Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Rayner Excerpts

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We come to the deputy Leader of the Opposition.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to welcome yet another Deputy Prime Minister to the Dispatch Box—the third deputy I have faced in three years. You know what they say: the third time’s a charm. I am also pleased to note that the Prime Minister has a working-class friend—finally.

I seem to remember that, after the loss of 300 Conservative seats at last year’s local elections, the right hon. Gentleman resigned, saying “someone must take responsibility”. After 1,000 more Conservative councillors have been given the boot by voters, who does he think is responsible now?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

In the spirit of the right hon. Lady’s opening remarks, can I just say it really is a pleasure to see her here today? I was, though, expecting to face the Labour leader’s choice for the next Deputy Prime Minister if they win the election, so I am surprised that the Liberal Democrat leader is not taking questions today.

Mr Speaker, you will forgive me if I take the right hon. Lady’s predictions with a pinch of salt. After all, she confidently predicted that the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) would one day be Prime Minister. Remember, this is a man who wanted to abolish the Army, scrap Trident, withdraw from NATO and abandon Ukraine. What did she say to that? She could not wait for him to be Prime Minister.

[Angela Rayner]

It is absolutely amazing that while the Labour party is preparing to govern with a Labour majority, the right hon. Gentleman’s party is starting to prepare for Opposition. This week, at the National Conservative conference, the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) blamed the country’s problems on a “new religion”. He even hit out at the “dystopian fantasy of John Lennon”. The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) identified falling birthing rates as the “overarching threat” to the UK. She criticised “woke” teaching for “destroying…children’s souls”, causing self-harm and suicide among young people. And the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) really let the cat out of the bag when he said:

“Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever schemes come back to bite them, as dare I say we found when insisting on voter ID”.

The Deputy Prime Minister, while working in No.10, said he had to listen to the radio every morning to find out what was really going on in the country. Apparently, he was “surprised” on a daily basis by what he learned and most of his time was spent on “day-to-day crisis management”. Eleven years on, nothing has changed.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am not quite sure what the question was there. If the right hon. Lady wants to talk about that sort of thing, we all know what is going on with her and her leader. It is all lovey-dovey on the surface. They turn it on for the cameras, but as soon as they are off it is a different story—they are at each other’s throats. They are the Phil and Holly of British politics.

[Angela Rayner]

The reality is that after 13 years of Tory rule, they are still lurching from crisis to crisis and wallowing in their own mess. They cannot solve the crisis, because they are the crisis. The right hon. Member should take more note of what is happening at his conferences in his party before trying to make up what is happening in mine.

The Prime Minister pledged that by March NHS waiting lists would fall. It is now May. Can the Deputy Prime Minister tell us whether, since the Prime Minister made that pledge, the number of people on waiting lists is higher or lower?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We are making good progress, for example with two-year waiting lists, but the right hon. Lady seems to forget a crucial fact. The United Kingdom experienced an unprecedented pandemic. Right before covid, GP satisfaction was high, delayed discharges were halved and ambulance targets were being met. She knows that right now in Labour-run Wales exactly the same challenges are being faced. The difference between us is that on the Government side of the House we have a plan to fix it, while she is too busy playing petty politics.

[Angela Rayner]

Even before the pandemic waiting lists were going up, so it does not wash that this Government, after 13 years in power, are blaming everybody but themselves for what people are having to put up with. The right hon. Gentleman appears to be claiming that 11,000 patients waiting more than 18 months is an achievement. The last Labour Government reduced waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks. He can come back to me when he has achieved that. The fact is that waiting lists are longer than when the Prime Minister made his pledge five months ago. The number of people in England waiting to start hospital treatment is the highest since records began—7.3 million patients left waiting.

I know the Prime Minister has his own private GP, so maybe he does not appreciate the urgency, but he has left people like my constituent Carol waiting over a year for an urgent appointment, moved from waiting list to waiting list, with appointments cancelled again and again. If not now, when will waiting lists—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We will continue until I hear the end of this question. If I get any more interruptions, it will take longer.

[Angela Rayner]

They do not want to hear the question because they know the answer is that they have failed the British people. [Interruption.] When will waiting lists fall?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I gently say to the right hon. Lady, if she cares that much about access to our healthcare, why does she oppose our minimum service levels? They will provide emergency services with vital cover during healthcare strikes. Does she not think that vulnerable patients deserve that level of care, or is she too weak to stand up to her union paymasters?

[Angela Rayner]

We all want minimum service levels; it is this Government who have failed to provide them for all our trains and public services because they have run them down and mismanaged them for the last 13 years. It is not just waiting times; 13 years after the landmark Marmot review into child poverty, Sir Michael says that this Government are

“on track to make child poverty worse”,

with more than a quarter of our children living in poverty last year. When I was a young mum, I remember the sick feeling in my stomach not knowing if my wages would cover the bills, yet the right hon. Member’s Government have taken a wrecking ball to measures by the last Labour Government to eradicate child poverty, even abolishing the child poverty unit. They tried to justify that by saying that they no longer needed a child poverty unit because they have abolished the child poverty target. Can he tell us what level of poverty he considers a success?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I say to the right hon. Lady that this comprehensive school boy will not take any lectures from the Opposition party about the lives of working people.

We have introduced record increases in the national living wage—something that this party introduced and the Opposition party failed to. We have taken 1 million working-age people out of poverty altogether. That is the record of my party, and one of which I am very proud.

[Angela Rayner]

The last Labour Government made it their mission to reduce the number of children in poverty by a million. We achieved that. Under the Tories, child poverty is nearly back to the level it was at when Labour last inherited the Tory mess. After 13 years, the Tories are stuck in a conveyer belt of crises. While the right hon. Member’s party is preparing for Opposition with their Trump tribute act conference over the road, Labour has focused on fixing the real problems facing British people. They Tories have picked their side. They are for the vested interests, the oil companies and the bankers—for those who are profiting from the crisis, not those suffering from it. Whether it is failing the millions of people anxiously waiting for treatment or overseeing a rise in child poverty, while his colleagues spout nonsense at their carnival of conspiracy, I want to know, when will his party stop blaming everybody else and realise that the problem is them?

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Rayner Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the deputy Leader of the Opposition.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I also welcome the Ukrainian MPs to this House today.

Can I start by wholeheartedly welcoming the positive steps towards returning Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori to the UK? I am sure Members across the House want to show their support for their families and them. I know the Deputy Prime Minister would agree that this devastating situation must never be repeated, and other British nationals still trapped in Iran need to be brought home. So will he commit to a review of these cases to understand what more could have been done by the British Government to secure releases and whether the lazy comments of the Prime Minister worsened the situation?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I should first say that I cannot yet confirm the reports we have seen in the media, but of course it feels like positive signs. No one wants more than me—although I am sure all Members of the House want this—to see Nazanin and all the arbitrarily detained nationals reunited with their loved ones. I can tell the right hon. Lady, having worked for two years with the concerted diplomatic effort led by the Prime Minister, that we have done absolutely everything that we can. She should not give succour to the despotic regime that detained our nationals in Iran, or those around the world, by suggesting it is anyone else’s responsibility other than theirs.

[Angela Rayner]

It is exactly for that reason that I asked for the review. It is important to learn from our mistakes so that other innocent families do not face this ordeal again. I hope that the Deputy Prime Minister will consider my comments.

I would like to thank all the people who have been working tirelessly to bring British nationals home from Iran, our diplomatic staff and our world-leading British intelligence agencies. The role of British intelligence today is critical in the face of Putin’s aggression. The Deputy Prime Minister oversaw our foreign intelligence services as Foreign Secretary, so can he confirm if at any time he overruled or ignored direct advice from the British security services?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

What the right hon. Lady suggests is nonsense. She is talking about the House of Lords Appointments Commission, and it has a vetting process. I have never overruled intelligence advice, and I would not comment on the details of it. I do agree with her on the strength and agility of the British diplomatic service, who time and time again are the unsung heroes in returning British nationals, often in less celebrated cases. Now is a great opportunity to recognise the heroic work that they do.

[Angela Rayner]

I agree with the Deputy Prime Minister’s comments on the diplomatic service’s heroic work. He was Foreign Secretary on 17 March 2020 when British intelligence reportedly warned against granting a peerage to the Prime Minister’s close friend who is now Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia. Forty-eight hours later, the Prime Minister visited Lebedev at his home in London. Details of that meeting have never been released. In July 2020, Lebedev’s appointment as a peer was announced. Can the Deputy Prime Minister tell the House what changed between the security warning and the appointment?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the right hon. Lady knows full well, all individuals are nominated for a peerage in recognition of their contribution to society. I should say that that includes those of Russian origin who contribute brilliantly to our nation—many of whom in this country are critics of the Putin regime. Life peerages are vetted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission for matters of probity. Frankly, she should know better.

[Angela Rayner]

What I do know better is that a central duty of any Government is to keep the British people safe. There are now widespread reports that the Prime Minister did not accept warnings from our own intelligence services about granting a Russian oligarch—the son and business partner of a KGB spy—a seat here in this Parliament. It should not matter if such a warning was about a close personal friend of the Prime Minister. It should not matter if he gave the Prime Minister thousands of pounds of gifts. It should not matter how much champagne and caviar he serves. There are no ifs or buts when it comes to the safety of the British people. So I ask the Deputy Prime Minister: can he guarantee that the Prime Minister never asked anyone to urge the security services to revise, reconsider or withdraw their assessment of Lord Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The suggestion that the right hon. Lady is making is sheer nonsense. But if she wants to talk about national security, I remind her that not so long ago she and her shadow Cabinet colleagues wanted the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) to be Prime Minister—a man who wanted and talked about abolishing the Army and pulling out of Trident. She voted for that. Has there ever been a more ridiculous, reckless, naive moment to call for unilateral nuclear disarmament and to pull out of NATO? A Labour Government would put at risk our security. We are doing everything that we can to protect it.

[Angela Rayner]

Labour Governments increased support for our Army. Labour is committed to NATO. I remind the Deputy Prime Minister that it was his Prime Minister who said in 2015 that he was not sure if it was morally irresponsible to work with Putin. I do not think the Deputy Prime Minister is on safe ground there.

Last week, my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition said that Britain should never again be at the mercy of a foreign dictatorship for our energy and fuel security. This week, the Prime Minister has gone cap in hand from one dictator to another, on a begging mission for the Saudi prince to bail him out. The Government have had 12 years to end their reliance on foreign oil and to invest in home-grown energy to secure our supplies. Their failure has left us all vulnerable, reliant on another murderous dictator to keep the lights on and the pumps open. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am going to hear this question. If some people do not want—[Interruption.] If someone wants a little argument, I am more than happy to argue outside the Chamber, but for the moment I need to get on and I want to hear the question.

[Angela Rayner]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Government Benches have a choice. They could accept Labour’s plan to save working families hundreds of pounds on bills, funded with a one-off levy on the soaring profits of big energy companies. So I ask the Deputy Prime Minister, is their only plan to keep on begging?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Can I just gently say to the right hon. Lady that when she was campaigning, as the rest of them were, to make the right hon. Member for Islington North Prime Minister, this Prime Minister was the Foreign Secretary leading the response to the nerve agent attack.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dominic Raab]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I wanted just to point out, and I hope it is not ancient history, that the Prime Minister was, as Foreign Secretary, galvanising the response to the nerve agent attack in Salisbury at the time when the right hon. Member for Islington North, the former leader of the Labour party, was siding with Putin against the UK. What did the right hon. Lady have to say on Sky News? That he was a very strong leader and she could not wait for him to become Prime Minister. [Hon. Members: “More!”]

[Angela Rayner]

There is a war in Europe. There is a fuel energy crisis in Britain. Democracy is at risk. We must support the courageous efforts of President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people. These uncertain times require leadership with integrity, a leader who works with the security services, can be trusted to say the right thing for British diplomacy, and provides security for the British people. Instead, we have this sorry excuse of a Government sat before us. They hike tax on 27 million working people, while the super-rich increase their wealth. They watch energy prices rise by over 50% while companies enjoy profits they did not even expect. They cavort with Russian oligarchs in luxury villas while neglecting the security of the British people. Remember, they partied while the country was in lockdown and unable to see their dying loved ones. Can the Deputy Prime Minister look the British people in the eye and really say that this Government are doing their best in their interests?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Mr Speaker, I will tell you what this Government and this Prime Minister have done: 1,000 Russian individuals sanctioned with a combined wealth of $45 billion; the impact of the sanctions and the diplomatic effort that this Foreign Secretary and this Prime Minister have led; the rouble plummeting; the Russian stock market record lows; and interest rates doubled. We have also shown the big-hearted spirit of this Government, and indeed this nation, with 5,500 visas granted to Ukrainians to come here, and the humanitarian route, which has now got 100,000 sponsors applying to take Ukrainian families into their homes. While the right hon. Lady is in her social media echo chamber, that is what this Government are doing.