Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Eric Ollerenshaw

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is the “long-term economic plan”, by the way.

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman how things are going in his own constituency. Never mind the academics; let us see what is happening for working people in his constituency. The number of people claiming unemployment benefit is down by 31%, the youth claimant count is down by 34%, and the long-term youth claimant count is down by 57% in the last year alone. If we look across London, we can see 470,000 more people in work, and more than half a million private sector jobs have been created.

What I want to know is this: when did the Labour party become the welfare party? When did that happen? It is Members on this side of the House who are standing up for hard-working people, and who are on the side of work and on the side of enterprise, reforming work and, yes, reforming welfare to make that happen.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

Q15. As part of the Prime Minister’s long-term economic plan to rebalance the British economy, will he continue to support Britain’s coastal communities, such as Fleetwood in Lancashire, to make up for 13 years of neglect by the last Labour Government?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of investing in our coastal communities, and that is what we have done through our coastal communities fund. So far more than 200 projects have benefited, creating or safeguarding more than 16,000 jobs. I know that Fleetwood received a boost from the fund last year, when Wyre council was given a grant to develop new tourist attractions, but I want to see more happen to help my hon. Friend’s constituents and to help our coastal communities, of which Fleetwood is such an important part.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Eric Ollerenshaw

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We have taken a whole series of steps in difficult economic circumstances, of which the first is parity of esteem in the NHS constitution. We have seen a big expansion of talking therapies that were not available under the previous Government; we have introduced for the first time a waiting time standard for young people with psychosis, which never existed under the previous Labour Government; and we have, for the first time, a Minister with dedicated responsibility for child and adolescent mental health services. Of course much more needs to be done. The demands on our mental health services are very great, but the steps that I have mentioned have not been taken by previous Governments. We have managed to take them because we have put the money in and made important reforms to get rid of bureaucracy. All of those things are possible only if there is a strong economy backing a strong NHS.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

Q3. On Saturday, the fountains of Trafalgar square, right through to Lancaster museum and Fleetwood’s Marine hall, were lit purple to raise awareness of pancreatic cancer. Will the Prime Minister look very carefully at the report produced last week by the all-party group on pancreatic cancer, with the support of Pancreatic Cancer UK, calling for more research into this dreadful disease before it becomes Britain’s fourth biggest killer in terms of cancer?

[The Prime Minister]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and the all-party group for the work that they do. I know how close this issue is to his heart and how much he feels this personally. The difficult situation here is that the one-year survival rate for those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer is about 20% and the five-year survival rate is only 5%, and that is not good enough. We are spending more money on research. We are investing a record £800 million over five years in a series of biomedical research centres, including the Liverpool pancreas biomedical research unit. We need the research to go in and for these new treatments to be properly tested so that we can improve these cancer survival rates as we have for other cancers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Eric Ollerenshaw

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can tell the hon. Lady what we have done on business rates, which is to extend the freeze on business rates that the last Government were going to get rid of. What we are also doing on business rates is to have a £2,000 cut in national insurance for every business in the country. For small businesses up and down our high streets, I cannot think of anything that will make a bigger difference than seeing their national insurance bill go down by £2,000 and being able to employ more people.

On the subject of how to help business, how on earth can it be a good idea to say that you want to increase corporation tax as you go into the next Parliament? That seems to me absolutely mad—a new Labour jobs tax.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

By the end of this year, more than 8,000 people in our country will have been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, of which only 4% will have even the chance of a five-year survival rate. Those figures have not changed for the last 30 years. Will the Prime Minister join the all-party group on pancreatic cancer and Pancreatic Cancer UK in their aim, which is that it is time to change and improve on those dreadful outcomes?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. An issue always raised by charities campaigning on some of the less well-known and less prevalent cancers is that they do not get a fair share of the research funding. That is an issue that I have taken up with the Health Secretary. We need to make sure that we are spreading research funding and the work we do into cancer fairly across the different disciplines and across the different cancers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Eric Ollerenshaw

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can quite understand why the hon. Gentleman raises this on behalf of his constituents. What happened is not acceptable. Clearly, it is an operational matter for the bank, but the Financial Services Authority has been monitoring this very closely. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland spoke yesterday to the chairman of RBS. The lessons must be learned, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that RBS has said that it will reimburse any customer for penalty charges or overdraft fees—anything that is incurred because of these difficulties.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

Q3. To be blunt, my constituents and businesses are losing faith in their banks. What they need from the Prime Minister is a reassurance that there will be no more political skeletons in the cupboard left by the Labour party.

[The Prime Minister]

What matters for my hon. Friend’s constituents and, frankly, for everyone in this House is that we get to the bottom of what happened as quickly as possible. We have had a vote in the House of Lords; we will have a vote in the House of Commons; and then we need to get on with it. We are sent to this House to hold these inquiries, to find these facts, to pass these laws. Let us get on with it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Eric Ollerenshaw

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

Q15. With unemployment down in Lancaster last week, I visited A & G Precision and Sons in Preesall in my constituency. It is a family-run company of only 40 employees that supplies components for the Hawk. It does high-precision work that is required nationally and internationally. I was told that it had turned two work experience places into full-time company-paid apprenticeships. Does that not show that things are moving in the right direction in Lancashire?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he says. I am sure he will be pleased, as well, with the order that BAE Systems had today from Saudi Arabia for Hawk aircraft, which is more good news for British jobs, British investment and British aerospace.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Eric Ollerenshaw

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady, who has a long record of supporting this cause, speaks for the whole House and the whole nation in raising it and stressing its importance. I met representatives of the Holocaust Educational Trust yesterday and I met a holocaust survivor, whose story was truly inspiring about what he had seen and gone through as a young boy—and then his coming to Britain and becoming an Olympic and Commonwealth contender. It was a fantastic story. We need to make sure that these stories are told in all our schools, right across the country. That is the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, and it is work that I strongly support.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

Q7. Is the Prime Minister aware that for the whole of Lancashire, average household income after tax is a little above £26,000? Yes, my constituents want a fair deal for those who deserve benefits, but they also want a fair deal for those who work and pay for benefits.

Public Disorder

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Eric Ollerenshaw

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about that. We plan to spend additional money on the 20,000 most troubled families in the country, with more early intervention and much better co-ordination. So often with those families, we find that they have contact after contact with the authorities, but that it is contact with them rather than work to change behaviour and address problems. The problem is manageable. I know that there are 20,000 such families, and there might even be 100,000, but it is still a manageable number which we can deal with during this Parliament.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

Two hours and 40 minutes ago the Prime Minister in his statement referred to the British model of policing. My understanding is that that model is policing through and by the public’s consent. Does he accept that he now has the public’s consent in such situations for a police force to rebalance its concerns about individual freedoms with its own freedom to act?

[The Prime Minister]

I know that my hon. Friend has been waiting two hours and 50 minutes to say that, but he puts it absolutely beautifully. None of us in the House wants to break with the British model, whereby the public are the police and the police are the public. They come from our communities, they are known to us and we know them, and it is a very special thing that we have, but that model has to be refreshed and updated with new tactics, resources and technology, as appropriate, so that it meets new threats. One message of the past few days is that police chiefs should feel that they have the political backing to make the necessary changes to meet new threats. “Don’t be stuck in the old ways of doing things if they are not working”—that will be one of the real lessons that we learn in the coming days.

Phone Hacking

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Eric Ollerenshaw

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As I said in my statement, this is one of the biggest police investigations currently ongoing in Britain. In defence of the Metropolitan police, next year is the Olympics and we have an enormous security challenge to get right in this country. The Metropolitan police has to meet a huge number of objectives—it is for the police authority to help to set those—so I do think it is putting adequate resources into this. As I have said, it is one of the biggest operations in Britain today.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

May I for one congratulate the Prime Minister and other party leaders on the speed and scope of all this? I particularly want to follow up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) about why the issue of police ethics is being dealt with only in relation to the Metropolitan police. It seems to some of us that there is a kind of cultural tradition across all police forces of having a tight relationship with favoured journalists. Perhaps in the short term my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary could talk to chief constables about starting their own procedures.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. First, the inquiry will make recommendations across all police forces from the lessons it learns about this malpractice. The point that Paul Stephenson and I were discussing last night was that there is an opportunity for the Met specifically to take a leadership role in what it does, which I am sure others will follow.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Eric Ollerenshaw

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

Q12. Last week the Government committed more than £100 million of investment to the M6 Heysham Port road link, promising to bring much-needed new jobs and businesses to my part of Lancashire. Can the Prime Minister reassure me that, despite our economic difficulties, the Government will continue to invest in major capital schemes, particularly in northern areas such as mine, which were much neglected by the last Labour Government?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We have prioritised, in a difficult spending round, spending on capital infrastructure, including the scheme that he mentions. It is important, as we go for growth in our country, that we put capital expenditure into our roads and railways, and things that will help our economy to grow. That is exactly what we are doing in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and in many other constituencies across the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Eric Ollerenshaw

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What I would say to the hon. Lady’s constituent is that we inherited a complete mess from the previous Government. We have a choice—we can deal with it or we can end up in a situation like in Ireland and other countries of not just cutting education maintenance allowance but cutting everything. We are going to replace it with something that is more targeted on those who need the money to stay on at school—that is in the best interests of her constituents and everyone else.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

Stepping Stones Nigeria is a children’s-based charity in Lancaster. It works with its Nigerian partners to rescue children who are accused of witchcraft and often, if they were left, would be persecuted or killed, and have recently been subject to a great deal of intimidation. Will my right hon. Friend ask the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to do whatever it can to assist the children’s-based charities in Nigeria?

[The Prime Minister]

We have very close relations with Nigeria, and I am sure that the Foreign Office will be interested in what my hon. Friend has to say. The charity to which he refers does an extremely important job.