Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Boris Johnson and Roger Gale(2 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
I understand the pressure that people are under, but the best thing we can do, rather than endlessly taxing more and borrowing more, is make sure that we support people through this tough time, which we are doing, and ensure that we have a strong and growing economy in which we get people into work. We are cutting the cost of energy, but we are also taking the long-term decisions that the Labour party failed to take to invest in our energy for the future.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
Today’s updated Government figures show that of 28,300 applications submitted under the sponsorship scheme by people displaced in Putin’s war, just 2,700 have been processed. Can my right hon. Friend tell the House how many to date of those people have actually arrived in the United Kingdom? Will he give his support to my noble Friend Lord Harrington to cut through the Home Office red tape, simplify the application process and get people into the country?
The Prime Minister
We are processing 1,000 a day. Twenty-five thousand visas have already been issued; as I just told the House, almost 200,000 families have opened their homes and their arms to Ukrainians coming in fear of their lives, and there is no limit on the scheme. I think we can be incredibly proud of what the UK is doing.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Boris Johnson and Roger Gale(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right in what he says about the importance of buying British and eating British. Our food is the best in the world. He is also right to address the problems that we are currently seeing in the supply chain, but we are taking steps. Of course, it has been a problem for a long time, but we will use the seasonal agricultural workers scheme to ensure that British farms get the labour that they need.
Integrated Review
Debate between Boris Johnson and Roger Gale(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con) [V]
I share the view expressed by the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), at the start. I am proud to be a member of a party which, in its last manifesto, said that it would spend 0.7% of gross national income on overseas aid, but we all know that because of the fall in GNI, the 0.7% represents less money than it did a year ago. Now is not the time to cut our aid to Yemen or to withdraw our support for voluntary services overseas, so will my right hon. Friend consider bridging the gap by additionally donating extra supplies of the world’s finest, safest covid vaccine—the Oxford vaccine—to developing countries?
The Prime Minister
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for his suggestion. I remind him of what I said about the commitment of this country to overseas aid, which is enormous by any objective view. On the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, this is the only vaccine in the world, under the terms of the deal struck between the UK Government, the Oxford scientists and AstraZeneca, that is sold at cost around the world. I thank him for raising that, because it is another reason for people in this country to be proud of the outward-looking, engaging, fundamentally compassionate attitude of the British Government and people.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Boris Johnson and Roger Gale(3 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady is on to something, but she is barking up the wrong tree. We are not cutting the green homes grant. The problem is that there has not been enough take-up, and we want to encourage people to take it up and make use of the opportunity to reduce the carbon emissions of their homes.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con) [V]
The Prime Minister has said, and he has written in his foreword to the environment White Paper, that he is pledged to protect the countryside. The countryside is more than just a bit of green belt around the home counties. In Westgate, Birchington and Herne Bay in my constituency, and indeed across much of the garden of England, there are plans to smother acres of prime agricultural land in housing that is not needed for local people but that is needed to grow the crops to reduce the amount of food we import at a cost of carbon emissions. If the Prime Minister is the friend of the countryside, will he announce an immediate moratorium on the use of all farmland for housing, while the whole policy is reviewed?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Boris Johnson and Roger Gale(4 years, 7 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Again, that is a bit rich from a member of a party whose shadow Chancellor says that business is the enemy—[Interruption.] Where is he? He has gone. The hon. Lady should listen to the people of her constituency who voted to leave the EU and implement their wishes, and that is what this Government are going to do.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
Much has been made about provision for EU nationals resident in the United Kingdom post Brexit. Much less comfort has been offered to those 1.5 million United Kingdom nationals resident throughout the rest of the European Union. Is the Prime Minister in a position to confirm not on a piecemeal, but on a pan-European basis that all pensions will be paid in full, that exportable benefits will continue to be paid in full, that healthcare will be covered in full, and that rights of domicile and freedom of movement will be protected? There are frightened people who need an answer.
The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend and I can assure him that that matter is, of course, at the top of our concerns with all our EU friends and partners. We have made it absolutely clear that the very, very generous offer that this country has rightly made to the 3.4 million EU citizens here in this country must be reciprocated symmetrically and in full by our friends in the way that he has described.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Debate between Boris Johnson and Roger Gale(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Boris Johnson
As I say, remain and leave have been, to a very large extent, united in their dismay at what I think is a wholly undemocratic deal. The thing that really pains me—the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) asked about the role of Ministers in this—is that we on the UK side of the negotiation have been responsible for forging our own manacles, in the sense that it is almost as though we decided that we needed to stay in the customs union and in the single market in defiance of the wishes of the people.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend allow me to intervene?
Boris Johnson
I will give way in a minute to my hon. Friend, who has been chuntering away from a sedentary position behind me. We should be careful about claiming any kind of subterfuge—we have lost two Brexit Secretaries in the course of these negotiations, and it is very hard to understand how the former Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union could have been kept in the dark about the crucial addition to paragraph 23 of the political declaration. This country agreed in paragraph 23, apparently without the knowledge of the elected politician concerned, that our future relationship would be based on the backstop. No one campaigned for that outcome. No one voted for this type of Brexit. This is not Brexit, but a feeble simulacrum of national independence.
Boris Johnson
I will give way in a second to my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale). It is a paint and plaster pseudo-Brexit, and beneath the camouflage, we find the same old EU institutions—the customs union and the single market—all of it adjudicated, by the way, by the European Court of Justice. If we vote for this deal, we will not be taking back control, but losing it.
Sir Roger Gale
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. He appears to be one of those who prefers the grievance to the solution. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has come up with a solution. What is his big idea? [Interruption.]