Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Mary Creagh

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise national apprenticeship week, which is a really important moment to advertise to businesses large and small the advantages of taking on apprentices. What we are going to see during this Parliament is 2 million apprenticeship starts. That is what we are aiming for, and there have already been some 1.6 million. As my hon. Friend says, unemployment in his own constituency has fallen, as has the claimant count, but we want to see many more apprentices and we also want smaller firms to come forward and take on their first apprentice.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

In 2006, 7-year-old Christi Shepherd and her little brother Bobby died of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty boiler at their hotel in Greece. Their father Neil and his partner Ruth narrowly escaped with their lives and after seven agonising years the inquest into their deaths is about to begin, but the Legal Aid Agency has refused the family funding to be legally represented at the inquest, and on Friday Thomas Cook tried to prevent the inquest from even taking place. Will the Prime Minister meet me and the parents to hear why it is imperative that the parents are legally represented at this inquest so the full facts surrounding their children’s deaths are learned, and so that no other British family suffers a similar tragedy when they take their children on holiday?

[The Prime Minister]

I do remember this absolutely tragic case and it is appalling that it has taken so long for the inquest to take place. When you have lost a child, you want answers and to know why it happened, whether it could have been prevented, and that lessons will be learned for the future. I am very content to arrange the sorts of meetings the hon. Lady talks about to help in this case and to make sure that the Foreign Office, which does an excellent job in helping people when they are dealing with issues overseas, is doing all it can to help her constituents.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Mary Creagh

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We were left a complete mess in terms of Building Schools for the Future. Here was a programme that took up three years and hundreds of millions of pounds before a single brick was laid. The cost of building those schools was twice what it should have been, so we have scrapped that programme and made available £15 billion for the next four years. That means that school building will be higher under this Government than it was under the Labour Government starting in 1997.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Rubbish!

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, it will be. Go and check the figures.

Saville Inquiry

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and Mary Creagh

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. One of the great prizes of the peace process would be for Northern Ireland to experience politics in the same way as the rest of us in the United Kingdom where it is about knocking on doors and talking about the health service, schools and water rates. That is what politics should be about, and there is a chance of that happening. It was great to go to Northern Ireland as Prime Minister without the normal security paraphernalia that previous visits involved, so we are making progress. That is what politics in Northern Ireland should become. The more that happens, the more people will find it unthinkable to go back to the days that came before.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Thirty-eight years is too long for any bereaved family to wait for justice and today’s report is a historic step on the long road to permanent peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Does the Prime Minister agree that today’s report will be welcomed by the families who have campaigned for so long for justice for the 13 men and boys who died on that day?

[The Prime Minister]

I hope that the families will welcome the report, and I know that they are gathered in Derry today. I know that they will have been watching our proceedings and will have read the report—they had access to it in advance of its publication. As I have said, nothing that anyone can write or say will bring back those who were killed, but I was very struck by a remark by one of the relatives, quoted in a newspaper this morning, that the truth can help to set you free. If you have been living with something for 38 years without any answers, the answers do not end the grief, but they do give you a chance to learn what happened and therefore bring some closure to those dreadful events.