the broader Dublin III system is not worth saving.

Amendment 28 relates specifically to children. Again, so far as we can see, it is the only Opposition amendment that goes beyond seeking an agreement and requires Ministers to put in place a scheme so that we keep accepting take-charge requests from unaccompanied minors. We in the SNP ask why that should be negotiated away. If we believe that children seeking international protection are best placed with their families, let us allow that to happen in the United Kingdom. If we get an agreement that the arrangement is mutual with the EU, that would be great, but why wait? Are we seriously saying that, in the unlikely event that the European Union decides to play bad cop, global Britain will not take these children?

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am following carefully the argument that the hon. and learned Lady is making. Does she not agree that the obligation the Government already have, under the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, to protect the best interests of children would be an essential factor in considering exactly the amendments that she is discussing, and that if they are refusing to accept those amendments, they are undermining that legislation and the intention behind it?

[Joanna Cherry]

I entirely agree with that point.

Supreme Court Ruling: Abortion in Northern Ireland

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

Again, my hon. Friend makes his long-standing views on this matter known, and I am sure the politicians in Northern Ireland will have heard them.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

May I say to the Secretary of State that the fact the decision on rape was a four-three majority decision means that it was a decision, an announcement, a pronouncement of the court? That is how the Supreme Court works; it does not matter how narrow the majority. May I also remind her of what Lord Kerr said? He said that

“it is incumbent on the state”—

the UK—

“to recognise the vulnerability of girls and women”

in relation to rape. Does she agree that human rights cannot be devolved and that she and the Government have the responsibility for them?

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think it is time. I do not think full-time trade unionists working in the public sector on trade union business rather than serving the public is right, and we will put that to an end. That is absolutely the case, and the evidence today makes that case even stronger.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Q4. Why are the Government freezing working tax credit, which helps the lowest paid workers, including those whose wages are too low for them even to pay tax, to make work pay?

[The Prime Minister]

As the hon. Lady knows, what we are doing with tax credits is that there will be a £255 increase this year, which is the largest ever increase in child tax credit, and there will be a further £135 increase next year—a 5.2% increase. I think that is the right increase in child tax credit. Helping those families, genuinely helping people to get out and stay out of poverty, helping on nursery education and helping to get low paid people out of tax is even more valuable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and pay tribute to him as a member of our Territorial Army reserve. He is himself a bomb disposal expert who has served in Afghanistan. What the bomb disposal and IED teams do is beyond brave. I saw for myself in Camp Bastion their training and instruction. They do a really extraordinary thing for our soldiers and our country. We announced an extra £67 million to give proper protection; £40 million of that is for more protected vehicles. We will also be doubling the number of teams. All the time, we have to keep up with the technology that our enemy is using.

My hon. Friend mentioned people coming home having lost one limb or two. These are young people, who do not just want to have a new limb and a quiet life—they want to run marathons and to climb Everest. They want to have fulfilled lives. We have to make sure that the support and the very best prosthetic limbs are there for them so that they can lead those lives.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Q7. In light of the earlier exchanges about employment and job losses, does not the Prime Minister think that the announcement this week of a further 4,000 full-time-equivalent staff being cut from Jobcentre Plus by next March amounts to a false economy?

[The Prime Minister]

First, I welcome the hon. Lady to the House. Not everyone will know that she was head of the Child Poverty Action Group, which has done incredible work in our country over many years. I pay tribute to her for that.

Let me just repeat: the forecasts show employment rising—that is the key—and employment is the best way of tackling poverty. Of course there are going to be public sector job losses, and of course there are going to be cuts in some programmes—that would have been true under a Labour Government, and it is true under our Government. The key, though, is gripping this problem so that we start to get confidence and growth in our economy and so we start to get the recovery. I say to Labour Members that they have got to engage in this debate rather than play this pathetic game of pretending there would not have been cuts under Labour. There would have been—they announced them, they just never told anyone what they were.