Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Ruth Jones

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is a massive champion for his constituency of North West Durham. I am delighted that he has been a supporter of County Durham’s city of culture bid—culture in its widest interpretation. I support him in everything he does.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

Q6. I am sure the Prime Minister knows that this is Dementia Action Week, and I am proud that the UK Dementia Research Institute now calls Wales home. In 2019, the Tory manifesto promised to double funding for dementia research, but the researchers are still waiting for this money. So can the Prime Minister tell me, in Dementia Action Week, when the dementia moonshot will be delivered?

[The Prime Minister]

We intend fully to deliver the dementia moonshot, but never forget that Labour was the party that voted against £13 billion a year extra for the NHS.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Ruth Jones

Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend has raised this issue before and I know how infuriating it is for his constituents. That is why the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has now ordered action against the site operator, and I can tell my hon. Friend that permanent capping will begin on site next month, which will improve things for thousands of residents in his constituency. If it is necessary to take further action to remove those malodorous vapours, we will do so.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

Q7. With details of the Sue Gray report trickling out, a flood of photos of partygate yet to be released and any number of fixed penalty notices liable to be leaked, this is a Prime Minister who is not fit to run a bath never mind this country. It is time for him to stop this ridiculous charade that he believes no rules were broken. Will he commit to making public every fixed penalty notice he receives; will he publish the party photos taken by the official photographer; and will he ensure that Sue Gray’s report is published at the earliest opportunity? We have a right to know the truth.

[The Prime Minister]

On my own fixed penalty notice, I have been transparent with the House—and will be—and I have apologised. On the rest of it, I really think, as I have said before, that the House should wait for the conclusion of the investigation when Sue Gray finally reports.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Ruth Jones

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for that suggestion, which is both interesting and ingenious. The oil and gas companies create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the UK, and they are very important to our economy. I will do what I can to take forward his request for a meeting with them, but I remind him and the House that we have frozen fuel duty for 12 years in a row, saving people £15 in the cost of filling up their tanks, compared with 2010.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

6. I understand that the Prime Minister has been heard singing “I will survive” in recent days. I suggest that he would be better off singing “Careless Whisper” instead, because, in 2017, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was condemned to an extended prison sentence in Iran because of the careless words of this Prime Minister. Now, in 2022, this week, my friend, the Leader of the Opposition, was hounded by thugs outside this Parliament because of the careless, disgraceful words of this Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister do the decent thing? Will he reconsider his words, repent and resign?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not think that the hon. Lady should let the thugs and yobs who bullied and harassed the right hon. and learned Gentleman off the hook, because they are culpable, any more than she should let the Iranian Government off the hook, because they are culpable.

AUKUS

Debate between Boris Johnson and Ruth Jones

Thursday 16th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can certainly assure my hon. Friend that this will be great for jobs across the United Kingdom, but as I said, there is an 18-month scoping programme to work out exactly how the labour is going to be divvied up.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I have listened very carefully to the Prime Minister’s statement. He mentioned the new well-paid jobs, which we all welcome, and all countries of the UK, but he did not mention Wales. Will he tell me why Wales has been left out of this jobs fest?

[The Prime Minister]

All parts of the United Kingdom, including the great Principality of Wales, will—I have no doubt—benefit from this agreement.

Covid-19: Road Map

Debate between Boris Johnson and Ruth Jones

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab) [V]]

I know that the Prime Minister was in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) last week to see the vaccine programme being rolled out by the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board at Cwmbran Stadium. I join him in thanking all the Welsh NHS staff and volunteers who are working so hard to save lives by rolling out the vaccine programme. However, does he agree with me and many people across Newport West that every single penny of public money must be accounted for? If so, what is he going to say to his Health Secretary, who, according to the Court, breached his legal obligation by not publishing details within 30 days of contracts being signed? We have had two attempts at getting the Prime Minister to answer, so I am hoping it is third time lucky.

[The Prime Minister]

I am going to ruthlessly repeat what I said before, which is that I believe that it was absolutely right for this country to secure PPE as fast as we possibly could, just as it has been right to roll out a vaccine programme as fast as we possibly can. It was great to be in Cwmbran and see what they are doing there. That is thanks to the dynamic work of the NHS and everybody in the Department of Health and Social Care, including the Health Secretary.

Integrated Review

Debate between Boris Johnson and Ruth Jones

Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question, because he is right to highlight the importance of soft power. Studies have shown that we are among the biggest wielders of soft power in the world—we are a soft-power superpower. That soft power has many components, of which the British Council is one, but a robust, self-confident defence policy that allows us to project strength around the world is also hugely valuable. Hard power leads to soft power.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. Like many people throughout Newport West, I welcome the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States and Kamala Harris as the first woman Vice-President. Will the Prime Minister tell us how he explained, in his first phone call with President-elect Biden, the actions of his Government’s undermining of the Good Friday agreement?

[The Prime Minister]

What I said to President-elect Biden was how much I congratulated him and Kamala Harris on their election and how much we look forward to working together on a number of issues. On Northern Ireland, I made the point that we both share the strong desire to uphold the Good Friday agreement and the stability of Northern Ireland and that that was the purpose of the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, but more importantly we talked about what we were going to do not only to advance the cause of free trade, international democracy around the world and human rights, but to tackle climate change. It was a very good phone call.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Ruth Jones

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The only comment I would make on all that was that I was genuinely amazed that the leader of the Unite union should make a remark of the kind that he did, and that the Labour party should remain in receipt of funding from Unite and take no steps to dissociate itself from that union after that remark. I did find that absolutely astonishing.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

  Happy anniversary, Mr Speaker.This week, the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee stated that centralised contact tracing will always be less effective than a locally driven model. Given the fact that in Wales track and trace cost £32 a head, is run by local authorities and works, whereas the English system cost £1,700 a head, is run centrally and does not, when will the Prime Minister introduce a more effective track and trace system driven by local authorities?

[The Prime Minister]

I am not going to pretend that every aspect of NHS Test and Trace has worked in the way that I wanted to, but as I said earlier on, it has achieved some very considerable things. What I think it has also done throughout the pandemic, from the get-go, is work with local authorities and local people. What we will be doing now, as we roll out the mass testing that I have described to the House in Liverpool and elsewhere, will be led by local people, and we will be working with those local authorities to deliver those programmes.

Covid-19: Strategy

Debate between Boris Johnson and Ruth Jones

Monday 11th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes indeed. The intention is that the covid alert system, in time, will be sufficiently sensitive and flexible to detect local flare-ups, so that, for instance, if the covid is detected in the water supply of a certain town or in a school in an area, steps can be taken on the spot to deal with that flare-up and measures taken to keep the R down locally as well as nationally.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab) [V]]

The Prime Minister claims to have devised a new stage of his plan having consulted across all four nations of the UK, yet the First Minister of Scotland claims that the first she saw of it was in the newspapers and the First Minister of Wales says that the UK Government only engage in fits and starts, while the First Minister of Northern Ireland is sticking to the original stay home message. Devolution does exist and we have it across the UK, so can the Prime Minister please explain what on earth is going on?

[The Prime Minister]

I think any impartial view of what the UK is doing will see that there is much more that unites our approach than divides it, although I note that of course it might seem attractive sometimes to accentuate the divisions. We fully respect and understand the necessity, where there are different rates of infection, sometimes to take a different approach, but I can also say to the hon. Lady that there has been intensive and very good communication between the Government and all the devolved Administrations throughout this period, and that will continue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Ruth Jones

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Most people in this country would agree that the system of automatic early release of terrorist offenders has run out of road and that it is time to find a way, as we are doing, to make sure they are properly scrutinised by a parole board or an equivalent.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

Q12. Thanks to the tireless work of my predecessor, the late, great Paul Flynn, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), and the families of children with intractable epilepsy, medical cannabis is now legal in the UK, so can the Prime Minister answer calls from the families of very sick children who need medical cannabis as to when this medicine will actually be available on the NHS? Will he come to Portcullis House with me after this session to meet these families and to personally assure them that he will do all he can to help?

[The Prime Minister]

It was this Government and my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary who legalised medicinal cannabis, and I undertake that he will certainly be happy to meet the hon. Member’s constituents this afternoon.