Budget Resolutions

Debate between Ed Davey and Layla Moran

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

The Budget proved one thing about this Conservative Government: they are totally out of touch. They are out of touch with the cost-of-living crisis: despite people struggling with rising heating, food and mortgage bills, the Conservatives’ response is to raise their taxes. They are out of touch with the crisis facing our children: despite the dramatic loss of learning, thanks to covid, the Conservatives plan to spend less than a third of what their own catch-up expert recommended. They are totally out of touch when it comes to climate change: despite the Budget taking place on the eve of the most important set of climate talks ever, the Chancellor had literally nothing to offer on positive action for the climate. Instead, he offered tax cuts for people using fossil fuels, not least on short-haul flights.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

It was such a missed opportunity and such an own goal. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there were other things that the Government could have done, such as the electrification of east-west rail, which would have affected my constituency? That would have shown that the Government were serious about decarbonisation, but what they did was encourage people to fly when they should not be flying.

Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress

Debate between Ed Davey and Layla Moran

Thursday 28th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) should have waited for the speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton, because none of those things is true. Perhaps he will correct the record later.

[Sir Edward Davey]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. The intervention she just took was wrong on every count. It was the Conservatives who got rid of the Department for Energy and Climate Change, the zero carbon homes allowance; and the green deal, the carbon capture and storage experiments—I could go on—whereas the Liberal Democrats have a proud record. Under us and our policies, carbon emissions fell dramatically.

[Layla Moran]

So where do we go from here? The COP24 summit in Katowice, where countries settled most elements of the rulebook for implementing the 2015 Paris agreement, did not go far enough. I have been contacted by non-governmental organisations, the Climate Coalition, Green Alliance and the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association, and they are all disappointed by the lack of forceful language and ambitious pledges to come of out COP24. Not enough was agreed.

I am delighted to hear, however, that we are bidding for the next round. What are we doing about it and what progress has been made? It is a good thing, but what is going on? We must make sure it happens. What can we do to lead from the front? The lack of action by Parliaments and Governments has prompted young people from across the world to strike. We all know of 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, whose solo protest outside the Swedish Parliament started this movement. The idea has spread rapidly. Across the world, 70,000 school children each week in 270 towns have wholeheartedly supported what we are trying to do here, but they ask us to go much further.

Community Policing

Debate between Ed Davey and Layla Moran

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Edward Davey]

I agree strongly with the hon. Gentleman. I had an example of just such a case in my constituency recently. The gentleman concerned phoned my office because he was getting no response from 999. We answered the phone, I am delighted to say, and got on to the police. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, and those fewer police officers and PCSOs are what the debate is about.

When we look at the history of the cuts, and the reduction in police officer numbers—over a long time, as I said; this happened during the coalition—it is worth remembering that for the first four or five years of the cuts, during the coalition, crime was falling. Crime, whether measured by recorded crime or by the crime survey, went down during the first few years of the cuts, but it is not going down now; that is the point that Ministers have to grasp and act on. Crime up and police down will not keep people safe.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I have been doing the tour in my constituency of the local area commanders, as all new MPs do. They tell me that burglary is up, especially in the south-east, but that local people do not feel that the police have the resources they need. An email I recently received from a resident in Yarnton says:

“I'm afraid the only beneficiary is the criminal and their chances of arrest are slim, the insurance companies who have to increase premiums and the Government who gains additional tax on the insurance premiums.”

Is not how local people perceive the police just as important as whether they can respond, and should we not recognise the intense resource pressures that they are under?

[Sir Edward Davey]

My hon. Friend is right in so many ways. She pointed to the issue of burglary; I have knocked on doors in my constituency, and it is the rise in burglary that has most hit people. In many ways, burglary has the largest impact on ordinary people, and it can be quite dramatic, so she is right to say that. The example I gave of the police not responding was to a burglary, and the impact that has on the fear of crime is amazing. When the police do not respond, because they are so stretched, that has an impact on people’s view of the police, and their concerns that the police are not there for them when they expect them to be. She is absolutely right to say that the public want more local police to respond to their needs and to deal with the fear of crime, but we are seeing quite the reverse.