Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Alison McGovern and Esther McVey(5 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
The Minister without Portfolio (Esther McVey)
Ministers without Portfolio contribute to the policy and decision-making process of a Government. It is routine for the chair of the governing party to be made a Minister without Portfolio. As such, they serve as a member of the Cabinet. My role as a Cabinet Office Minister is to provide scrutiny and oversight across all Departments to ensure that we deliver best value for the public.
Alison McGovern
I welcome the right hon. Lady back to the Front Bench. If a Prime Minister needs to install a Minister for common sense, is that an admission that they do not really have any?
Esther McVey
I have seen the reports in the paper describing me as the Minister of common sense. I appreciate that the concept is difficult for Opposition Members to grasp. I am committed to delivering common-sense decisions, such as delaying the ban on petrol and diesel cars, delaying the ban on oil and gas boilers, scrapping High Speed 2 from Birmingham to Manchester and reducing the overseas budget—all common-sense policies that those on the Opposition Benches have voted against. Those on the Government Benches are full of common sense. I am building on all those policies.
Universal Basic Income
Debate between Alison McGovern and Esther McVey(1 year, 10 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Alison McGovern
I will set out the rest of my argument about what I think we should do to help to improve people’s incomes. And I will do so very quickly, Ms McVey.
People have mentioned the various pieces of research, which are important, because they tell us about how people respond to different systems. However, I think that this broken jobs market that we now face, whereby businesses are crying out for staff and there are vacancies left, right and centre, but too many people are stuck in work that is far too low-paid, shows exactly what is going wrong.
The problem with what the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies) said about work having been proven to be the best route out of poverty is that, for the past decade, the Tory Government have set out on a mission to prove that that is not the case. We need a social security system that does what it was designed to do—help people through different life stages when they need it, and help lift people out of disadvantage and into the dignity of work. There will always be people who are unable to work, but the vast majority of people want to be in work.
It is not obvious to me that there is a proposal on the table that does either of those things. Labour’s approach will be different. We need to change jobcentres—
Esther McVey (in the Chair)
Order. I need to hurry you along, because we still need to hear from the Minister and have the wind-up at the end.
Alison McGovern
My apologies, Ms McVey.
We need to change jobcentres to help people move on and move up in work, and progress our country to real full employment that involves disabled people and everybody in our country. That would be a plan towards progress.
Esther McVey (in the Chair)
Minister, will you be mindful of the need to leave a minute at the end for the Member in charge to wind up the debate?