Oral Answers to Questions

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 6 July.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

Today is a big day—[Interruption]—as we implement the biggest tax cut for a decade, increasing national insurance thresholds to make tax lower and the tax burden easier. These changes will benefit 30 million people across the UK and I am pleased to say that two of those people—Mandy Banfield and Alan Calzari—are seated in the Public Gallery. A typical worker will now save £330 per year, with 70% of employees better off as a result. That is real money for real people.

I am sure the House will also join me in wishing the best of luck to England and Northern Ireland, who are competing in the UEFA women’s Euro 2022 tournament, which starts today. I am sure that they will both make the nation proud.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others—[Interruption.] In addition to my duties in this House, I expect I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Ben Everitt]

Last week, we launched a new approach to combating knife crime in Milton Keynes, which means increased use of stop and search, tougher charging and custody, tougher sentencing, faster youth diversion and more work with parents and communities. Does the Prime Minister agree that if someone carries a knife in Milton Keynes, they should expect to end up behind bars?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he is doing to campaign for tougher sentences and against knife crime in Milton Keynes. As a result of what the Conservatives have done, adults who are convicted of certain offences involving a knife, including threatening with a knife or a second offence of possession, face a minimum sentence of six months’ imprisonment—and guess who voted against tougher sentences for knife crime?

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the Leader of the Opposition.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Today is the start of the women’s Euros, and I know that the whole House will wish the Lionesses the very best of luck in bringing football home.

It has been 40 years since the death of Terrence Higgins. Terrence worked at Hansard by day and Heaven by night before he sadly died of AIDS. The Labour party and the Terrence Higgins Trust are committed to ending new cases of HIV by 2030. Together, we can.

Last week, a Government Minister was accused of sexually assaulting a young man. I want to quote the victim’s account. He says: “He grabbed my arse and then he slowly moved his hand down in front of my groin. I froze.” I accept that that is not easy listening, but it is a reminder to all those propping up this Prime Minister just how serious the situation is. The Prime Minister knew that the accused Minister had previously committed predatory behaviour, but he promoted him to a position of power anyway. Why?

[The Prime Minister]

That individual, the right hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), no longer has the Conservative Whip. He no longer has a job. As soon as I was made aware of the allegation that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has just read out—the complaint that was made—he lost his status as a Conservative MP. He is now the subject of an independent investigation by the complaints and grievances panel and that is entirely right. I want to say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I abhor bullying and abuse of power anywhere in Parliament, in this party or in any other party.

[Keir Starmer]

None of that explains why he promoted him in the first place. And we have heard it all before. We know who he really is. Before he was found out, he is reported to have said, “He’s handsy, that’s the problem. Pincher by name, pincher by nature.” Has the Prime Minister ever said words to that effect? I am not asking for bluster and half-truths—we’ve all had enough of that. Yes or no?

[The Prime Minister]

I am not going to trivialise what happened. [Interruption.] Yes, Mr Speaker, because very serious complaints have been raised against the right hon. Member for Tamworth and they are now being investigated. It is true that a complaint was raised when he was in the Foreign Office and the matter was resolved. It is absolutely true that it was raised with me. I greatly regret that he continued in office and I have said that before, but it is now the subject of an independent investigation and that is the right thing. Frankly, I think the people of this country would like also to hear about other jobs that are held by people in this country, not least the 500,000 people we got off welfare into work in the last six months alone. Those are things that are making differences to the lives of people up and down the country and I am proud of it.

[Keir Starmer]

No denial. He says the matter was resolved when he means it was upheld. And they are all sitting there on the Front Bench as if this is normal behaviour. When that young man reported his attack to a Government Whip, she asked him if he was gay. When he said that he was, she replied, “That doesn’t make it straightforward.” That comment will sicken anyone who has experienced sexual assault and then been made to feel like they somehow asked for it, or who worry that prejudice means their complaint will not be taken seriously. Will the Prime Minister apologise for those disgraceful comments on behalf of his Government?

[The Prime Minister]

I have already said that I regret very much that the right hon. Member for Tamworth continued to hold office after the complaint was made against him in the Foreign Office. It was resolved in the Foreign Office and his apology was accepted, but clearly that was not enough and in hindsight I should have realised that he would not change. However, when it came to Friday last week, and when I was given the information that the right hon. and learned Gentleman read out about the complaint that was made against the right hon. Member for Tamworth, I acted immediately and I took the Whip away from him. We will not tolerate that kind of behaviour in this or in any other party. What we also want to do is to help people up and down the country with the things that also matter to them like cutting their taxes by £330 this year, which is what we are doing.

[Keir Starmer]

Doesn’t that just sum up the Prime Minister? Awful behaviour, unacceptable in any walk of life: it is there for all to see, but he ignores it. It was the same when his ally was on the take from lobbyists. It was the same when his Home Secretary was bullying staff. It was the same when taxpayers’ money was being abused, and it was the same when he and his mates partied their way through lockdown. Anyone quitting now after defending all that has not got a shred of integrity. Is this not the first recorded case of the sinking ship fleeing the rat?

[The Prime Minister]

Look, the right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about—[Interruption.] He should hear what his lot say about him. He talks about integrity; he wanted to install the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) into No. 10. That is what he wanted to do—imagine what our country and what the world would be like now. He talks about integrity; he voted 48 times to overturn the will of the British people and take us back into the European Union. By the way, listening to his muddled speech the other day, that is exactly what he would do again. He talks about integrity, but he has voted time and time again against sanctions on criminals that would put them behind bars. This is the Government who are tough on—[Interruption.] I am sorry—he talks about integrity; he is himself facing a criminal investigation, for which he asked me to resign.

[Keir Starmer]

What a pathetic spectacle: the dying act of the Prime Minister’s political career is to parrot that nonsense. As for those who are left, they are only in office because no one else is prepared to debase themselves any longer—the charge of the lightweight brigade. Have some self-respect! For a week, he has had them defending his decision to promote a sexual predator. Every day, the lines he has forced them to take have been untrue: first, that he was unaware of any allegation—untrue; then, that he was unaware of any “specific” allegation—untrue; then, that he was unaware of any “serious, specific” allegation; and now he wants them to go out and say that he simply forgot that his Whip was a sexual predator. Anyone with anything about them would be long gone from his Front Bench. In the middle of a crisis, does the country not deserve better than a Z-list cast of nodding dogs?

[The Prime Minister]

When times are tough and when the country faces pressures on the economy and pressures on budgets, and when we have the biggest war in Europe for 80 years, that is exactly the moment when we expect a Government to continue with our work, not to walk away, to get on with our job and to focus on the things that matter to the people of this country. So we are not only cutting taxes today, but putting £1,200 into every one of the 8 million most vulnerable households in the country, thanks to the strength of our economy and thanks to the decisions that we took, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposed at the time.

[Keir Starmer]

The only thing that the Prime Minister is delivering is chaos. I started this session with a quote from the young victim in all this—how he “froze” when he was attacked. When I was prosecuting rapists, I heard that from victims all the time. Victims said they froze because “It’s not about sex; it’s about power”. The power that the disgraced Government Minister had was handed to him by that Prime Minister, and he is only in power because he has been propped up for months by a corrupted party defending the indefensible. So it is no longer a case of swapping the person at the top; is it not clear that the only way the country can get the fresh start it deserves is by getting rid of the lot of them?

[The Prime Minister]

The difference between—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We have to get through Prime Minister’s questions.

[The Prime Minister]

The difference between this Government and that Opposition is that we have a plan and they do not, and we are getting on with it. They want to focus on this type of issue; we are going to get on with our jobs. We are going to control prices by not giving in to the union barons; they are paid by the union barons and they are proud of it. We were the first European country to arm the Ukrainians; I am proud of that. Those guys, in the Labour party opposite, not only wanted to put the right hon. Member for Islington North into No. 10, but eight of them—the shadow Foreign Secretary, the shadow deputy leader and six others—voted to get rid of our independent nuclear deterrent. Today, we are cutting taxes, we are helping half a million people into work and, thanks to the strength of our economy, we are helping people up and down the country. And we are going to continue to deliver on the mandate I was given.

[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

2. On Monday night, the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill had its Third Reading. With it, we are at the beginning of the end of the long journey to making sure that the service and sacrifice of those who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Northern Ireland are not rewritten by those who seek only to line their own pockets. Does the Prime Minister agree that we can never again allow such a gulf to open up between this place and those who serve? Never again must they be made to feel that we are not on their side. Will he redouble his commitment to making sure that this is the best country in the world to serve in the military and to be a veteran or their family?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for all the work that he has done and continues to do for veterans. The Bill will give veterans the certainty that they deserve. We are fulfilling the manifesto pledge to end the cycle of investigations, but at the same time we are making sure that families can get the answers that they need about what happened to their loved ones.

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the leader of the SNP.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

May I give every best wish to the England and Northern Ireland ladies’ football teams as they approach the Euro championship? There is nothing better than seeing your team in the final.

We commemorate the passing of Terrence Higgins 40 years ago, and of all those who have died from AIDS since then. I am sure that the whole House will also want to join me in passing condolences to the family and friends of the Scottish football goalkeeping legend, Andy Goram, who sadly passed last weekend, far too early. He will long live in memory as the best goalkeeper that many of us have seen.

It is easy to forget that only 10 days ago the Prime Minister was dreaming of a third term. It is often said that a week is a long time in politics, but it turns out that 10 days is truly a lifetime. Let us face it: it is a minor miracle that the Prime Minister has even made it through to Prime Minister’s questions. He really ought to see the faces behind him. Prime Minister, it really is over.

The Prime Minister is desperately clinging on to his own fantasy, but the public cannot afford to put up with this farce of a Government a minute longer. Today we should be talking about the Tory cost of living crisis, soaring inflation and the growing costs of Brexit, but instead it is always about him. How many more Ministers need to quit before he finally picks up his pen and writes his own resignation letter? Perhaps that is what he is doing now.

[The Prime Minister]

Actually, I was just jotting down some notes about the right hon. Gentleman’s question, which I thought was excellent when he was talking about the economy, because that is the issue that the country faces. That is where this Government are introducing, I think, the most important decisions—helping families up and down the country, with £1,200 going into their bank accounts right now; cutting taxes for 30 million people, with a £330 tax cut; and helping half a million people into work, through the Way to Work scheme. That is a fantastic thing to be getting on and doing. That is the priority of this Government, and that is what I am going to focus on. I am glad he likes it.

[Ian Blackford]

My goodness! Nothing to see, we should all move on—if we live in the world of the Prime Minister.

A few weeks ago, I compared the Prime Minister to Monty Python’s black knight. It turns out that I was wrong: he is actually the dead parrot. Whether he knows it or not, he is now an ex-Prime Minister, but he will leave behind two deeply damaging legacies. I hope that the dishonesty of his leadership will follow him out of the Downing Street door, but the other legacy is Brexit—and that will stay, because I am sad to say that the Labour party now fully supports it.

Scotland wants a different future, not just a different Prime Minister, so if the Prime Minister will not resign, will he call a general election and allow Scotland the choice of an independent future, free from the control of Westminster?

[The Prime Minister]

I noticed that the right hon. Gentleman’s remark that the Labour party had given up on returning to the European Union was not greeted with rapture by the Opposition. That was because it is not true: they want to go back in, just as he does. I think that that is a terrible mistake. It would be undemocratic. As for the referendum that the right hon. Gentleman wants, we had one of them—as I have told him before—in 2014.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

6. Does the Prime Minister think there are any circumstances in which he should resign?

[The Prime Minister]

Clearly, if there were circumstances in which I felt it was impossible for the Government to go on and discharge the mandate that we have been given, or if I felt, for instance, that we were being frustrated in our desire to support the Ukrainian people, or over some major point, then I would. But frankly, Mr Speaker, the job of a Prime Minister in difficult circumstances, when he has been handed a colossal mandate, is to keep going, and that is what I am going to do.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Well, there you have it, Mr Speaker. Once again, the Prime Minister puts political survival before public duty. However, people can see that even if he goes—it is not an if; it is a when, isn’t it?—the same Westminster arrogance will continue to dictate our futures in Wales. Does the Prime Minister want a medal for being the best recruiting sergeant for independence we could wish for?

[The Prime Minister]

Actually, whenever I look around the United Kingdom—I had a great talk with Mark Drakeford the other day, as well as talking to Nicola Sturgeon—I see the bonds of our Union being strengthened all the time, and I am confident that that will continue.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

8. The Government’s town centre levelling-up funds have been very successful around the country, but a few town centres, such as Waterlooville in Meon Valley, are in desperate straits and have not managed to get a scheme into the current round of funding. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that future funds will be available to help declining high streets to become fit for the 21st century and to survive post pandemic?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is a great champion for Meon Valley, and I will ensure that she has a meeting with the Minister for levelling up at the earliest opportunity.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

3. The public clearly think that this Government have lost the plot over the cost of living crisis. The Prime Minister may be aware that the average salaries of a nurse and a primary school teacher are £36,000 and £38,000 respectively. They, and indeed working people everywhere, are struggling to pay their rents and their mortgages. Given that they can barely afford a £150,000 mortgage on a new home, can the Prime Minister tell the House how he could afford a £150,000 treehouse?

[The Prime Minister]

What I can tell the hon. Gentleman is this. Rather than talking about fantasy infrastructure, I can tell him about real infrastructure. We are helping to unite and level up the people of this country with £650 billion of investment. We are helping people—helping to lift the aspirations and opportunities of people up and down the country. Thanks to the strength of our economy, we are helping exactly the people whom the hon. Gentleman describes, with £1,200 going into their bank accounts to help them with the cost of living pressures.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

10. The Prime Minister knows that while he is Prime Minister, I want him to do all the good that he can. While he is Prime Minister of this green and pleasant land, may I refer him to early-day motion 1082, which concerns the Goring Gap, Chatsmore Farm, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and the land above Goring station? That farm in Worthing was fully protected, and it will be fully protected again when a different inspector says that Worthing Borough Council can protect it. May I ask the Prime Minister to tell the Government to withdraw their objection to the council’s appeal against the absurd decision by a planning inspector to allow 482 homes to be built on the green lung between Goring and Ferring?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much. He has campaigned on this issue for some time, and I will ensure that he has a meeting with the relevant Minister to discuss the development in Goring-by-Sea.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

4. On 21 January, the Government committed £100 million from the automotive transformation fund to BritishVolt for a gigafactory at Cambois in my constituency. As of today, not a penny—not a single ha’penny—has been received by the company. This jeopardises up to 8,000 much-needed jobs. The tensions between the Prime Minister and the former Chancellor have sadly now been much exposed, and I am telling you, Prime Minister, that the betrayal of my constituents cannot be another broken promise by this Government. Prime Minister, give him a nudge. Please instruct your new bestie to make sure a cheque is in the post this afternoon, because who knows who will be in that seat this afternoon, never mind this time next week.

[The Prime Minister]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the passion with which he advocates for investment in BritishVolt. I share his enthusiasm, and I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Ian Levy) as well. He is a heroic campaigner on this issue. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the letter was sent last night with an in-principle offer of support for that project. How about that! Hang on in there. That is what I am going to do.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

12. The world is facing a global food crisis, in which the poorest nations face catastrophic consequences. Will the Prime Minister take all possible action to negotiate and facilitate access to the grain stores stranded in Ukraine? We have a limited opportunity to avert famine in developing nations and the UK must play its full part using all the resources at our disposal.

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is completely right. There are 25 million tonnes of wheat that are basically being held hostage by Putin. That is the equivalent to the annual consumption of many of the least developed countries, and we are helping to lift that blockade not just by negotiation but by supplying de-mining equipment, insurance for the commercial ships that might be involved and also £10 million to help improve the railway infrastructure that will be necessary to get the grain out by rail.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

5. Yesterday the Prime Minister said that he was fed up of people saying things on his behalf. It is not just him who is fed up: so are the British people, and so are his Ministers who are resigning. They are sick of being sent out by him time and again to say things that are not true. Is the real problem him, or them for believing him in the first place?

[The Prime Minister]

I want to be clear. What I want to say, and I say it again, is that I regret the way the appointment happened. I was clear with the House about what I knew at the time, but I want to stress that I take this matter extremely seriously. I am very sorry for the impact it has had on the victims, but the individual in question, the right hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), is now subject to an independent complaints and grievance procedure. As soon as that began—as soon as a complaint was made, I should say—the Whip was taken away.

[Mr Speaker]

Let me just say that we do not know that that is the case. It is confidential, and I think we have to stop referring to something we do not know. I want to put the House on notice that we do not mention it.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

13. Just over a fortnight ago, two horrific fatal stabbings took place on a quiet street in East Barnet. With the Metropolitan police now in special measures for the first time in its history, will the Prime Minister urge the Mayor of London to start living up to his responsibilities as police and crime commissioner? The Mayor needs to get a grip on crime, give Barnet its fair share of new officers and abandon his plan to sell Barnet police station.

[The Prime Minister]

I notice that crime has spiked since the previous Mayor of London, and it is the Labour party that voted against stop and search and against increased funding for the police. As for the London Mayor, he would do better to get out of California and take control of crime in his city.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

7. According to the NHS Confederation, not a single one of the so-called 40 new hospitals that the Prime Minister promised at the last election will be built by 2024. Two of those “new” hospitals are in my constituency: Hammersmith Hospital opened in 1902, and Charing Cross Hospital opened in 1818. They are not new hospitals and there is no building going on. Like all his promises, they exist only in his warped imagination. As this is likely to be his last Prime Minister’s questions, will he finally tell us the truth?

[The Prime Minister]

Actually, if the hon. Gentleman looks at what we have promised and what we have delivered, we said we would get 20,000 police out on the streets, and we already have 13,500 more; and we said we would get 50,000 more nurses, and we are already on track. He is quite wrong about the pledge on hospitals, as we are going to deliver them by 2030, as was always clear. The only reason we can do that is because we are putting the funding into our NHS that he and his party opposed.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

Yesterday, in an attempt to boost morale in the Tea Room, the Prime Minister said to one table, “There were seven MPs in the Carlton Club last week, and one of them should have tried to intervene to stop Chris drinking so much.” As if that was not insulting enough to the people who did try to intervene that night, it is insulting to the victims to say that drink was the problem. Is this not another example of the Prime Minister constantly trying to deflect from the issue? He always tries to blame other people for mistakes. There is nothing left for him to do other than to take responsibility and resign. [Applause.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Can I just say that Members ought to be embarrassed by clapping? [Interruption.] Order. Mr Esterson, this is not a debating society. This is Prime Minister’s questions. I want to get through the questions because other people want to catch my eye, and the way to do it is not by clapping.

[The Prime Minister]

There is a very simple reason why they want me out, and that is because they know that otherwise we will get on with delivering our mandate and win another general election. That is the reality.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

9.   The Prime Minister once wrote:“It is a wonderful and necessary fact of political biology that we never know when our time is up. Long after it is obvious to everyone that we are goners, we continue to believe in our ‘duty’ to hang on…to the perks and privileges of our posts…In reality, we are just terrified of the come-down.”For the sake of this great country, will the Prime Minister heed the advice of his former self, get over his terror and do the decent thing?

[The Prime Minister]

I refer the hon. Lady to the answer I have just given. When things are tough, of course people turn their fire on the leader of the country. It is my job to get on and deliver our manifesto, which we are; deliver on the mandate on which I was elected; and get this country through tough times, just as we got it through covid. That is what I am going to do.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Around 1,000 delegates from 100 countries are at the freedom of religion or belief international ministerial conference over at the QEII centre today, and there is still time for hon. Members to visit. Does the Prime Minister agree that this significant conference will count for nothing unless it results in concerted global action to promote and protect freedom of religion or belief around the world?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much. Freedom of religion or belief is integral to people’s identity, their sense of themselves and their personal security. I thank her for her work as my envoy on this subject, and for the wonderful conference she has organised. It was great to talk to her about it yesterday.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

11. Will the Prime Minister join me in expressing my deepest condolences to those injured and affected by the explosion in a block of flats on Redwood Grove in Bedford on Monday that has sadly led to the death of one resident, with others yet to be accounted for? This is a timely reminder of the dangerous work undertaken by the fire service. Will he join me in praising the emergency service workers who were at the scene, and will he reconsider his 2% pay offer when firefighters have endured a 12% real-terms pay cut over the last decade?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much, and I share very much his support for the firefighters of our country. They do an incredible job, and overall it is a testament to their work that deaths from fire over a long period have, on average, been decreasing, thanks to the work that they put in. We will look at the public sector pay review body offer and do our best to fund as much as we can, but everybody knows the inflationary pressures that this country is now under. We do not want to have pay increases that are simply swallowed by price increases.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

North Moreton, in my constituency, was dubbed “Britain’s kindest village”—[Hon. Members: “Ahh!”] Wait for it. This 160-home village was dubbed “Britain’s kindest village” because it committed to taking 50 Ukrainian refugees, and it has them all there now. In the Gallery today there is a group of those hosts and some of the Ukrainians they are hosting, including two young people who hope to go into Ukrainian politics in the future. Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming them to this place and in thanking North Moreton for its efforts?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for what he is doing to host young Ukrainians. I thank everybody in this House who is looking after Ukrainians—a lot of people are doing that. I believe it is the wish of this entire House that those young people should grow up to live in a free, independent, democratic and sovereign Ukraine.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

Given that the Prime Minister does not like walk-outs and strikes, what legislation will he be introducing to stop further walk-outs and strikes among his Cabinet colleagues and junior Ministers?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that the whole House will have observed the brilliant performance on the radio this morning by the new Chancellor of the Exchequer—that is no disrespect to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer. It shows that, in common with many sectors of the UK economy, there is a ready supply of skilled labour in the upper reaches of the Conservative party.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I would like to draw the Prime Minister’s attention to the words he used in response to the earlier question from my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). Six months ago, I called on the Prime Minister to resign because even then it was clear that his approach to leadership and integrity was already creating a pipeline of problems that would paralyse proper government. Today, I ask him to do the honourable thing: to put the interests of the nation before his own interests, before, in his own words, it does become “impossible” for government to do its job.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend very much for the point he has made again, but I just could not disagree with him more. Look at what the Government are doing today. We are cutting taxes for 30 million people, we have just completed a programme to get half a million people off welfare and into work, and, thanks to the strength of our economy, thanks to the position we are now in—because of decisions that we took and the Opposition opposed; we should never forget that—we are able to give £1,200 to 8 million of the poorest and most vulnerable families in this country. That is the right thing to do, we are getting on with it and we will continue with our active and energetic programme for the benefit of this country, uniting, levelling up and unleashing the prosperity of the entire nation.

[Mr Speaker]

For the final question, I call Clive Betts.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

The Local Government Association has told us that more than 400 families who have come to this country from Ukraine under the family scheme have subsequently presented them- selves as homeless to local authorities. Because the local authorities have not got enough accommodation, those people are going to end up in temporary accommodation. There is a simple answer: local authorities could be allowed to contact the many thousands of people who volunteered to provide homes under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. The problem is that the Government do not allow families to transfer from the family scheme to the Homes for Ukraine scheme. When will the Prime Minister act to ensure that people who have come thousands of miles to this country are not placed in temporary accommodation and that we take up the generosity of those families who are willing to offer them a home?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for the very valuable point he has raised, and we will make sure that families are able to cross over from one scheme to another, to simplify and speed up the process. But I do not think that that should take away from the generosity of this country in welcoming Ukrainians; 135,000 visas have so far been issued through our uncapped scheme—both the family scheme and the Homes for Ukraine scheme. That is changing the lives of those Ukrainians, and we should all be proud of what we are doing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 25 May.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

Mr Speaker, I want to begin by echoing what you have just said about the reports of the fatal shooting in a Texan primary school. Our thoughts are with all those affected by this horrific attack.

Yesterday, I welcomed the Emir of Qatar to Downing Street. It is excellent news that Qatar announced that it will invest up to £10 billion in the UK through our new strategic investment partnership. Not only will that boost local economies and support jobs; it will support our green economy and decarbonisation.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Anthony Browne]

Cambridge is one of the most expensive places in the country to live, but unlike many cheaper places, NHS workers in the city get no high cost of living supplement. NHS workers in Cambridge pay higher rents than NHS workers in outer-London boroughs, such as Redbridge, Croydon, Bexley and Barking, and yet they get paid 15% less. That makes it very difficult for the NHS in Cambridge, including Addenbrooke’s Hospital, to retain and recruit staff. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister work with me to make sure that NHS workers in South Cambridgeshire and Cambridge get paid fairly?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion for his constituents and for Addenbrooke’s. We are very proud of our NHS, which is why we are putting in record investment. I hope that the independent NHS Pay Review Body will listen carefully to what he has just said.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

My thoughts and, I know, the thoughts of the whole House are with the families of the victims of yesterday’s school shooting in Texas. Nineteen children have died, some as young as seven, as well as two adults believed to be teachers. It is an unspeakable tragedy, and our hearts are with the American people.

Last weekend marked the anniversary of both the Manchester bombing and the murder of Lee Rigby, and we remember them this year as we do every year. Today is also the anniversary of the killing of George Floyd, a reminder that we must all tackle the racism that is still experienced by so many in our country and beyond.

The Sue Gray report was published this morning and I look forward to discussing that during this afternoon’s statement with the Prime Minister. For now, I want to focus on the cost of living affecting the whole country.

Since we stood here last week and I asked the Prime Minister yet again to back Labour’s plans for a windfall tax to reduce energy bills, hundreds of millions of pounds have been added to the bills of families across the country, and hundreds of millions of pounds have landed in the bank accounts of energy companies. It sounds like he has finally seen sense and the inevitable U-turn may finally have arrived, so when can people across the country expect him to use those oil and gas profits to bring down their bills?

[The Prime Minister]

There is nothing original about a Labour plan to tax business. Labour wants to tax business the whole time. Every day, the party wants to put up taxes on business. What we are doing is helping people. The right hon. and learned Gentleman asks when we are going to help people. We are helping people now. We are putting £22 billion into people’s pockets already, cutting council tax by £150, cutting fuel duty, and cutting national insurance contributions by an average of £330 for people who pay NICs. How can we afford that? We can because we have a strong economy, because we came out of covid fast, which would not have been possible if we had listened to Labour.

[Keir Starmer]

Fifteen tax rises and the Prime Minister pretends they are a low-tax Government. It has been four and a half months since Labour first called for a windfall tax on oil and gas profits. I have raised it week in, week out, and every week he has a new reason for not doing it. The Business Secretary said it is “bad”, the Justice Secretary called it disastrous, and even this weekend the Health Secretary and the Northern Ireland Secretary opposed it. The Prime Minister ordered all his MPs to vote against it last week, and now—surprise, surprise—he is backing it. Prime Minister, I am told that hindsight is a wonderful thing! [Laughter.] But while he dithered and delayed, households across the country suffered when they did not need to.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

There is no surprise about Labour’s lust to put up taxes; there is nothing original about that thought. Labour Members get off on it; they absolutely love to confiscate other people’s assets. What we prefer to do is make sure that we have the measures in place to drive investment in our country and drive jobs, and it is thanks to the steps that we took and thanks to the fact that we came out of covid faster than any other European country, which would not have been possible had we listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, that we now have unemployment at the lowest—[Interruption.] Listen to this—Labour used to care about this, Mr Speaker. We now have unemployment at the lowest level since 1974. Put that in your pipe.

[Keir Starmer]

I actually thought that, with this U-turn, the Prime Minister might get his head out of the sand, but obviously not. The reality is that every day of his dithering and his delay, £53 million has been added to Britain’s household bills. While he is distracted by trying to save his own job, the country has been counting the cost. But complacency is nothing new for this Government: back in October, the Chancellor delivered a mini-Budget that has to be reread to be believed. With inflation already climbing, he said that he understood people were concerned about it, and that the Government were “ready…to act”. Since then, inflation has risen to a 40-year high—the highest rate of any G7 country. If the Government were so ready to act six months ago, why have they not done so?

[The Prime Minister]

The Government have acted, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor continues to act. This is the Government who not only put in the living wage—it was a Conservative institution—but have now raised it by £1,000, a record amount. Families on universal credit have another £1,000. Thanks to the £9.1 billion that we have already put in to support people’s cost of heating, we are abating the costs of fuel for people up and down the country, and of course we are going to do more. We are going to put our arms around the people of this country, just as we did throughout the covid pandemic. We can do that because we took the tough decisions to drive the fastest vaccine roll-out in Europe, which would not have been possible if we had listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Let me take another statistic: youth unemployment—Labour used to care about it—is at or near a record low.

[Keir Starmer]

It was not just the Chancellor back in September—the Prime Minister called fears about inflation “unfounded”. He was the last person to spot the cost of living crisis, just as he is the last person to back Labour’s plan to help people through it. It was not just on inflation that they got it badly wrong. In the same speech, the Chancellor boasted about growth, as the Prime Minister does today, and how we would do better than all our major competitors. It was obvious that he was being complacent. Lo and behold, Britain is set to have the lowest growth of any major country except Russia, despite our brilliant businesses and all we have to offer. Why has his Government inflicted on Britain the twin-headed Hydra of the highest inflation and the lowest growth?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman loves running this country down. [Interruption.] How many times did he come to this place and say that the United Kingdom had the highest covid death rate in Europe? How many times? He was proved completely wrong. Did he ever apologise? Absolutely not. Did he ever take it back? Absolutely not. Actually, because of the steps we took, last year we had the fastest growth in the G7, and we will return to the fastest growth by 2024-25, thanks to the decisions that this Government took. [Interruption.] Labour does not care about getting people into jobs. We care about the working people of this country and making sure we have a high-wage, high-skill, high-employment economy, and that is what we are delivering.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister talks about running this country down; he is running this country down! It was not just complacency on Labour’s windfall tax, which he is now backing; it was not just complacency on inflation, which is now through the roof; and it was not just complacency on growth, which is now spluttering along at the back of the pack, because his Chancellor also claimed that people should

“keep more of the rewards of those efforts.”—[Official Report, 27 October 2021; Vol. 702, c. 286.]

Then he put their taxes up. Does the Prime Minister want to explain to hard-working people, whose wages are running out sooner and sooner each month and who are facing astronomical bills and prices, just how his 15 tax rises since taking office have helped them to keep more of their rewards in their pocket?

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, what we are doing is making sure that after a huge pandemic we are funding our vital public services, which we can because of the steps that we took. What we are also doing is making sure that we put more money back into people’s pockets through the measures I have outlined today, whether through cutting national insurance contributions, lifting the living wage or lifting universal credit. All that is made possible because we took the responsible and sensible steps to protect our economy throughout covid and then to come out strongly. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is completely wrong about this country’s growth performance. He runs it down. He was proved wrong about covid, and he is going to be proved wrong again.

[Keir Starmer]

Just delusional.

Last week, I raised the case of Phoenix Halliwell, whose kidney condition means he needs daily dialysis and whose energy bill has gone through the roof as a result. I am glad that as a result, Government officials got in touch with Phoenix yesterday, and I hope that will result in more support for people who are vulnerable, but it should not be left to Labour to turn up week after week to make the Prime Minister aware of the consequences of his dither and delay.

I want to raise another issue where the Government are sleepwalking into disaster. With the summer holidays looming, there are reports that the Home Office already has a backlog of 500,000 passports to issue. That is potentially more than half a million people worrying whether they will get away this summer. Can the Prime Minister reassure people that they will not miss out on their holidays due to the failures of his Home Office?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman very much, but I can tell him, actually, that what we are doing is massively increasing the speed with which the Passport Office delivers. To the best of my knowledge, everybody is getting their passport within four to six weeks. That is because we are driving the leadership of this country and we are getting things done that would never have been possible if we had listened to the Opposition. We got Brexit done when he voted 48 times—48 times—to undo the will of the people. We got the vaccine roll-out done when he would have kept us in the European Medicines Agency. We were the first European country to help the Ukrainians resist Vladimir Putin. Does anybody seriously believe for a second that the Opposition would have done it? [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Some are trying to boo; some are trying to cheer. The worst of it is that I cannot hear the Prime Minister.

[The Prime Minister]

Let me say very plainly: does anybody seriously think for a second that the Labour party would have done that when eight of the shadow Front Bench, including the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who is mysteriously not in his place, voted recently to get rid of this country’s independent nuclear deterrent, and when the Leader of the Opposition campaigned to put Vladimir Corbyn—I mean, sorry, Jeremy Corbyn—in Downing Street?

We get on. We do the difficult things. We take the tough decisions. Social care: we are fixing it. We deliver; they dither. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Prime Minister, we cannot both be on our feet. I am trying to help you; you have to help me as well. I am sure you have got to the end, because Mr Stuart is itching to get his question in.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Q4. When the Prime Minister gets passionate, things get done. Brexit is done. The vaccine—[Interruption.] If the Opposition can contain themselves—the vaccine roll-out is done. So will he personally intervene so that the immunocompromised, like my constituent Scott, can get access to British wonder-drug Evusheld—not next winter, not next year, but now—so that they can enjoy this summer and enjoy their freedom, just like the rest of us?

[The Prime Minister]

As my hon. Friend, who I know has taken a keen interest in this for a while, Evusheld has the potential to reduce the risk of infection. We must look at the evidence before we can make a decision about whether it should be available, but I will make sure that the Department of Health and Social Care keeps him updated on the progress we are making.

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the leader of the SNP, Ian Blackford.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

I want to join others today in expressing my deepest sorrow at the horrific events in Texas yesterday. Some 19 children and two teachers have needlessly lost their lives. Many of us in Scotland will be remembering the tragic events that took place in Dunblane 26 years ago. The thoughts and prayers of the SNP are with the families suffering today, but we also hope that lawmakers will finally act to bring to an end the scourge of gun violence that plagues the United States.

The reports of the Prime Minister’s and Downing Street’s lawbreaking have been damning: empty bottles littering offices; rooms so crowded people were sitting on each other’s laps; and security forced to intervene because parties were so outrageous. At the centre was the Prime Minister orchestrating it and grabbing a glass for himself to toast the partygoers. For eight months, we have heard every excuse under the sun, but now we have all seen the damning photo evidence. While people stayed at home to protect the NHS, the Prime Minister was engaging in drinking and debauchery that makes a mockery of the gut-wrenching sacrifices that each and every person made. Will the Prime Minister now take the opportunity and resign?

[The Prime Minister]

I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that, much as I appreciate his advice, he will have a further opportunity, which I am sure he will take with his customary length, to debate that matter in the course of the statement that will follow directly after PMQs.

[Ian Blackford]

These are serious matters, but it is all a joke to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has lost the trust of the public. He has lost what little moral authority he had left. The Prime Minister has apologised many times, but not because he feels any genuine remorse. He still refuses to even admit that there were parties and that he presided over them. He apologised for one simple reason: he got caught. The reality is that no apology will ever be enough for the families of people who lost loved ones—the families who followed the rules, who stayed at home while their nearest and dearest were dying, and who are now forced to look at photographs of the Prime Minister, surrounded by drink, toasting to a party in the middle of a lockdown.

If the Prime Minister will not accept that he must resign, those on the Tory Benches must act. This Prime Minister, who has broken the law and shown a cavalier attitude to the truth, cannot be allowed to remain in office. Time is up, Prime Minister. Resign! Resign before this House is forced to remove you!

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much, and I direct him to the report. I think it would be to his advantage to look through it and then I think we should return to it after PMQs.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Q6. High streets and heritage mean a lot to the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. Burslem and Tunstall, two of the great six towns of Stoke-on-Trent, are plagued with rogue and absent landlords who are only too happy to let shops sit empty and historically important buildings, such as the Price and Kensington Teapot Works, fall into ruin, which is why I introduced my Planning (Proper Maintenance of Land) Bill to increase fines on these ruinous owners. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that, as part of the Government’s planning reform, he will adopt my Bill, which imposes a new unlimited fine, so these reckless reprobates can be held accountable?Up the Vale for Saturday, Mr Speaker!

[The Prime Minister]

Hear, hear, Mr Speaker—up the Vale!

I thank my hon. Friend for his campaign, and I think he is entirely right. We have adopted the measures that he proposes in the Bill so that those who leave properties derelict unreasonably could face an unlimited fine.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

I was pleased to meet the Prime Minister last week in Royal Hillsborough in my constituency. We welcome his commitment to introduce legislation to deal with the protocol and the Irish sea border, and to protect the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. That will take some time. In the meantime, as in the rest of the United Kingdom, hard-pressed households in Northern Ireland are suffering from the cost of living crisis. Will the Prime Minister give me an assurance that any measures that are brought forward by the Chancellor in the near future to help hard-pressed households will apply to Northern Ireland, and that the protocol will not be allowed to prevent Northern Ireland citizens receiving the support they need from the Government at this time?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much. As he knows, I have already detailed to the House a package of measures to support families across the whole of the UK. I may say that I also think it would be an advantage to the people of Northern Ireland, in tackling the issues that we all face across the UK, if Stormont were to be restored.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

Q7.   The recent report on levelling up the rural economy highlighted many areas where more work is needed in small rural and coastal communities to ensure that they also benefit from our levelling-up agenda. Does the Prime Minister agree that we need to ensure that levelling up reaches into rural and coastal Devon? Will he meet me and Helen Hurford, our excellent candidate in Tiverton and Honiton, to agree how we can progress our plans for Devon?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, of course. My hon. Friend is a fantastic advocate for Devon and rural communities, and I will ensure that both she and Helen Hurford get a meeting with the relevant Minister to discuss her ideas further.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

Q2. Rising fuel costs are causing serious problems for workers in car-dependent rural areas such as Ceredigion, and for carers and district nurses the situation has reached a crisis point. One carer from Ceredigion often has to travel 29 miles just to reach her first service user of the day and travels about 1,700 miles each month. Will the Prime Minister therefore consider extending the rural fuel duty relief scheme to areas such as Ceredigion to help my constituent and many like her to continue their invaluable work?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Member for his excellent question. Rural fuel duty relief is there to compensate motorists by helping retailers in some more remote rural areas where pump prices can be significantly higher. It currently operates on a geographical basis, but I am happy to ensure that he gets a meeting with the relevant Minister as fast as possible.

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

Q8. Labour and socialism have failed the country because their failed policies interfere too much in people’s lives, over-regulate, spend too much taxpayers’ money, borrow too much and raise taxes. Will the Prime Minister tell the House what policies his Government will follow to ensure that we do not have a similar fate?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I can. I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right that Labour’s instinct everywhere and always is to put up tax, with all its—[Interruption.] Well, Labour Members are bragging about it today—it is ludicrous. What we are doing is not only cutting people’s contributions under national insurance but helping businesses to invest with the 130% super deduction that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor put in. That is helping us to have a high-wage, high-skill economy, with unemployment—yes, I have said this before, Mr Speaker—at its lowest since 1974.

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Q3.   Days before the election of disgraced former Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan, his victim warned the Conservative party of the abuse that he had suffered.

[Gill Furniss]

Shockingly, the party has failed to act on the report and still will not explain why. That is why Rotherham child sexual exploitation survivor Sammy Woodhouse has called for an independent investigation into the failure, warning that the Conservative party has

“broken the trust of victims”.

Will the Prime Minister personally back that call and launch an independent investigation into the failure to act so that victims can have confidence that his party will never again turn a blind eye?

[The Prime Minister]

I hear what the hon. Member says and the sensitivity of the issues that she raises. Given the legal proceedings that are currently going on, I do not think it would be right to comment any further.

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

Q10.   While the politics of politics often gets all the attention, back in the real world millions of parents—I declare a quite obvious interest—are being held back by issues with childcare schemes, which have been a muddle under Governments of all political colours. The taxpayer is spending five to six billion quid a year and we have some of the highest costs in the world during a cost of living squeeze. Stroud parents and early years educators are also really stuck with the bureaucracy. I know that my right hon. Friend has personally asked Ministers to investigate options to reduce the costs of childcare. Will he tell us a little more about what we can do urgently, and will he work with me and the Onward think-tank on reforms?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I thank my hon. Friend very much. She and I have talked about this. This is a subject in which I take a direct personal interest. There are things we can do to make childcare more affordable. One issue is that not enough people take up tax-free childcare, so we need to have more take-up of what is on offer. We can also look at ways in which we can reform and improve the system.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q5. Next month marks five years since the horrific Grenfell Tower fire which killed 72 people. My constituency of Vauxhall has many tall buildings similar to Grenfell. In 2019, the Prime Minister rightly told this House that where the inquiry recommends Government responsibility for fire safety, “we will legislate accordingly.” But last week the Government dropped the inquiry’s recommendation that a personal evacuation plan should be in place for disabled residents, claiming basic safety would be too expensive. Grenfell United said that that showed“cutting costs is more important than the value of human life.”Will the Prime Minister urgently reverse this deeply inhumane decision and not break another promise to this House?

[The Prime Minister]

Let us be clear: if there is an issue with fire safety in a building, extra steps should be taken and remediation should be made. When it comes to self-evacuation, the Home Office has launched a new consultation to support the fire safety of residents who are unable to self-evacuate, but if the hon. Lady has further representations to make on that point, I will be very happy to ensure she gets a meeting with a Minister in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

Q15. Mr Speaker, I am not a cynical sort but I was slightly perplexed this week when the Cabinet Secretary and the director general of Government Propriety and Ethics, no less, were banned from attending my Committee, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, to give evidence. That meeting had been scheduled for two months. I cannot possibly think why, Mr Speaker. I wonder which particular subjects my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was most concerned about being raised by my Committee. Was it the case of undeclared loans and donations in kind, security insights into appointments to the House of Lords, or indeed the consultation of the Propriety and Ethics unit in ministerial appointments?

[The Prime Minister]

I know my hon. Friend is not a cynic; he is one of nature’s idealists. I will make sure that all relevant Ministers and civil servants appear before his Committee.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Q9. The Prime Minister is leading a long queue of Conservative MPs lining up to show how out of touch they are. Bills are rising and people are struggling. A quarter of people in work in Putney earn less than the London living wage. They do not need to be told how to budget better, to learn how to cook or how to buy value food. They are already doing so. When will the Prime Minister get a grip on this crisis and when will he bring in the windfall tax?

[The Prime Minister]

What we are doing for the people of Putney, and indeed the people throughout the country, is making sure that we invest now in protecting them, as I have said to the House and I have said repeatedly, not just with the increases in universal credit, the living wage and the warm home discount and cutting fuel bills, but with the £330 cut in NICs. The reason we can do that is that we have a robust economic position and strong employment. That is giving us the revenue to pay and to cushion people at this difficult time. It would not have been possible if we had listened to the Labour party during covid.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

This weekend tens of thousands of Huddersfield sports fans are coming down to London. On Saturday, Huddersfield Giants are in their first rugby league challenge cup final for over a decade, and, on Sunday, it is Huddersfield Town in the championship play-off final for a place in the premier league. As well as wishing the best of luck to both Huddersfield teams, will the Prime Minister, agree with me that the best way that Labour-run Kirklees Council can honour the sporting tradition of Huddersfield is by following through with its pledge to house the new national rugby league museum in its birthplace, the George Hotel in Huddersfield, and not pull out of that deal, as it has indicated it wants to do?

[The Prime Minister]

Is that the Labour council pulling out of its deal? I am not surprised. All I can say is that I congratulate my hon. Friend on his campaign for a national rugby league museum and I urge him to take it up with the Arts Council or other relevant bodies.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Q11. Under cover of the pandemic we have seen a massive shift in wealth from the poorest to the richest. A partying Prime Minister and a law-breaking rich list Chancellor have lined the pockets of their wealthy pals while upwards of 175,000 of our fellow citizens have died from covid, and they are now sitting on their hands and laughing in our faces as the cost of living crisis and fuel poverty could well leave thousands more to die of cold in their own homes. So when we saw pictures of the Prime Minister partying in the middle of the pandemic was he toasting his assault on the working class, and how on earth does he sleep at night with so much blood on his filthy, privileged hands?

[The Prime Minister]

From furlough onwards everything we have done since the pandemic began has been to get money into the pockets of the working people of this country; those are the people who time and again we have prioritised. I do not for a moment doubt that things are tough—I do not doubt it for a moment—but it is our intention to get this country through it, and we will get through it very well by putting our arms around people as we can, and as we will because of the fiscal firepower we have, but also by making sure that we continue with the high wage, high skill, high employment economy that we have. The best way to get money into people’s pockets is for them to have a job.

[Jill Mortimer (Hartlepool) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that when the Leader of the Opposition spins his myth of a low tax Labour party, he clearly needs a memory jog? [Interruption.] May I remind Labour Members that in 2019 they all stood on a manifesto that would have inflicted the highest tax burden on the people of this country in peacetime—and that is probably why there are so few of them over there on the Labour Benches?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, Labour campaigned to put up taxes on business to the highest level this country has ever seen; that was the Leader of the Opposition’s ambition, and that is what they would do again. Be in no doubt, that is what they love to do—we can feel the lust for tax rising off those Opposition Benches—and that is why there has never been a Labour Government who left office with unemployment lower than when they came in.

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Lab)]

Q12. Yesterday the head of Ofgem advised MPs that the energy cap is due to increase to £2,800 in the autumn, more than double last year’s cap. I know the Prime Minister has been busy drafting and redrafting his half-arsed apologies rather than helping the people of Bury South, but at which work event—[Interruption.] At which work event did he realise Labour’s call was the right thing to do; considering he and his party voted against it last week? Is it just to save his own neck?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I could not hear the question or the advice I was being given, and it might be helpful if I could hear both. Prime Minister, did you manage to hear the question?

[The Prime Minister]

I heard enough to have a rough idea of the nonsense the hon. Gentleman was talking. We are not only supporting people now but will continue to put our arms around the people of this country, as we did during the pandemic and beyond.

[Mr Speaker]

Can I just say that moderate language is what we normally use, but I do not hear it now? It does not suit the Chair and I do not think it suits the country.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

The Prime Minister will recall that I previously raised with him the plight of 170 British Council contractors who remain in Afghanistan in fear of their lives, 85 of whom are deemed to be at very high risk. I had a positive meeting with the refugee Minister, Lord Harrington, last week, but we face bureaucracy that is preventing the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office from helping these people now courtesy of the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme. Will the Prime Minister help us cut through that red tape and help these people, as we owe them a debt of obligation and time is running out?

[The Prime Minister]

I will see what we can do to help those particular people but I just remind the House that we not only evacuated 25,000 people under Op Pitting, which was a great credit to this country, but since then have supported 4,600 more to come to this country, and we will do what we can to help the people my hon. Friend mentions.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q13. Jubilee LEAD Academy in my constituency, working with Nottingham citizens, recently asked me to visit the school to hear about their low pay campaign. They are tired of seeing people in our community working hard but living in poverty. Bills are rising and inflation is at 9%, yet the Government seem incapable and, frankly, a little disinterested in doing anything to help out. Our children can see the need for emergency action; why cannot our Government?

[The Prime Minister]

Everybody in work—30 million workers—will get a tax cut in July, on top of everything that we are already doing, but that is not the end of what this Government are going to do to look after people. I told the House before this afternoon that we will continue to use our fiscal firepower to look after the British people through the covid aftershocks and beyond.

[Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

On Monday at 3.25 pm, a school bus crashed into a group of schoolchildren in Llanfair Caereinion. Three children were airlifted to hospital, with another child and the bus driver taken by ambulance, and a fifth child was discharged at the scene. Everyone is in a stable condition. Clearly, this is a tragic accident that will stay with the community for some time. Will the Prime Minister join me and, I am sure, the whole House in sending our love and prayers to those in hospital? Will he also praise the teaching staff of both the primary and the high school, Wales Air Ambulance and Dyfed-Powys police for their heroic and continuing response to the community?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this very sad incident. I am sure that the thoughts of the whole House will be with those who have been affected. I want to join him, in particular, in paying tribute to the emergency services and, of course, the teachers and staff at the school, who did so much to help.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

Q14.   My constituent, Robert Walker, sadly died last year. He worked for MI6 and, as such, disclosed in confidence that he was a gay man. That confidence was breached by the HR department at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Recently unearthed paperwork showed that that breach largely accounted for his wellbeing issues and enforced early retirement. Will the Prime Minister offer Bob’s partner, Stephen Honeyman, a posthumous apology and commit to asking the FCO for a formal response to his treatment while he worked at MI6?

[The Prime Minister]

I begin by saying how grateful I am to the hon. Member for raising that case. I am afraid that I do not know directly about the events that she describes. What she says is very concerning and I will make sure that she gets a meeting with the relevant Minister as soon as possible.

[Mr Speaker]

That ends Prime Minister’ questions—for those who wish to leave. I say to the House, as we come to the next statement, that I expect moderate and temperate language.

Oral Answers to Questions

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 9 February.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

I can tell the House today that it is my intention to return on the first day after the half-term recess to present our strategy for living with covid. Provided that the current encouraging trends in the data continue, it is my expectation that we will be able to end the last domestic restrictions, including the legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test, a full month early.

This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Gareth Bacon]

The Northern Ireland protocol frustrates business, undermines the Belfast agreement, and restricts the free movement of goods and people within our United Kingdom. What action will my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Union take to reunite the UK and uphold the interests of all its residents, including those living in Northern Ireland?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is quite right. The protocol does not require, contrary to how it is being applied by our friends, all foods, all medicines and all plants to be systematically checked in the way that they are. We must fix it, and with good will and common sense I believe we can. However, if our friends do not show the requisite common sense, we will of course trigger article 60.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Was the Business Secretary right to say that fraud is not something that people experience in their day-to-day lives?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, this Government and this country despise those who defraud people, and that is why we crack down on fraudsters. We have strengthened our anti-fraud taskforce and we are bringing forward an economic crime Bill. We also attach huge importance to tackling neighbourhood crime and crimes of violence, and I am pleased that those crimes are down 17%.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister’s answer has a big hole in it. We have had lockdowns for the past two years; two crimes that people could commit were online fraud and throwing parties. So far as I can see, the numbers for both have gone through the roof.

However, I was asking the Prime Minister about the 14,000 cases of fraud a day. Many older people have been duped out of hard-earned savings, but the Business Secretary casually suggests on TV, “Don’t worry; it’s not real crime.” There is a crime gang in Manchester nicking cars and shipping them around the world, all financed by covid loans from the taxpayer. What is the Chancellor’s response? Write off £4 billion in losses, and block an investigation by the National Crime Agency. The Prime Minister’s Cabinet is turning a blind eye to scammers. Is it any wonder that his anti-fraud Minister realised that no one in Government seemed to care and threw in the towel?

[The Prime Minister]

No, because what we are doing is tackling crime across the board. That is why we are investing more in tackling fraud, but we are also tackling the neighbourhood crime that does such massive psychological damage to people in this country. We are tackling knife crime, burglary and crimes of violence in the street with tougher sentences—which Labour voted against, by the way—and putting more police out on the street. And we are able to afford it because we have a strong economy and we are coming back strongly from covid, and that is thanks to the big calls that this Government got right.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister’s anti-fraud Minister quit, saying that the failure of Government to tackle fraud was “so egregious” that he had to

“smash some crockery to get people to take notice.”

It seems that the Prime Minister has not noticed the broken plates and shattered glass all around him. It is almost as if he has been completely distracted for weeks.

Talking of scams, households are going to have to fork out an extra £19 billion on their energy bills. The Government are insulting people’s intelligence by pretending they are giving them a discount. It is not; it is a con. It is a buy now, pay later scheme. A dodgy loan, not a proper plan. [Interruption.] He shakes his head, so let me put this in language he might understand. When his donors give him cash to fund his lifestyle and tell him he has to pay it all back later, are they giving him a loan or a discount?

[The Prime Minister]

Our plan to tackle the cost of living is faster, more efficient and more generous than anything that Labour has set out. We have lifted the living wage by record amounts, we have cut the effective tax for people on universal credit and we are now setting out a fantastic plan to help people with the cost of energy. It is more generous and more effective than anything Labour has set out. It is £9.1 billion—it is huge sums that we are using to help people across the country—and the only reason we can afford it is that we have a strong economy, the fastest growing in the G7— as I think I may have pointed out to the right hon. and learned Gentleman last week—not just last year but this year as well.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister clearly hasn’t got the first clue what the Chancellor has signed him up to, so let me help him out. His plan is to hand billions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash to energy companies and then force families to pay it off in instalments for years to come. If it sounds like he is forcing people to take out a loan, and it looks like he is forcing people to take out a loan, is it not just forcing people to take out a loan?

[The Prime Minister]

We are giving people in bands A to D council tax valuations across the country—27 million homes—the equivalent of a £150 rebate off their council tax. Labour’s offer is £89. Ours is faster, more generous and more effective. This is a global problem, caused by the spike in gas prices, but what Labour would do is clobber the oil and gas companies right now—[Interruption.] Yes they would—with a tax that would deter investment in gas, just when this country needs gas as we transition to green fuel. It would be totally ridiculous, and it would raise prices for consumers.

[Keir Starmer]

I was always worried that the Prime Minister wasn’t one for reading terms and conditions and that he didn’t understand what the Chancellor had signed him up to. He has just confirmed my worst fears. There is an alternative—[Interruption.]

[Keir Starmer]

There is an alternative. The Prime Minister can stand up to his Chancellor and tell him to support families rather than loading them with debt. He can tell him to look at those bumper profits of the oil and gas giants. Shell’s profits are up £14 billion this year. BP’s profits are up £9.5 billion this year. Every second of the day, they have made £750 extra profit from rising prices. At the same time, households are facing an extra £700 a year on their bills. Why on earth are this Government forcing loans on British families when they should be asking those with an unexpected windfall to pay a little more to keep household bills down?

[The Prime Minister]

The Labour plan would clobber suppliers. It is an improvement on what I thought the right hon. Gentleman stood for, which was nationalising the energy companies. Maybe he has dropped that one now. I cannot tell whether he has dropped that one; maybe he has. What he would be doing is hitting the energy companies at precisely the moment when we need to encourage them to go for more gas, because we need to transition now to cleaner fuels, and this Government are providing £9.1 billion of support. It is more generous than anything Labour is offering.

I repeat my point: the only reason we can do it is that we kept our economy moving in those hard times, when Labour took the wrong decisions. We came out of lockdown in July last year when the Leader of the Opposition opposed it, and we kept going over Christmas and new year when they opposed it, and that is why we have the fastest-growing economy in the G7, not just last year but this year as well, as I never tire of saying.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister can bluff and bluster all he likes. The reality is this. On top of the Tory tax rises, on top of the soaring prices, the loan shark Chancellor and his unwitting sidekick have now cooked up a buy-now, pay-later scheme. It leaves taxpayers in debt, while oil and gas companies say that they have more money than they know what to do with. It is the same old story with this Government: get in a mess, protect their mates and ask working people to pick up the bill. But is the Prime Minister not worried that everyone can now see that with this Prime Minister and this Chancellor it is all one big scam, and people across the country are paying the price?

[The Prime Minister]

What they can see is a Government who are absolutely committed to doing the right thing for the people of this country and taking the tough decisions, when Labour is calling for us to take the easy way out and spend more taxpayers’ money. It was this Government who decided to keep going in July, when the Leader of the Opposition wanted to stay in lockdown. We kept going over Christmas and new year.

By the way, it occurs to me that we were also able to use those Brexit freedoms to deliver the fastest booster roll-out and the fastest vaccine roll-out—[Interruption.] Yes, when the Leader of the Opposition not only voted 48 times to go back into the EU—yes he did—but he also voted to stay in the European Medicines Agency.

Our plan for jobs is working. We have record low youth unemployment. Our plan for the NHS and care is working. Labour has no plan at all. Our plan for the country is working. We have a great vision to unite and level up across our country. Labour has no plan whatever. I say to him: plan beats no plan. We have a great plan for our country; they play politics.

[Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)]

Q3. The Government’s £9 billion support to help with rising energy bills is most welcome; but will the Prime Minister assure the people of Anglesey and beyond that it is full steam ahead for new nuclear, like Wylfa Newydd, and that this Government are moving at pace on the future nuclear enabling fund, so that the UK has energy security, jobs and investment right here on these shores?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I think it was only last week that I was congratulating my hon. Friend on her fantastic advocacy for nuclear in Ynys Môn. Do not forget, Mr Speaker, that Labour allowed nuclear capacity to decline by 11% on their watch; I do not think my hon. Friend has forgotten that. We want to get back up there, and that is why there will be at least one big nuclear project this Parliament—at least one—and our Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill will support that objective.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

Mr Speaker, I am sure that you and the entire House will want to join me in welcoming the Remembering Srebrenica campaign, that launched our yearly events in Parliament last night. We must all continue to strive for ongoing peace in Bosnia.

The flurry of changes in Downing Street over the last few days is a sight to behold. It is amazing how much energy this Prime Minister can sum up when it comes to saving his own skin. But while he has been busy rearranging the deckchairs, in the real world people continue to be punished by the Tory cost of living crisis. Yesterday, openDemocracy found that as a direct result of the Chancellor’s national insurance hike nurses will, on average, take a £275-a-year pay cut in April. That pay cut will hit at the very same moment that soaring energy bills land—bills that have shot up £1,000 in the space of a year.

It is a bill day and the rest of the public simply cannot afford it. So, rather than the Prime Minister and the Chancellor scrapping over the Tory leadership, will they do something useful and scrap their regressive hike in national insurance?

[The Prime Minister]

It was interesting that the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) did not mention that, because I think everybody can see how vital this is. We have to clear our covid backlogs; we have 6 million people already on the waiting lists; I am afraid that will go up, and we need to be recruiting the staff now. That is why we are recruiting 50,000 more nurses. There are 11,000 more this year than there were last year. To the point made by the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), let me say that we have increased the starting salary for nurses by 12.8%, in addition to the bursaries and other help that we give them. We value our nurses, we love our NHS and we are paying for it.

[Ian Blackford]

Actions speak louder than words and if the Prime Minister wants to reward nurses, he needs to pay them. They are the very backbone of the national health service—the very people he is hitting with a pay cut in April. I should not have to remind the Prime Minister that at the same time as those nurses were going into work every day to fight a pandemic, 16 different parties were happening in his Government. The public know what nurses sacrificed during the pandemic, and they know exactly what this rule-breaking Prime Minister and his Government were up to. So are the Prime Minister and his Chancellor seriously telling those nurses that their reward for seeing us through the pandemic is a £270 wage cut?

[The Prime Minister]

What we are telling the people of this country now is that we back our fantastic nurses all the way. What they want is more nurses, which is why record numbers are in training and why we had 11,000 more in the NHS this year than there were last year. Those are fantastic investments in our country and in our society, and I must say that it is peculiar that, as I understand it, the Scottish nationalist party’s approach to healthcare is now to cut off the bottom of doors in schools in Scotland in order to improve ventilation.

[Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)]

Q5. As a proud Wulfrunian, I am thrilled that my city is at the front and centre of the Government’s levelling up White Paper. Getting jobseekers of all ages the skills they need to get into work will be vital to levelling up in Wolverhampton, and the City of Wolverhampton College is already doing this at its brand-new facility at Bentley Bridge, in my constituency. Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating the college? Will he also meet me and my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Stuart Anderson), preferably at the college, so that we can discuss how more jobseekers can get access to skills, potentially through the City Learning Quarter and that final bit of funding that we need?

[The Prime Minister]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson), who is truly a modern-day Lady Wulfruna. She is completely right; Wolverhampton and the Black Country were at the heart of the first industrial revolution and they are at the heart of the current 21st-century green industrial revolution. I am very glad that since April 2020 we have seen 125,000 starts for the sector-based work academy programme, partly at least thanks to her lobbying and support, and wild horses will not keep me away from Wolverhampton.

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

Seventy-four-year-old Janet had £25,000 stolen by fraudsters. She told the BBC:

“The money was my mum and dad’s and I just felt I let them down.”

For Janet, and for the 4 million people who fell victim to fraudsters and online scammers last year, fraud is a crime. So does the Prime Minister understand the hurt that he and his Ministers cause fraud victims such as Janet when they write them out of the crime figures and dismiss fraud as something that people do not experience in their day-to-day lives? Will the Prime Minister correct the record on crime figures, and apologise?

[The Prime Minister]

I direct the House to what I have already said to my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer). The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that this Government hate fraud and online fraud. We are tackling the scammers by helping people to come forward when they get an email—when they get duped. We are of course helping them in any way that we can, but we are also cutting the crime that affects people up and down our country—the neighbourhood crime—and dealing with the county lines drugs gangs, and the right hon. Gentleman should support that as well. I am proud that those numbers have come down by 17%.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Q9. Wednesday 9 February. It is wonderful news that the first in-person Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting for four years will take place during Her Majesty’s platinum jubilee year. Will the Prime Minister ensure that the global learning crisis is high on the agenda? Will he ask his amazing diplomats to ensure that every leader in the Commonwealth signs up to the Kenyatta declaration on education?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for everything she does to support education for girls. Twelve years of quality education for every girl in the world is probably the single most transformative thing we can do to improve the world. I remember working with my friend Uhuru Kenyatta on that declaration and we will certainly ensure that everybody at the Commonwealth meeting signs up to it.

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

Q2. At the height of the lockdown restrictions in 2020, my constituent, who has worked for the NHS for over 30 years, was diagnosed with a tumour on her spine. While she was in hospital undergoing painful surgery, her family obeyed the rules and did not visit her. In the last few minutes, a photo has emerged of the Prime Minister in Downing Street, on 15 December 2020, surrounded by alcohol, food and people wearing tinsel. It looks a lot like one of the Christmas parties that he told us never happened. For the sake of my constituent and the sacrifices she made, will the Prime Minister be referring that party to the police, as it is not one of those already being investigated?

[The Prime Minister]

First, I am very sorry about the hon. Gentleman’s constituent and for the difficulties she has been through. I understand very much her feelings, but in what the hon. Gentleman has just said I am afraid he is completely in error.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

Q10. On 30 September 2020, the Prime Minister joined me on a building site in Dudley that is now the new Institute of Technology, delivering on skills for future jobs and creating opportunities across the Black Country. Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating the delivery team—including stakeholders such as Thomas Dudley and Dudley College—that delivered on this amazing project? Will he join me to do so in person at the nearest opportunity?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is a great champion for Dudley and for the Black Country. I am delighted to hear that the Black Country & Marches Institute of Technology is now open and will certainly keep his kind invitation in mind.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Q4. The film “Belfast” contains the immortal words: “If you’re not listening, you probably don’t understand us, and if you don’t understand us, you’re probably not listening.” The fact of the matter is that the protocol has zero support from Unionists. The fact of the matter is—I hope the Prime Minister is listening—that in a divided society a solution that attracts the support of only one section of the community will never stand. Will the Prime Minister therefore take the opportunity to speak to the Irish Government, whose ambassador, Daniel Mulhall, is running around Washington demanding further implementation of the protocol on the basis that it will bring further checks on the people of Northern Ireland? Does the Prime Minister accept that he now has the responsibility to bring forward a solution that unites the people of Northern Ireland and that saves the Union that is being undermined by the protocol?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I agree completely that there must be a solution that commands cross-community support. At the moment, there is no doubt that the balance of the Good Friday agreement is being upset by the way that the protocol is being operated, and we need to fix that. That is what we will do, and, if our friends will not agree, we will, as I said earlier, implement article 16.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

11. Rather than a compulsory windfall tax so favoured by the Opposition, will my right hon. Friend take an alternative view: summon a high-level meeting with the oil and gas companies with the aim of a voluntary agreement to bring more oil and gas on to the wholesale market to reduce oil and gas prices to help hard-pressed people deal with the cost of living problems?

[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.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Since 2017, referrals for children’s mental health have gone up by 60%. Eating disorders among young girls have gone up by 400% since lockdown, and we know that social media companies play a huge part in that. Given that social media platforms such as TikTok are providing “crack for kids” in terms of adult content, negative imagery and addictive algorithms, will my right hon. Friend consider implementing a 2% levy on social media companies, which would raise £100 million to fund mental health resilience programmes for children?

[The Prime Minister]

I know that my right hon. Friend has campaigned on this issue assiduously, and he is quite right about the psychological damage that social media can do. I have heard what he has had to say recently about TikTok. We will see what we can do to address all these issues in the forthcoming online harms Bill.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

7. Bradford is the UK’s youngest city and has the 10th largest city economy, with a GDP of £11.6 billion, and is bidding to be the city of culture. Now, it comes out that no detailed analysis of the long-term economic benefits of investing in Bradford and the north through the integrated rail plan was carried out. This Government’s failure has robbed Bradford of £30 billion-worth of growth over the next 10 years. When will the Prime Minister match action to rhetoric on levelling up and give Bradford the investment that it deserves?

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady is wrong in what she says, because we are investing massively in Yorkshire—investing in 640 more police in Yorkshire and investing in education in Yorkshire—but she has misunderstood what we said at the time of the £96 billion integrated rail plan. What we are saying is that we will look at ways in which we can ensure that we protract the eastern leg of High Speed Rail from north of Birmingham to Bradford. What we are not doing is coming up with a scheme before we have decided exactly what to do and how to fund it, but we are not ruling it out.

[Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

I served my country with pride in the Royal Green Jackets. I will always be a rifleman and a veteran. I welcome the veterans’ strategy that the Prime Minister has just brought out, but I ask him whether veterans will always be at the heart of this Government’s strategy and whether everything will be done to see that they always get what they need and are honoured?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, that is why we have set up an Office for Veterans’ Affairs and have ensured that veterans get preferential treatment on public transport, which was one of the first things I did when I became Prime Minister. It is why we ensure that veterans receive particular support and encouragement in employment, and we encourage employers to take on veterans as well.

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

Q8.   In the panicked Downing Street staffing reshuffle at the weekend, the Prime Minister appointed to a senior role a man who recently lobbied the Government on behalf of Huawei Technologies, a hostile state vendor that this House legislated to exclude entirely from this country’s 5G networks. Given that the No. 10 director of communications has by definition access to some of the most sensitive Government information, will the Prime Minister tell the House whether Mr Harri’s present role requires enhanced developed vetting and STRAP clearance and whether he went through the necessary checks to provide that level of clearance before he took up his post?

[The Prime Minister]

That is a curious question to come from a Member on the Benches that contain someone who took, I think, £586,000 from the Chinese Government to support his office. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that this Government took the brave and necessary step of making sure that we excluded Huawei from our critical national infrastructure, and that was the right thing to do, whatever he says.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

May I ask the Prime Minister a question about Sue Gray’s report—[Interruption.] Colleagues may groan, but I am only asking it because I asked the Prime Minister this question last week and did not get a straight answer. It is important, because it is about those who make the law obeying the law. The Prime Minister wants to be judged on the facts, and that is right, so may I ask him for a commitment at the Dispatch Box? On conclusion of the Metropolitan police investigation, will he ensure that Sue Gray’s final report is published immediately and in full?

[The Prime Minister]

With the greatest respect to my right hon. Friend, I believe that I did answer that question last Monday, or whenever it was—possibly last Wednesday as well. I will repeat for the benefit of the House that as soon as all the inquiries are concluded I will immediately publish in full whatever Sue Gray gives me.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

Q12. I understand that the UK Government signed an agreement with the Iranian authorities last summer that would have resulted in the payment of the £400 million that we owe Iran and the release of my constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. That agreement fell through and the debt still has not been paid. The case urgently needs the Prime Minister’s attention and personal intervention, so may I ask the Prime Minister to meet personally with me and Richard Ratcliffe? I do not want to meet his colleagues; I want to meet him personally to find out why the agreement fell through and why Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is still not home after six long years.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady for that question and for all the hard work she does on behalf of Nazanin. We remain committed to securing the release of Nazanin and all the very difficult consular cases that we have in Iran. As the hon. Lady knows, the International Military Services, or IMS, debt is difficult to settle and square away for all sorts of reasons to do with sanctions, but we will continue to work on it and I will certainly make sure that we have another meeting with Richard Ratcliffe in due course.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Dover is once again beset by miles of traffic jams along the motorways, affecting residents and local businesses alike—not because of Brexit but because of Brussels bureaucracy and red tape. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister meet me to discuss how we can invest in our local roads, the M2, the M20 and the Dover traffic assessment project to unclog those roads once and for all, and how we can get rid of the unnecessary red tape for a trading global Britain?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right in what she says. As the economy rebounds, we are seeing all sorts of pressures. We need to ensure that we clear bottlenecks everywhere in our system and that is what we will do.

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

Q13. I would like to refer to the Prime Minister’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton). The photograph referred to is all over social media; everybody can see the photo; the Prime Minister is in the photo. Can I ask him again, will he refer the matter to the police, because it is not one of the parties that are already being investigated by the Metropolitan police?

[The Prime Minister]

That is precisely the point—it already has been. That event already has been submitted for investigation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 17 November.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Jonathan Edwards]

The Prime Minister will be aware of the considerable public concern in relation to the impression that significant political donations can help acquire a peerage. The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) will publish a Bill later today that will prohibit large party donors from being nominated to the other place for a period of five years. Will the Prime Minister offer full Government support to my hon. Friend’s efforts?

[The Prime Minister]

I will study his proposals with care when the Opposition parties commit to stop taking funds from the unions in order to control their politics.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Q2. During a recent visit to Barnet Hospital, I was told that A&E there was routinely seeing twice the number of people for which it was designed. Thanks to the hard work of staff and big funding increases, the NHS is seeing more patients and delivering more tests, treatments and operations than at any time in its history, but what are the Government doing to urgently assist the NHS to tackle spiralling demand for healthcare and a tough winter ahead?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for what she does to represent her hospital, and I thank the NHS staff for the amazing work that they are doing. We are supporting them, as she knows, by recruiting 50,000 more nurses and putting another £4.5 billion into the NHS over the rest of this financial year. The best thing we can do to protect our NHS over this winter is for everybody to come forward and get their booster vaccination.

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Trust matters, and after the last fortnight the Prime Minister has got a lot of work to do. A central plank in this Government’s promise to the north of England is a Crossrail of the north with at least an entirely new high-speed rail line between Manchester and Leeds. A Crossrail for the north; an entirely new line—that is the promise. It has already been made, so I do not want the Prime Minister fobbing off the House about waiting until tomorrow; he can say today: will he stick by that promise, yes or no?

[The Prime Minister]

He should wait and see what is going to be announced tomorrow, because we will produce a fantastic integrated rail plan—[Interruption.] I am not going to spoil it for them—why would I? We are going to produce a fantastic—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I expect Front Benchers to behave better than they are doing at the moment. If you do not want to listen to the answer, let me know now. I do, and I cannot hear when you all shout together. We want better politics. I expect better politics from both sides. Let us show a little more decorum than we are seeing at the moment.

[The Prime Minister]

When we produce our integrated rail plan tomorrow, people across the House and across the country will see what we are doing to cut journey times to make life easier and better for people in the north-east, in the north-west and in the midlands—across the whole of the north of the country—with the biggest programme of investment in rail for a century. What we are doing is giving people in those communities the same access to commuter-type services that people in the south-east of this country have felt entitled to for more than a century. That is going to be levelling up across the whole of the UK.

[Keir Starmer]

That was a lot of words, but it was not a yes, so that is one important promise to the north that he will not stand by. Let us look at another. In February this year, the Prime Minister told this House:

“I can certainly confirm that we are going to develop the eastern leg as well as the whole of the HS2.”—[Official Report, 10 February 2021; Vol. 689, c. 325.]

The whole of HS2—that is a new high-speed line, running continuously, no gaps, between Birmingham and Leeds. Will the Prime Minister confirm that he stands by that promise?

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is in danger of getting hoist by his own petard. He needs to wait and see what we announce tomorrow, because I think he will find that the people of Leeds, the people of Nottingham, the people of Sheffield and the people of the whole of the north-west and the north-east of this country will benefit massively from what we are going to announce.

[Keir Starmer]

Again, a lot of words, but not a yes. So that is two important promises to the north that the Prime Minister will not stand by. No wonder trust in the Prime Minister is at an all-time low. Across the country, and belatedly across this House, there is now agreement that Owen Paterson broke the rules and that the Government should not have tried to let him off the hook. Many Government Members have apologised— the Business Secretary has apologised for his part, and the Leader of the House has apologised for his part, but they were following the Prime Minister’s lead. Will he do the decent thing and just say sorry for trying to give the green light to corruption?

[The Prime Minister]

Well, yes, as I have said before, it certainly was a mistake to conflate the case of an individual Member, no matter how sad, with the point of principle at stake. We do need a cross-party approach on an appeals process. We also need a cross-party approach on the way forward, and that is why we have tabled the proposals to take forward the report of the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life of 2018, with those two key principles: first, that everybody in this House should focus primarily and above all on their job here in this House; and, secondly, that no one should exploit their position in order to advance the commercial interests of anybody else. That is our position. We want to take forward those reforms. In the meantime, perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman can clear up from his proposals whether he would continue to be able to take money, as he did, from Mishcon de Reya and other legal firms. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Prime Minister, as you know, and I do remind you, it is Prime Minister’s questions, not Leader of the Opposition’s questions.

[Keir Starmer]

That is not an apology. Everybody else has apologised for the Prime Minister, but he will not apologise for himself—a coward, not a leader. Weeks defending corruption and yesterday a screeching last-minute U-turn to avoid defeat on Labour’s plan to ban MPs from dodgy second contracts. Waving one white flag will not be enough to restore trust. There are plenty of Opposition days to come, and we will not let the Prime Minister water down the proposals or pretend that it is job done. We still have not shut the revolving door where Ministers are regulating a company one minute and working for it the next. There are plenty of cases that still stain this House. There are two simple steps to sorting it out: proper independence and powers for the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, and banning these job swaps. Will the Prime Minister take those steps?

[The Prime Minister]

I have called for, as you know Mr Speaker, and as you have called for, a cross-party approach to this. What I think we need to do is work together on the basis of the independent report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life to take things forward and to address the appeals process. What I think everybody can see is that in a classic, lawyerly way, the right hon. and learned Gentleman is now trying to prosecute others for exactly the course of action that he took himself. What I think the nation wants to know, because his register is incomplete, is who paid Mishcon de Reya and who paid the £25,000? Who paid him for his—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Prime Minister, I do not want to fall out about it. I have made it very clear. It is Prime Minister’s questions; it is not for the Opposition to answer your questions. [Interruption.] Whether we like it or not, those are the rules of the game that we are all into, and we play by the rules, don’t we? We respect this House, so let us respect the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keir Starmer]

When somebody in my party misbehaves, I kick them out. When somebody in the Prime Minister’s party misbehaves, he tries to get them off the hook. I lead; he covers up.

Let us try another issue. We know that Owen Paterson was a paid lobbyist for Randox. We know that he sat in on a call between Randox and the Minister responsible for handling health contracts. We know that Randox has been awarded Government contracts worth almost £600 million without competition or tender. Against that backdrop, the public are concerned that taxpayers’ money may have been influenced by paid lobbying. There is only one way to get to the bottom of this: a full, transparent investigation. If the Prime Minister votes for Labour’s motion this afternoon, that investigation can start. Will he vote for it, or will he vote for another cover-up?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to publish all the details of the Randox contracts, which have been investigated by the National Audit Office already. But talking of cover-ups, I am sorry, Mr Speaker, but we still have not heard why the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not tell us—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

[The Prime Minister]

And he talks about—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Prime Minister, sit down! Prime Minister, I am not going to be challenged. You may be the Prime Minister of this country, but in this House I am in charge, and we are going to carry on. That is the end of that. I call Keir Starmer.

[Keir Starmer]

I think the Prime Minister just said he is happy to publish all the Randox papers in relation to these contracts, so we will take that and we will pursue it. I remind the Prime Minister that when I was Director of Public Prosecutions, I prosecuted MPs who broke the rules. He has been investigated by every organisation he has ever been elected to. That is the difference.

Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money handed to their mates and donors; Tory MPs getting rich by working as lobbyists, one not even bothering to turn up because he is in the Caribbean advising tax havens—and the Prime Minister somehow expects us to believe that he is the man to clean up Westminster! He led his troops through the sewers to cover up corruption, and he cannot even say sorry. The truth is that beneath the bluster, he still thinks it is one rule for him and another for his mates. At the same time as his Government are engulfed in sleaze, they are rowing back on the promises they made to the north, and it is working people who are paying the price. Is it any wonder that people are beginning to think that the joke isn’t funny any more?

[The Prime Minister]

It is plain from listening to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that he seeks to criticise this Government while refusing to explain his own position. You have ruled on that, Mr Speaker—[Interruption.] You have ruled on that, Mr Speaker, and I hear you, I hear you—but his own “Mishconduct” is absolutely clear to everybody. [Interruption.] His own “Mishconduct” is absolutely clear. Meantime, we will get on, on a cross-party basis—we will get on, on a cross-party basis —with taking forward the business that I have outlined. And we will get on with the business of this Government, which is leading the country out of the pandemic and—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Prime Minister, I am struggling to hear, but if I am correct about what was said, it was about the Leader of the Opposition and misconduct. We cannot accuse somebody of misconduct. [Interruption.] Order. Before the Leader of the House gives me an answer, all I am going to say is that I cannot hear. If it was said, I want it withdrawn. If it was not said, I will accept that. [Interruption.] Just a moment! I call the Prime Minister.

[The Prime Minister]

Mr Speaker, I referred to the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s “Mishconduct”, because that is what he is guilty of.

[Hon. Members]

More, more!

[James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)]

Q3. The people of Leigh have never accepted our forced merger with the rival town—friendly rivals—of Wigan back in 1973. Will the Prime Minister tell me how we can escape the big government of big Wigan by getting our own council back?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his campaign against local Labour government overtaxing and delivering inadequate services. The local boundary commission will look at the boundary reviews, but in the meantime I will support him in any way that I can.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

It used always to be said that the Tory MPs were behind the Prime Minister, but—my goodness—look at the gaps on the third, fourth and fifth Benches. The rebellion has clearly started.

This Tory sleaze scandal has now been hitting the headlines for the past 14 days, yet it is pretty obvious that the Prime Minister spent less than 10 minutes coming up with yesterday’s half-hearted, half-baked, and already half-botched proposals. These so-called reforms do not even scratch the surface. This sleaze scandal runs far, far deeper. Month after month the public have witnessed scandal after scandal: peerages handed to millionaire donors; VIP lanes; gifted covid contracts to Tory pals; dodgy donations for luxury holidays and home renovations. The Prime Minister and his Government have been up to their necks in sleaze. Will the Prime Minister tell us exactly which one of those scandals his proposals would have stopped?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the humble crofter, as the right hon. Gentleman refers to himself, for his question. What I think we can do is pursue a cross-party approach, based on the report of the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life, which has much of profit in it. Among other things it says is that it is important that this House should be augmented with outside experience of the world, and it is important that Members of this House should have experience of the private sector, as he does. On a cross-party basis we should proceed with the couple of reforms that I have indicated.

[Ian Blackford]

This is about Tory sleaze and Tory corruption, and the Prime Minister has basically admitted that not one of this Government’s sleaze scandals would have been stopped by his so-called plan. Perhaps we should not be surprised, considering that the Prime Minister has been at the rotten core of all these scandals. The trail of sleaze and scandal all leads back to the funding of the Conservative party. Since 2010, the Tory party has made nine of its former treasurers Members of the House of Lords, and every single one of them has something in common: they have handed over £3 million to the Prime Minister’s party. That is the very definition of corruption. It is the public’s definition of corruption. Will this Government finally accept that this is corruption, or is the Prime Minister the only person in the country who has the brass neck to argue that it was all one big coincidence?

[The Prime Minister]

I will not comment on the missing £600,000 from the Scottish National party’s accounts, but what I will say, in all sincerity and heeding what you said earlier, Mr Speaker, is that I think that these constant attacks on the UK’s levels of corruption and sleaze do a massive disservice to billions of people around the world who genuinely suffer from Governments who are corrupt, and who genuinely have no ability to scrutinise their MPs. This is one of the cleanest democracies in the world, and people should be proud of it.

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

Q4. Will the Prime Minister join me in celebrating the 50th anniversary this year of the formation of the 177-mile path for walkers along Offa’s Dyke, which runs through Clwyd South, and give his support to the recently launched Offa’s Dyke rescue fund to repair and preserve this monument and nature reserve for future generations?

[The Prime Minister]

I had the good fortune to walk Offa’s Dyke very recently. I am delighted that English and Welsh organisations are working together to protect that fantastic national monument, and Historic England has committed to give almost £300,000 more to that great cause.

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

Ambulance response times are now the worst ever, people are waiting for ambulances longer than ever, and with A&Es in crisis, patients are stuck in ambulances outside hospital longer than ever. Waiting times are not statistics; they are about people—people often in great pain and in danger—so why are this Government closing ambulance stations in parts of our country? Why is the West Midlands ambulance service closing up to 10 community stations, including in Rugby, Oswestry and Craven Arms? With this health crisis for our ambulance services and in our A&Es, injured, sick and elderly people are being hit. When will the Prime Minister deal with this health crisis?

[The Prime Minister]

I appreciate that ambulance crews and ambulance services are doing an amazing job, particularly at this time of year, and I thank them for what they are doing. We are supporting them with more cash. Another £450 million was awarded to 120 trusts to upgrade their facilities, and as the right hon. Gentleman knows, we are putting another £36 billion into dealing with the backlog, which is fundamentally affecting the NHS so badly at the moment, through the levy that we have instituted, which I do not think he supported.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

Q5. Domestic heating accounts for 30% of UK carbon emissions. I support the Government’s incentive scheme to replace old gas boilers with environmentally friendly alternatives. However, now that we are building more homes than we have been for many years, can we build on the success of COP26? What progress is being made on the standards for new-build homes, to make sure that they are fit for the future?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is totally right to focus on the issue of future-proofing homes and making them low carbon. By 2025, our future homes standard will ensure that new homes produce at least 75% fewer CO₂ emissions.

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Q6.   Last week I visited a GP practice in my constituency of Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough and was horrified to hear about the amount of abuse that staff are currently experiencing. Their workloads are under extreme pressure and this is not helped by the Prime Minister making demands about appointments while he has still failed on his manifesto pledge to recruit 6,000 more GPs. Will the Prime Minister apologise for this broken promise to GPs and their staff, who are on the frontline working under ever increasing pressure and depleted staffing resources?

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, I want to thank GPs for everything they are doing, particularly during the booster roll-out. As well as recruiting as many GPs as we can, we have 10,000 more nurses this year than last year and 25,000 more healthcare professionals altogether. There are more people now working in the NHS than at any time in its history, and because of our investment—the extra £36 billion that we are putting in—there will be even more, and I am afraid that the hon. Lady voted against that investment.

[David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)]

Q7. Following on from COP26, can my right hon. Friend confirm that maximising carbon capture and storage capacity across the whole United Kingdom is a priority for the Government—[Interruption.]—despite the doom and gloom, and words of rejection from SNP Members? Will he also confirm that the Acorn carbon capture and storage and hydrogen project in my constituency has a key role to play in this country’s future carbon capture and storage capacity targets to meet net zero?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is quite right to champion carbon capture and storage, which has a great future in Scotland in spite of all the gloomstering of the SNP. The Scottish cluster remains on the reserve. We will continue to study it and, we hope, bring it forward in due time.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Q8. The River Tyne, with its world-renowned offshore and subsea sectors, has been repeatedly sidelined by the Government, despite my and others constantly lobbying Ministers for investment that would massively increase employment opportunities and help the UK’s transition to net zero. However, I am very excited to see our voice is now being magnified by a new Tyne taskforce set up by local authorities, the port, businesses and the combined authority. Will the Prime Minister, here and now, commit his Government to work with us to realise the full potential of our great river?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that the River Tyne is a massive economic asset for the whole of the north-east. It has suffered from historic contamination, but we are going to work with the North East local enterprise partnership to invest another £6 million to help to develop clear plans for sustainable economic growth along the whole of the estuary.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Q9.   Crawley constituency was one of the most negatively affected by the covid-19 pandemic, but thanks to significant support from the Government we are seeing recovery. Unemployment is now beginning to come down and we look to a confident future. In that vein, will my right hon. Friend please look favourably on Crawley’s platinum jubilee city-status bid?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. I was not aware until today that Crawley was bidding to become a city—

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Resign! [Laughter.]—

[The Prime Minister]

—but I will look at it very carefully. I am sure there is an excellent case in there somewhere.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

Q13. Every year, 100,000 babies are born premature or sick in the UK and admitted to neonatal intensive care units. The Prime Minister will be aware that today is World Prematurity Day. There is cross-party agreement in the House to bring forward neonatal leave and pay. Rather than wait for a complex and controversial employment Bill, will the Prime Minister bring forward a standalone Bill to legislate for that, so that next World Prematurity Day the 100,000 babies and their parents do not have to choose between spending time in the hospital or unpaid leave from work?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is a passionate campaigner in this area. One way or another—I will get back to him on the exact way—we will legislate to allow parents of children in neonatal care to take extended leave, giving them more time during the most vulnerable and stressful days of their lives.

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

Q10. Further education colleges like Hopwood Hall College in my constituency will play an essential part in building back better. The team at Hopwood have supported over 8,000 learners on courses as diverse as small business management and animal management, as well as six new T-level courses. May I invite my right hon. Friend to come and visit the inspirational team and the students at Hopwood Hall, and, as a special treat, come and see Middleton’s very own flamboyance of flamingos and our endangered potoroos?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind invitation. I will certainly keep it mind. The Government are absolutely committed to reforming technical education through new T-levels. That is why we are investing a further £65 million to develop teacher retention, and support and recruitment for teachers in further education. As for the potoroos in his area, are they wild? I will do my utmost to come and inspect them.

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

Q14. My constituent Laura told me that Remembrance Sunday hurts. It hurts because there have been no medals for her grandad’s service and the thousands of men involved in nuclear weapons tests overseas between 1952 and 1991. It hurts because studies of such veterans have shown increased miscarriages, increased birth defects and the same rate of genetic damage as clean-up workers at Chernobyl. And it hurts because the UK is the only nuclear power on earth that has denied recognition. So I ask the Prime Minister: will he recognise nuclear testing veterans today and agree to meet them? The Leader of the Opposition has.

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for bringing this to my attention. I will certainly make sure that we get a proper meeting with the representatives of the nuclear veterans that she mentions.

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

Q11. When I was in Greece with Save the Children, I learned that change at any border was quickly communicated down the line. If migrants and asylum seekers knew that they would be directly returned to France or taken to a third country pending application, would they risk a dangerous and illegal crossing and make their way to France in the first place? I ask my right hon. Friend: what further measures are being considered? This is an issue of great concern in Eastbourne, along the coast and across the country, and I am anxious to be able to reassure my constituents that there are plans ahead.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much, and she has much relevant experience from her work for Save the Children in Greece. Our only credible way of fixing this is with our new plan for immigration. That will be made possible with our new Nationality and Borders Bill, which will make it possible for us to distinguish at last between those who come here legally and those who come here illegally. I hope very much that it will command the support of the whole House.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

In May, part of Northwich station in my constituency collapsed. I have asked the Transport Secretary to intervene and build back better and fairer to allow access for people with disabilities. He has declined my kind offer, so I ask the Prime Minister to intervene: no bluster, substance, build back better and fairer Northwich station—it is in the north of England.

[The Prime Minister]

I am tempted to invite the hon. Gentleman to wait and see what we do for rail funding tomorrow, but I will certainly look at what he had to say about Northwich station with keen interest.

[Sarah Atherton (Wrexham) (Con)]

Q12. Over 4,200 servicewomen and veterans used a democratic process to contribute to the Defence Committee’s inquiry into women in the armed forces. A formal response is still awaited from the Ministry of Defence. While the majority of women enjoy a fulfilling career in the military, shocking issues were raised around sexual assault, bullying and harassment. I know that the Prime Minister agrees that our armed forces are the best in the world. Would he also agree that we need to make sure that the British Army is the best place to serve as a woman?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend; she is campaigning on a very important issue. Too often, we find that our armed forces fail to provide the wonderful women in our armed forces with the support they deserve. That is why I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary has secured a parliamentary inquiry into this for the first time. It is vital that we support and encourage women in our armed forces, who make a massive difference to those services.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

It has cost businesses in Northern Ireland £850 million to date to operate the failed and suffocating protocol. Lord Frost is today in Belfast. When will the Prime Minister fix this by legitimately activating article 16?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, and I think the word that I would fasten on in his question is “legitimately”. There is no question but that the use of article 16, which, after all, has been done by the EU Commission to stop vaccines being exported to this country, is something that is perfectly legal and within the bounds of the protocol.

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

Q15.   I recently visited Humphrey Perkins School in beautiful Barrow upon Soar. The students asked me, “What are the Government doing to engage children and students from all backgrounds to encourage them to aspire to become an MP, or even Prime Minister?”

[The Prime Minister]

What I would say to my hon. Friend and her students is that nothing that is said or takes place in this House—none of the argy-bargy, the repartee and the occasional abuse to which we subject each other—should in any way deter anybody from seeking a career in politics, because it is a wonderful privilege and we are all very lucky to be here.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

In my constituency of Edinburgh West, numerous people come to us with delays from the Department for Work and Pensions with pensions and benefits, to add to the delays that others are facing with passports and with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. Can the Prime Minister tell us who—among the many jobs being done at the moment—is making sure that the Departments of Government are running smoothly and quickly?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that actually the Department for Work and Pensions, under the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), has performed outstanding service. It has performed miracles. Among the things that it has achieved is helping to get millions of people effectively back into employment, in spite of all the difficulties that we have faced. We now have unemployment running at virtually record lows, in spite of all the difficulties we have faced in this pandemic and as we come out of furlough. That is largely thanks to the work of the DWP. Of course there is more that can be done and people can always up their game, but I think that the DWP and its officials working across the country —huge numbers of men and women—have done an outstanding job.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

In July 2019, I was in Manchester when the Prime Minister committed to building a new line, Northern Powerhouse Rail, between Manchester and Leeds. That commitment was reaffirmed in our manifesto in November 2019, and last month it was reaffirmed in the Prime Minister’s conference speech in Manchester. Were the voters of the north right to take the Prime Minister at his word?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, and they should wait and see what is unveiled tomorrow, when my right hon. Friend may learn something to his advantage.

Oral Answers to Questions

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 19 May.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

Last week, an inquest found Francis Quinn, Father Hugh Mullan, Noel Phillips, Joan Connolly, Daniel Teggart, Joseph Murphy, Edward Doherty, John Laverty, Joseph Corr and John McKerr, who were killed in Ballymurphy in August 1971, entirely innocent. On behalf of successive Governments, and to put this on the record in this House, I would like to say sorry to their families for how the investigations were handled and for the pain they have endured since their campaign began almost five decades ago. No apology can lessen their lasting pain. I hope they may take some comfort in the answers they have secured and in knowing that this has renewed the Government’s determination to ensure in future that other families can find answers with less distress and delay.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Gareth Thomas]

I strongly associate myself with the earlier part of the Prime Minister’ comments. May I raise something slightly different though? It is nearly four years since the Grenfell Tower tragedy claimed some 72 lives, yet hundreds of thousands of families still live in unsafe, unsellable homes, and many leaseholders face crippling debts, through no fault of their own—Trident Point, Pearmain House and Amber Court are all in my constituency. Given that this was the biggest building scandal in modern UK history, why did the Prime Minister order his MPs to vote down our efforts yesterday to get this scandal sorted once and for all?

[The Prime Minister]

I in no way underestimate the suffering of the victims of Grenfell or of those whose buildings—whose homes—have been prejudiced by the spectre of unsafe materials. That is why we have provided an unprecedented £5 billion of investment, and I can also tell the hon. Gentleman that the most dangerous cladding is already gone or is going from all high-rise buildings. We certainly agree that leaseholders should be protected from remediation costs, and people in high-rise buildings will pay nothing to replace their unsafe cladding.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

The Prime Minister will understand that Havering, just like Hillingdon, is located on the outskirts of London and has very different needs and aspirations from those in the core area of the city. My borough still prides itself on being part of Essex, as I know his prides itself on being part of historic Middlesex. Although we need co-operation on things such as transport, will he accept that it is time for wholesale reform of the way London and the wider region are governed? Will he support my campaign to allow boroughs such as Havering to take back control from the Mayor and City Hall interference? This would allow Havering, and indeed all outer London boroughs, the freedom to make their own decisions that best meet the needs of local people.

[The Prime Minister]

I can understand the feelings of frustration that the people of Havering may have about a current Mayor of London who does not understand the needs of outer London and is not investing in outer London in the way that a previous Mayor did—I seem to recall that they set up the outer London fund and drove through many other benefits for the outer boroughs. However, I must tell my hon. Friend in all candour that what we need to do is work together to ensure that that glad day returns when we have a Mayor who truly represents all Londoners.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s comments on the Ballymurphy inquest and the sentiment behind them.

Does the Prime Minister agree that the single biggest threat to hitting the 21 June date for unlocking is the risk of new variants coming into the UK?

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly think that that is one of the issues that we must face, but perhaps it would be of benefit to the House if I update it on where we are, because we have looked at the data again this morning. I can tell the House that we have increasing confidence that vaccines are effective against all variants, including the Indian variant. In this context, I want particularly to thank the people of Bolton, Blackburn and many other places who have been coming forward in record numbers to get vaccinated—to get their first and second jabs. I think that the numbers have doubled in Bolton alone, and the people of this country can be proud of their participation.

[Keir Starmer]

I think that is a yes: that the risk of other variants coming through our borders is one of the biggest threats to unlocking. We are not just talking about the Indian variant; we are talking about future variants. In those circumstances, why on Monday did the Prime Minister choose to weaken travel restrictions by moving 170 countries or territories to the amber list?

[The Prime Minister]

We have one of the strongest border regimes anywhere in the world. There are currently 43 countries on the red list. Everybody should know that if they travel to an amber list country for any emergency or any extreme reason that they have for doing so, when they come back they have not only to pay for all the tests, but to self-isolate for 10 days. We will invigilate that; we are invigilating that. People who fail to obey the quarantine can face fines of up to £10,000.

[Keir Starmer]

I think everybody would agree that, having moved 170 countries to the amber list, absolute clarity is needed about the circumstances in which people can travel to an amber country. Yesterday morning, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that people could fly to amber list countries if they wanted to visit family or friends. By the afternoon, a Health Minister said that nobody should travel outside Britain this year, and that, “Travelling is dangerous.” The Prime Minister said that travel to amber countries should be only where it is essential. By the evening, the Welsh Secretary suggested that

“some people might think a holiday is essential”.

The Government have lost control of the messaging. Can the Prime Minister answer a really simple question that goes to the heart of this? If he does not want people to travel to amber list countries, if that is his position, why has he made it easier for them to do so?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that, after more than a year of this, the right hon. and learned Gentleman will understand that what the public would like to see is some effort to back up what the Government are saying to deliver clarity of message. On his point about legal bans, as he knows, we are trying to move away from endlessly legislating on everything and to rely on guidance and asking people to do the right thing. It is very, very clear, Mr Speaker: you should not be going to an amber list country except for some extreme circumstance, such as the serious illness of a family member. You should not be going to an amber list country on holiday. I can imagine that the right hon. and learned Gentleman wants to take a holiday, but he should not be going to an amber list country on holiday. If people do go to an amber list country then, as I say, we will enforce the 10-day quarantine period. If they break the rules, they face very substantial fines.

[Keir Starmer]

That completely swerves the question. The point was that, if it is only in “extreme circumstances” —the Prime Minister’s words—why make it easier to go? Let us test it by looking at the consequences. Since the Government loosened travel restrictions, 150 flights a day are going to amber list countries and travel agents are reporting surges in holiday bookings to those countries. Prime Minister, this is not just a coincidence; it is because of the messaging. Can he tell the House how many people are now travelling to and from Britain from amber list countries every day?

[The Prime Minister]

I can tell the House that there has been a 95% reduction in travel of any kind to and from this country, and that is exactly what we would expect in the circumstances of this pandemic. There are 43 countries on the red list, and if people come back from one of those countries, they have to go immediately into hotel quarantine. The reason we are able to move forward in the way that we have been is because, as I have told the House repeatedly, we are continuing with the fastest vaccination roll-out, I think, just about anywhere in Europe. As of today, 70% of adults in this country have been vaccinated. That is a fantastic achievement, which is enabling us to make the progress that we are.

[Keir Starmer]

I think that’s an “I don’t know”. The suggestion that in the last few days there has been a 95% drop-off in travel to amber list countries does not hold water. I am trying to understand the logic of the Government’s position. We know that new variants are the single biggest risk to unlocking. We know that the Government do not think that people should travel to amber list countries, save for in extreme circumstances, but the Government have made it easier to do so. The messaging is confused and contradictory. As a result, this week many people are now travelling to amber list countries, but the Government cannot say how many or when. We are an island nation; we have the power to stop this. Why does the Prime Minister not drop this hopeless system, get control of our borders and introduce a proper system that can protect against the threat of future variants of the virus?

[The Prime Minister]

Actually, I think what would be helpful—I have set out the position on amber list countries very clearly at least twice; wouldn’t it be great to hear the right hon. and learned Gentleman backing it up for a change and using what authority he possesses to convey the message to the rest of the country? The Labour position on borders is hopelessly confused. Last night, I think, the shadow Home Secretary said that Labour wanted to cut this country off from the rest of the world—to pause all travel, even though 75% of our medicines and 50% of our food actually come from abroad. It was only recently that the Leader of the Opposition was saying that quarantine was a “blunt instrument” and he would rather see alternatives.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister is just wrong again; we have called for a blanket hotel quarantine for months. I have raised it here at Prime Minister’s questions three times. The Government ignored it every time and look where we are now, talking about the Indian variant.

The Prime Minister’s former adviser had this one right. He said that the Government’s border policy was a “joke”. Our borders have been wide open pretty well throughout the pandemic. [Interruption.] For those who say that is not true, there was no hotel quarantine system in place until February this year. Flights are still coming in from India, and even as the variant is spreading the Prime Minister decides that now is the time to weaken the system even more. It is ridiculous.

Finally, I want to raise the appalling rise in antisemitism in the last week, and the attacks and violence that we have seen. On Saturday, a rabbi in Chigwell was hospitalised after being attacked outside his synagogue. Many of us will have seen the appalling incident in Golders Green. The Community Security Trust reports a 500% rise in antisemitic incidents since the outbreak of violence in Gaza and Israel. I know that the Government are working on this, and both the Prime Minister and I have condemned these antisemitic attacks and violence, but across this House we all know that Jewish communities remain very anxious. What more does the Prime Minister think can be done to provide the extra support and protection needed to reassure Jewish communities at this really very difficult time?

[The Prime Minister]

I share the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s horror at the outbreak of antisemitic incidents. The Government have conveyed that message loud and clear to those who are responsible for enforcing the law against hate crime of that kind. Obviously, we will continue to work and support the Jewish community in any way that we can, particularly by working with the Community Safety Trust, which does an absolutely outstanding job, but also by showing, as a country and as a society, that we will call this out at every stage. We will not let it take root; we will not allow it to grow and fester. In welcoming his remarks, I may say that I believe it is one of the most important changes of attitude —or U-turns, I should say—that I have seen from the Labour party in recent times. I am delighted that he is taking that attitude now. But what this country wants to see is a Government who get on with delivering on the people’s priorities, making everybody safe. It might have been a good thing if he had voted—and got his party to vote—for tougher sentences against serious and violent sexual offenders, to say nothing of people who commit hate crime.

[Mr Speaker]

I think in fairness this House is very united and will remain united, and of course we do support the CST.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

My second AstraZeneca jab reinforced my confidence not only in normal life resuming but in the future of our life sciences industry. In Cheadle and across south Manchester and the Cheshire life sciences corridor, investment in R&D and innovation will bring high-skilled, well-paid jobs. Will the Prime Minister join me in recognising and endorsing the work of our northern universities, NHS trusts and life sciences sector, who, together with the Northern Health Science Alliance, are piloting health tech initiatives that will take us forward from jabs to jobs?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, and I thank my hon. Friend, who is a great advocate for the people of Cheadle. As part of our plan to move from jabs, jabs, jabs to jobs, jobs, jobs, I am delighted to say that over £1 billion-worth of Government-funded science and innovation projects are currently taking place across the north-west, thanks largely, or at least in part, to her advocacy.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP) [V]]

May I thank the Prime Minister for his comments on the Ballymurphy inquest?

As a member of Scotland’s crofter community, I understand just how disastrous a Brexit trade deal with Australia, as proposed by this Tory Government, would be for Scotland’s farming and crofting sectors. If reports of this Tory deal were true, farmers will lose their livelihoods, rural businesses will collapse, and ultimately families will be driven off the land. Let us be very clear: if that happens, this UK Tory Government will be solely responsible. Just for once, will the Prime Minister give a straight answer to the farming and crofting families who are living with this threat? Can he categorically rule out his Government being prepared to sign up to a trade deal that will at any future point guarantee tariff-free access to Australian lamb and beef—yes or no?

[The Prime Minister]

I am delighted to see the shots of the right hon. Gentleman’s croft, by the way—the humble representative of the crofting community. I do not think that he does justice to crofters and to farmers across the country, and in Scotland as well, because he grossly underestimates their ability to do great things with our free trade deals and to export Scottish beef around the world. Why does he not believe in what the people of Scotland can do? Why is he so frightened of free trade? I think it is a massive opportunity for Scotland and for the whole of the UK, and he should seize it and be proud of it.

[Ian Blackford]

That was quite chilling. To try to treat something as serious as this in the way that the Government and the Prime Minister have done is really quite pathetic. The fact that the Prime Minister could not give a straight answer will send a real chill across Scotland’s farming communities. The UK Government led the betrayal of Scottish fishing and now the Tories are planning to throw our farmers and crofters under the Brexit bus. This morning Martin Kennedy, president of National Farmers Union Scotland, told ITV that farmers will feel “seriously betrayed” by these proposals. This deal would be the final nail in the coffin for many Scottish crofters and farmers. It will end a way of life that has endured for generations—generations, Prime Minister. I know that many of the Prime Minister’s Tory colleagues privately agree with me and want him to pull back from this deal. Will the Prime Minister finally listen, think again, and ditch a deal that will send our farmers down under?

[The Prime Minister]

First, the right hon. Gentleman is totally wrong in what he says about the fisheries. In fact, there are massive opportunities for fisheries in the whole of the UK as we take back control of our territorial waters. That will be the same for Scotland and around the UK. Again he is grossly underestimating the ability of the people of this country, the agricultural communities of this country and the farming industry to make the most of free trade. This is a country that became successful and grew prosperous on free trade and exporting around the world. Our food exports are second to none. He should be proud of that and he should be celebrating that. All he does is call for us to pull up the drawbridge and go back into the EU to be run by Brussels. That is his manifesto, and I think the people of this country have decisively rejected it.

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

  North Staffordshire YMCA in my constituency undertakes fantastic work transforming the lives of young people locally in the Stoke-on-Trent community, and I am delighted that it has been recognised for its work through the Queen’s awards for enterprise. There is no better example of levelling up in action, and I invite the Prime Minister to join me in congratulating all the staff, volunteers and partners of the YMCA in north Staffordshire. I look forward to showing him levelling up in action when he next visits Stoke-on-Trent, the new second home of the Home Office.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much, and she is totally right. It is part of our levelling up. We are absolutely determined to do that as fast as we possibly can, and I thank her for her message about it this morning. We are not just sending back offices; some of the most important Departments of State will be run from around our great cities and towns in the whole of the UK. I believe that will have a dramatic effect on levelling up across the UK, and I thank her for her question.

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

Local planning reforms introduced by Liberal Democrat Ministers have seen communities across England vote for new developments, including new housing, new affordable housing and new community facilities, while also protecting the environment and the countryside. Why therefore is the Prime Minister so determined to push through his planning reforms, which will do nothing to solve the country’s real housing crisis and will allow developers to ride roughshod over local communities? The reforms will mean, in the words of his immediate predecessor as Prime Minister,

“the wrong homes being built in the wrong places.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2021; Vol. 695, c. 39.]

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is completely wrong, and he should look at the Bill when it comes forward, because we want to protect the green belt. We want to protect our wonderful open spaces. This is a Government who understand the value of the countryside and rural Britain, but we also think that young people have been deprived for too long of the ability to get on to the housing ladder. That is not just in the south-east, but across the country, and that is why we are bringing forward sensible reforms to allow brownfield sites to go ahead.

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

Two weeks ago, in giving the Scottish Conservatives their highest ever number of votes in the era of devolution, the Scottish people decided that Scotland would remain at the heart of this newly reinvigorated global Britain. With that in mind, will the Prime Minister accept my invitation to Stonehaven in my constituency to come and plant one of the 120 cherry blossom trees donated by the Sakura Cherry Tree Project to celebrate the deep and growing links between our country and that other great trading nation, Japan?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that such a gesture would be the cherry on the cake of the free trade deal that we have already done.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

In 2019, before visiting Wales, the Prime Minister said: “I will always back Britain’s great farmers”. Now it looks as if he is backing Australia’s farmers instead, so will he keep to his word, clearly back Welsh farmers and permanently rule out tariff-free access for Australian lamb and beef imports?

[The Prime Minister]

I will back Britain’s farmers and Welsh farmers in exporting their fantastic lamb around the world. Is it not a disgrace that not a single morsel of Welsh lamb has passed the lips of the Americans in the past 20 years or more? What about China? Has the hon. Gentleman no ambition for the people of this country, the people of Wales or Welsh farmers? I do, and this Government do, and that is why we are getting on with our agenda.

[Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister, or Prif Weinidog, agree that a freeport on Anglesey will create much-needed skilled jobs and investment, protect our precious Welsh language and culture, and breathe fire into the nostrils of the Welsh dragon? Will the Prime Minister accept an invitation on behalf of the people of Ynys Môn to join me on a tour of the island to include a panad at the truck stop café in Holyhead?

[The Prime Minister]

It says here that I must not express a preference on the location of freeports, and I will not, but my hon. Friend makes an outstanding case, as ever. Together with our Welsh Conservative colleagues, she is helping to apply the Vicks inhaler to the bunged-up nostrils of the Welsh dragon.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

Despite the opprobrium that the Prime Minister always seems to seek to heap upon the Scottish National party, at the Scottish elections two weeks ago, the SNP was returned to government with twice the number of MSPs as its nearest rivals, the Scottish Conservatives, securing 48% of the vote and 49% of the seats in the proportional system, with 51% of voters backing parties that support an independence referendum in the current term. If the Prime Minister genuinely believes that his criticisms of the Scottish Government have any merit whatsoever, why does he consider that the Scottish National party did so well in those elections, while his own party did so badly?

[The Prime Minister]

I totally reject what the hon. Gentleman just said. I notice that, actually, the Scottish National party did less well than it did under Alex Salmond in 2011—I hesitate to point that out to the hon. Gentleman, but that is the reality. I think the reason for that is that, notwithstanding the nationalist approach that he takes, the people of Scotland have been very disappointed by the record of the Scottish Government in fighting crime, improving education and making Scotland a great place to live and to invest. That is the failing for which his Government are being held to account.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

A large part of Salisbury plain falls in my constituency, and I therefore have the honour to represent a lot of serving soldiers and veterans and their families. My right hon. Friend will understand that feelings are running high in Wiltshire about the treatment of British Army veterans of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Can he assure me that legislation will be brought forward in this Session to protect veterans from further prosecutions or investigations unless compelling new evidence is brought forward?

[The Prime Minister]

The House will have understood from my opening apology how difficult, how complex and how fraught these issues are, but we are committed to introducing legislation in this Session to address the legacy of the troubles in Northern Ireland, to introducing a fair package for veterans and to protecting them, as I have said many times before, from unfair, vexatious litigation when no new evidence has been brought forward.

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

There were no new measures in the Queen’s Speech to tackle youth unemployment. There are over 500,000 unemployed young people in this country, yet the Government’s flagship youth unemployment scheme is nowhere near sufficient, only helping around one in 25 young people. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) and I have already requested a meeting with the Minister to discuss local concerns from training providers and businesses. What exactly will the Prime Minister do to address that and to safeguard the future of a generation of young people in this country?

[The Prime Minister]

We are putting £2 billion into the kickstart programme for 18 to 24-year-olds and investing massively in the restart programme for those who have been longer out of work. I can also tell the hon. Gentleman that the businesses I talk to are currently facing shortages of workers in many sectors, and we will work flat out to ensure that we get those who want jobs to those who need workers.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I thank the Prime Minister for the support he has already shown for coming forward with an offshore transmission grid, which he knows will help us to both export our surplus offshore wind to the continent and reduce the infrastructure associated with new wind farm capacity. It is very important to our communities, but there is a question over timing. Given that he has already set out an ambitious and clear timetable for increasing offshore wind generation, will he now come out with an equally ambitious timetable for delivering an offshore grid?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is spot on in what he says about the need for an offshore grid. As well as building the fantastic windmills, it is vital that we bring the energy onshore in a way that has minimal disruption for local communities and enables us to maximise efficiency.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

What does the Prime Minister think when he hears Jenny McGee, the nurse who saved his life, say of NHS staff,“We’re not getting the respect and now pay that we deserve. I’m just sick of it. So I’ve handed in my resignation”?Surely even he must pause and think about what can be learned from the mistakes of the past year—what Jenny calls the “indecisiveness” and “mixed messages” of his Government. Will he think again about giving nurses more than an insulting 1% pay rise?

[The Prime Minister]

I think the whole House acknowledges our collective debt to the nurses of the NHS, and I certainly acknowledge my own huge personal debt. That is why, of all the professions in this country in very tough times, we have asked the public sector pay review board to look at an increase in pay for nurses, but in the meantime we have increased starting salary for nurses by 12.8%, and we have put in the bursary worth £5,000—we have restored that—as well as £3,000 for extra help.

But above all, to all nurses—and I know what a tough year they have had, I know how hard it has been on the frontline coping with this pandemic—we have done what I think is the most important thing of all, and that is to recruit many more nurses. There are now about 11,000 more nurses in the NHS today than there were this time last year, and there are 60,000 more in training, and we are on target to reach our target of 50,000 more nurses in the NHS.

[Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)]

  Following on from that theme, patients in England have unfettered access to specialist hospital care anywhere in England, including within world-leading centres of excellence, but my constituents in north Wales have no such automatic choice, with access dependent on restrictive contracts or individual funding requests. So will my right hon. Friend do all he can to ensure that healthcare features prominently within the UK levelling-up agenda?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I thank my hon. Friend for his point, and he knows a great deal about the subject. We have worked very hard with the Welsh Government throughout the pandemic, supporting them with £8.6 billion of additional funding through the Barnett formula, but clearly we need to learn the lessons together as we bounce forward from this pandemic.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is now 664 days since the Prime Minister said he had a plan for social care, but the Department of Health and Social Care is advertising at the moment for social care policy advisers to “develop proposals for reform.” Why do that if there is a plan already? Every day, more people lose their life savings to pay huge social care costs, and we cannot even get a straight answer as to whether the Government have a plan to fix social care, never mind find out what it actually is, so just tell us, Prime Minister: do you have a plan—yes or no?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes is the answer, but the Labour party junked it in—[Interruption.] This is something that, for decades, politicians have failed to address: in 1999, Labour failed to address the plan. They had 13 years—13 years—in government. I think it was 13—13 unlucky years for this country—and they did not do it. They did not do it, and this Government are going to tackle it. This Government are finally going to address the issue of social care. If they want to support it with their customary doughty resolve, if they want to support it without wibble-wobbling from one week to the next on whatever their policy is—without changing like weather vanes, which is what they normally do—if they want to support it and if they want to back it, then I am all ears.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

Throughout this week, businesses across Burnley and Padiham have reopened their doors to customers inside—from Usha and Molly Rigby’s to Bellissimo and Reel Cinema. Would the Prime Minister join me in wishing them all the best of luck as they get back on their feet, and does he agree with me that if we are to support local businesses in the long term, we need to create the environment and the opportunities they need to succeed, and that includes schemes such as the levelling-up fund and the lifetime skills guarantee?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. That is why we are investing, for instance, £3.6 million from the getting building fund for the development of Pioneer Place, and Burnley will also benefit from our high streets taskforce, but what Burnley and towns across the country need more than anything else is passionate leadership, such as my hon. Friend shows, in championing their localities and getting the right investment in.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

The Prime Minister will be aware of Pladis’s proposal to close the McVitie’s factory in Glasgow’s east end, placing at risk 470 jobs. So will he join me in engaging with Pladis’s global CEO, Salman Amin, and call upon him to rethink his plans, which would definitely unleash economic armageddon on a very fragile part of the local economy?

[The Prime Minister]

McVitie’s has been a proud part of the Scottish economy since 1800, and I know that people at the Tollcross factory and their relatives will be very concerned about what is happening. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising it. I know that conversations are now going on to see what we can do. I think it is the Turkish company that now owns McVitie’s, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is meeting the hon. Gentleman to discuss the situation.

[Mr Speaker]

I am now suspending the House for three minutes to allow the necessary arrangements for the next business.

Oral Answers to Questions

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 17 March.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

I am sure colleagues across the House will want to join me in wishing everyone a very happy St Patrick’s day. I was delighted to visit Northern Ireland last week, where I was able to thank military and emergency response teams for their brilliant work throughout the covid-19 pandemic.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Simon Fell]

A decade ago, GlaxoSmithKline announced a £350 million investment in my constituency, which would have led to 1,000 jobs. In 2017, it reneged on that, and a few weeks ago it announced that it is closing its business altogether. We have gone from the very real prospect of having 1,000 high-paying, high-skilled pharma jobs in my constituency to the risk of having none by 2025. Will my right hon. Friend agree to meet me and throw the weight of the Government behind efforts to ensure that GSK does the right thing by my constituents and delivers for some very worried people?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much, and I express my deepest sympathy to all those in Ulverston affected by these job losses. I will certainly meet him. I believe that bioscience is one of the great growth areas for this country in the future, and I am determined that Barrow and Furness should take part in that boom along with everywhere else, as well as other high technologies.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

May I join the Prime Minister in his comments about St Patrick’s day?

My thoughts, and I am sure those across the whole House, are with the family and friends of Sarah Everard, who will be suffering unspeakable grief. There are five words that will stick with us for a very long time: she was just walking home.

Sometimes, a tragedy is so shocking that it demands both justice and change. The Stephen Lawrence case showed the poison of structural and institutional racism. The James Bulger case made us question the nature of our society and the safety of our children. Now the awful events of the last week have lifted a veil on the epidemic of violence against women and girls. This must also be a watershed moment, to change how we as a society treat women and girls, and how we prevent and end sexual violence and harassment.

I believe that, if we work together, we can achieve that, and the questions I ask today are in that spirit. First, does the Prime Minister agree that this must be a turning point in how we tackle violence against women and girls?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes I do, and I associate myself fully with the remarks that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has made about the appalling murder of Sarah Everard. I am sure that those emotions are shared in this House and around the country.

That event has triggered a reaction that I believe is wholly justified and understandable, and of course we in government are doing everything that we can. We are investing in the Crown Prosecution Service, trying to speed up the law; we are changing the law on domestic violence, and many, many other things. But the right hon. and learned Gentleman is right, frankly, that unless and until we have a change in our culture that acknowledges and understands that women currently do not feel they are being heard, we will not fix this problem. That is what we must do. We need a cultural and social change in attitudes to redress the balance. That is what I believe all politicians must now work together to achieve.

[Keir Starmer]

I thank the Prime Minister for that answer. In that spirit, can I turn to the practical challenges we face if we are collectively to rise to this moment? The first challenge is that many, many women and girls feel unsafe on our streets, particularly at night. What is needed is legal protection. That is why we have called for a specific new law on street harassment and for toughening the law on stalking. Both, I think, are absolutely vital if we are going to make meaningful change in the everyday experiences of women and girls. So can the Prime Minister commit to taking both of those measures forward?

[The Prime Minister]

We are always happy to look at new proposals. What we are already doing is introducing tougher sanctions on stalkers. That is already being brought in and we are bringing in new measures to make the streets safer. Of course that is the right thing to do. Last night there was a Bill before the House on police, crime and sentencing, which did a lot to protect women and girls. It would have been good, in a cross-party way, to have had the support of the Opposition.

[Keir Starmer]

I will come to last night’s Bill later, but it did say a lot more about protecting statues than it did about protecting women.

Let me, if I may, given the gravity of the situation, continue in the spirit so far. I thank the Prime Minister for his answer. The next practical challenge is that many, many women and girls who are subjected to sexual violence do not feel confident to come forward and report what has happened to them. Nine out of 10 do not do so. We have to improve the support that is provided for victims.

The Victims’ Commissioner published a report last month with 32 recommendations about this. This week, Labour produced a detailed survivor support plan, and five years ago I introduced a private Member’s Bill, with cross-party support, for a victims’ law to give legally enforceable rights to victims. The shadow victims Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), has tabled a similar victims’ Bill that is before Parliament now. It is ready to go. All it needs is the political will to act. So will the Prime Minister commit now not just to the idea of a victims’ law, which I think he supports, but to a tight timetable, of ideally six months or so, to actually implement such a law?

[The Prime Minister]

As I say, I would be very happy to look at new proposals from all sides of the House on this issue. That is why we are conducting an end-to-end review of the law on rape and how it works, and investing in the criminal justice system to speed up cases and give women and girls the confidence they need. The point the right hon. and learned Gentleman makes about victims and their need to feel confident in coming forward is absolutely right. That is why we have put £100 million so far into services for dealing with violence against women and girls, particularly independent domestic violence advisers and independent sexual violence advisers. I do not pretend that these are the entire solution; they are part of the solution. It is also vital that we have long- term cultural, societal change to deal with this issue.

[Keir Starmer]

I agree with the Prime Minister on that last point. Can I gently remind him that for 10 years this Government have been promising a victims’ law? I think it has been in his party’s last three manifestos. It still has not materialised. We do not need more reviews, consultations, strategies. The conversations our shadow Minister is having with Government—constructive conversations—are exactly the same conversations that I had five years ago: constructive conversations. We just need now to get on with it.

Let me press on with the practical challenges. The next challenge is this. For many, many women and girls who do come forward to report sexual violence, no criminal charges are brought. Only 1.5% of rapes reported to the police lead to a prosecution. Put the other way, 98.5% of reported rapes do not lead to a prosecution. That is a shocking statistic. I appreciate that efforts are being made to improve the situation, but can the Prime Minister tell us: what is he going to do about this not in a few years’ time, not next year, but now?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is entirely right. I agree with him; one of the first things I said when I became Prime Minister was that I believed that the prosecution rates for rape were a disgrace in this country. We need to sort it out. That is why we are investing in confidence-building measures, such as ISVAs and IDVAs, and investing in the Crown Prosecution Service in trying to speed up the process of the law to give people confidence that their cases will be heard in due time. We are also doing what we can to toughen the penalties for those men—I am afraid it is overwhelmingly men—who commit these crimes. I think it would have been a good thing if, last night, the whole House could have voted for tougher sentences for those who commit sexual and violent offences and to stop people from being released early. In that collegiate spirit, I ask him to work together with us.

[Keir Starmer]

I was Director of Public Prosecutions for five years and spent every day prosecuting serious crime, including terrorism, sexual violence and rape, so I really do not need lectures about how to enforce the criminal law.

Walking on through the system, as many women and girls have to do, and facing up to the challenges that we need to face as a House, the next challenge is the point that the Prime Minister just referenced—the sentences for rape and sexual violence, because they need to be toughened. Let me give the House three examples. John Patrick, convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl, received a seven-year sentence. Orlando and Costanzo, who were convicted of raping a woman in a nightclub, received a seven-and-a-half-year sentence. James Reeve, convicted of raping a seven-year-old girl, received a nine-year sentence. Does the Prime Minister agree that we need urgently to look at this and to toughen sentences for rape and serious sexual violence?

[The Prime Minister]

Would it not be a wonderful thing if there was a Bill going through the House of Commons that did exactly that? Would it not be a wonderful thing if there were measures to defend women and girls from violent and sex criminals? Would it not be a wonderful thing if there was a Bill before the House to have tougher sentences for child murderers and tougher punishments for sex offenders? That would be a fine thing. As it happens, there is such a Bill before the House. I think it would be a great thing if the right hon. and learned Gentleman had actually voted for it. He still has time. This Bill is still before the House. He can lift his opposition. They actually voted against it on a three-line Whip and I think that was crazy.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister mentions the Bill last night. That provided for longer maximum sentences for damaging a memorial than the sentences imposed in the three cases of rape I have referred the House to, which were all less than 10 years. I thank the Prime Minister for providing me with the best examples of why the priorities in his Bill were so wrong. Nothing in that Bill would have increased the length of sentence in any of those rape cases—nothing in that Bill.

Let me try to return to the constructive spirit, because I think that is demanded of all of us. If this House came together on the points raised today, and there has been agreement across the Dispatch Boxes, it would make a real difference to victims of crime. This week, Labour published a 10-point plan. We published a victims’ law. In coming days, we are going to publish amendments in relation to the criminal justice system to make it work better. I do not expect the Prime Minister to agree with all of this and, frankly, I do not care if this becomes a Government Bill or Conservative legislation. All I care about is whether we make progress, so will the Prime Minister meet me, the shadow Home Secretary—my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds)—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and victims’ groups, who have spent many years campaigning on this, so that we can really and truly make this a turning point?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for the collegiate way in which he is addressing this and the way in which he is reaching out across the Chamber. I think that is entirely right in the circumstances, but I do think that he should not misrepresent what the Bill was trying to do. The average sentence for rape is already nine years and nine months, as he knows full well, and the maximum sentence is already life. What we are trying to do is stiffen the sentences for a variety of offences to protect women and girls and others, and that is entirely the right thing to do.

We will go on with our agenda to deliver on the people’s priorities, rolling out more police—7,000 we have already—investing in ISVAs and IDVAs and doing our utmost to accelerate the grinding processes of the criminal justice system, which, as he rightly says, are such a deterrent to women coming forward to complain as they rightly should. Until we sort out that fundamental problem, and until women feel that their voices are being heard and their complaints are being addressed by society, we will not fix this problem. I warmly welcome what he suggests about wanting to fix it together, and I hope that, in that spirit, he can bring himself to vote for the tougher sentences that we have set out.

[Mr Speaker]

We have to be a little bit careful, because nobody would misrepresent anyone in this House.

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

I thank the Prime Minister for bringing the G7 leaders’ summit to Cornwall this summer. This will put Cornwall front and centre on the world stage as we emerge from the pandemic and give us a great opportunity to showcase all that Cornwall has to offer. It is a great place to visit not just for its amazing food and drink sector, but for the technologies of the future in space and in renewable energy.I know the Prime Minister shares my ambition for the G7 to leave a lasting economic legacy for the people of Cornwall, so to that end, and in the light of the recent progress on lithium extraction, will he work with me to secure a gigafactory for Cornwall so that we can produce the batteries, leave that lasting economic legacy and provide the well-paid jobs for the future that Cornwall needs?

[The Prime Minister]

I think Cornwall is the Klondike of lithium, as far as I understand the matter, and I would be delighted to assist my hon. Friend in locating a gigafactory somewhere near Cornwall—I do not want to promise too much at this stage.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP) [V]]

May I wish everyone a happy St Patrick’s day?

Across Scotland this week, a tale of two Governments with two very different sets of values has again been exposed. Yesterday, the Scottish National party Government passed landmark legislation that will put the UN convention on the rights of the child into Scots law, putting children at the vanguard of children’s rights. In contrast, we have a UK Government who have to be shamed into providing free school meals, who will clap for nurses but will not give them a fair wage, and who plough billions into a nuclear arsenal that sits redundant on the Clyde. Does the Prime Minister understand that the Scottish people are best served by a Government who live up to their values—a Government who prioritise bairns not bombs?

[The Prime Minister]

I think what the people of Scotland need and deserve is a Government who tackle the problems of education in Scotland, a Government who address themselves to fighting crime and drug addiction in Scotland, and a Government who can wean themselves off their addiction to constitutional change and constitutional argument, because they seem, in the middle of a pandemic when the country is trying to move forward together, to be obsessed with nothing else—nothing else—but breaking up the country and a reckless referendum.

[Ian Blackford]

Of course, this is Prime Minister’s questions, and maybe the Prime Minister might, just once, try to answer the question that is put to him. We are talking about a Tory plan to impose a 40% increase in nuclear warheads. Our children have the right to a future that no longer lives under the shadow of these weapons of mass destruction. As the Irish President said on this St Patrick’s day, we need to find ways to make peace, not war. Every single one of those weapons will be based on the Clyde, so can the Prime Minister tell us exactly when the Scottish people gave him the moral or democratic authority to impose those weapons of mass destruction on our soil in Scotland?

[The Prime Minister]

The people of Scotland contribute enormously to the health, happiness, wellbeing and security of the entire country, not least through their contribution to our science, our defences, our international aid and in many other ways. I am very proud that this Government are investing record sums in defence, including maintaining our nuclear defence, which is absolutely vital for our long-term security, and helping, thereby, to drive jobs not just in Scotland, but across the UK.

[Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)]

Back in July last year, I informed the Prime Minister of the need for a new hospital in Doncaster. Sadly, Doncaster was not mentioned among the first 40 hospitals promised in the manifesto, but the building of a further eight specialist hospitals was. Does my right hon. Friend agree that a new hospital will prove to the people of Doncaster that this Government are committed to building back better and levelling up their town?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is a fantastic advocate for Doncaster, and he is right to campaign in the way he does. I wish I could give him a cut-and-dried yes or no answer today, but I can tell him that his local trust is very much in the running in the current open competition for the next eight hospitals, on top of the 40 that we are already building.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The creation of a no-protest zone around Parliament, a 266% increase from a maximum of three months to 11 months’ imprisonment for protest organisers, a direct attack on the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community, up to 10 years in prison for any offence committed by destroying or damaging a memorial, and criminalising people for taking part in protests where they ought to have known police conditions were in place. Does the Prime Minister agree that if the UK is to be a force for good in a world where democracy is “in retreat”, as the Foreign Secretary is saying today, it needs to start at home with the protection of the long-standing, precious and fundamental right to peaceful protest, which is a cornerstone of liberal democracy?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is quite right to stick up for peaceful protest, and I understand and sympathise with that, but there are a couple of points. First, we are facing a pandemic in which, alas, we have to restrict human contact—[Interruption.] Although the hon. Lady shakes her head, I think the people of this country do understand that and do understand the restrictions we are now under.

I think we also have to strike a balance between the need to allow peaceful protests to go ahead, and we do on a huge scale in this country, and the need to protect free speech and vital parts of the UK economy.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

I want to see the fundamental right to protest protected, so that events such as the powerful vigil last Saturday on Clapham Common can proceed safely, including covid safely, but I also want to see measures so that people can go about their lives, get to work and get to hospital without being hindered. Can the Prime Minister reassure me that the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which we have been discussing today and which was before the House yesterday, strikes that balance while also taking action against the perpetrators of some of the worst crimes?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend perfectly sums up the balance that we are trying to strike between allowing people, in a reasonable way, to go about their daily lives and bringing in tougher sentences for child murderers, tougher punishments for sex offenders, and stopping the continuing practice of allowing people out early. I think that is what the people of this country want to see. That is what they voted for in 2019, and I hope the Opposition can bring themselves, one day, to support it.

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

With the Government’s end-to-end rape review remaining unpublished, two years after it was promised, rape conviction rates having fallen to their lowest point on record and almost 90% of sexual harassment complaints not even reported to the police, women are increasingly being left without legal recourse against sexual violence. I have parliamentary privilege and can name the men who have hurt me, but millions of women in this country do not have that. Women are stuck between a criminal justice system in which only 1.4% of reported offences result in charges being laid and too many survivors who speak out being pursued through the civil courts by their abusers to silence them. Can the Prime Minister advise how they are meant to get justice?

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady is completely right, and I know that she speaks for many women up and down the country. We can do all the things we have talked about, two men arguing over the Dispatch Box. We can bring in more laws and tougher sentences, which I hope she will support. We can support independent domestic violence and sexual violence advisers. We can do all that kind of thing, but we have to address the fundamental issue of the casual everyday sexism and apathy that fail to address the concerns of women. That is the underlying issue.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con) [V]]

Two years ago, the Bishop of Truro produced an interim report outlining the global phenomenon of the persecution of Christians. As we make progress on our manifesto commitment fully to implement the Truro review recommendations, will the Prime Minister join me in looking forward to our hosting the international ministerial conference on freedom of religion or belief next year, and to the UK demonstrating its global leadership in defending and promoting this universal right for all?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for everything she is doing to campaign for freedom of religion and belief. I am very pleased that we are going to be holding an international conference on this issue. That is exactly what global Britain is all about: promoting freedom of expression, and freedom of belief and religion.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]]

The Prime Minister refused point blank to answer the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), so I will ask him again: what gives any British Prime Minister the moral and democratic right to impose the obscenity of an even bigger arsenal of weapons of mass murder on the people of Scotland, against their express will?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that was a veiled attempt, again, by the SNP to ask for another referendum, which is its habitual refrain. That is all it seems able to talk about: wrangling about democracy and its desire to be separated and to break up the country. I do not think that is the right way forward. I think we need strong defences. That is what the people of this country voted for and that is what we are going to deliver.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con) [V]]

  From gloom to joy, with news from Winchester for the Prime Minister that the vaccination programme is going really, really well. There are now fewer than 200,000 people in the whole of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight left to do in cohorts 1 to 9, and we have the plan, plus the supply to cover them comfortably by the end of March. Will my right hon. Friend please thank the NHS and its volunteers here for this amazing effort? As he does that, will he share his view on what led to the disinformation and the apparent abandonment of scientific evidence in certain EU member states around the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, I thank the NHS in Hampshire, and indeed around the country, for the amazing job it is doing in rolling out the vaccination programme—it has been truly stunning. Perhaps the best thing I can say about the Oxford-AstraZeneca programme is that I have finally got news that I am going to have my own jab very shortly; I am pleased to discover that. I do not know whether the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has had his. [Interruption.] He has had his. It will certainly be the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab that I will be having.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

There have now been more than 600 cases of coronavirus infection at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea since September, yet Ministers still refuse to meet the Public and Commercial Services Union to discuss ways in which more workers could work from home in safety before they are vaccinated. Workers have now resorted to voting for strike action, as a last resort, to protect their families and communities. I ask the Prime Minister again: will he now instruct Ministers to engage in talks with the union to help shield vulnerable workers before vaccination, or will he force a needless strike?

[The Prime Minister]

I think “needless” is the right word, and the hon. Gentleman should bear it in mind that any strike is likely to be bad news for motorists. We are at the stage now where we are advancing down our road map out of lockdown, and at the DVLA any staff who can work from home are doing so. Out of a workforce of 6,000, only five cases of covid have currently been found, and I understand that those individuals are all working from home. Frankly, I see no need for industrial action.

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con) [V]]

  My Kensington constituents and I have been deeply troubled by what is coming out of the Grenfell inquiry with regard to the building products industry. Does my right hon. Friend agree that contractors who have behaved improperly should not be used, going forward, for Government contracts? Will my right hon. Friend consider imposing a tax on the building products industry, in the same way as we have done on the residential property sector, as a way of partly paying for cladding remediation?

[The Prime Minister]

I know how much my hon. Friend cares about this issue and how deeply her constituents have been affected by the Grenfell fire. I will study her proposal for a new tax on building materials, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will want to think about that kind of idea. We are looking at new rules to exclude contractors from Government business where gross professional negligence has been shown.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab) [V]]

Exactly one year ago today we were told that 20,000 coronavirus deaths would be a “good outcome”. Yet our death toll is now six times higher: over 100,000 more people have lost their lives than that initial estimate. In March last year, the Prime Minister pontificated about taking it “on the chin”. Others acted decisively with lockdowns, but the Prime Minister dithered and delayed, with deadly consequences. With the worst hopefully now behind us, is it not time for the Prime Minister to hold up his hands and come clean with the British public and say, “Those deaths are on me, and for that I apologise”?

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly take full responsibility for everything the Government did, and of course we mourn the loss of every single coronavirus victim, and we sympathise deeply with their families and their loved ones. Am I sorry for what has happened to our country? Yes of course I am deeply, deeply sorry, and of course there will be a time for a full inquiry to enable us all to understand what we need to do better when we face these problems in the future, and that is something I think the whole House shares.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con) [V]]

  Five years on from Storm Desmond and a year on from Storm Ciara, sadly Penrith and The Border and Cumbria remain in the frontline for severe flooding events. With climate change, these catastrophes are becoming increasingly frequent and severe, and the effects on communities are serious and long term. Can my right hon. Friend reassure my constituents that at-risk communities will be supported by Government in terms of both flood protection and longer-term support, including in the important area of help for the mental health impacts of flooding?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point about the mental health impacts of flooding. Anybody who has been a victim of flooding or who visits a family that has been hit by flooding will know the immense distress that flooding causes. That is why the NHS will get an extra £500 million to address those issues and to give more support for the mental health needs.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Prime Minister, in December 2019’s election campaign you visited Samantha Parker at her home in Darlington. Samantha has the rare genetic condition PKU—phenylketonuria. You vowed to do your utmost to get her access to the life-changing drug Kuvan on the NHS.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Twist]

Apologies. The Prime Minister vowed to do his utmost to get Samantha access to life-changing drug Kuvan. Last month NICE published draft guidance, which would make Kuvan available to children but not to adults like Samantha—great for children, but devastating and discriminatory for adults like Samantha. Prime Minister, speaking as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on PKU, I now ask, what action will you take to deliver on your commitment to Samantha Parker, and make Kuvan available for her and for other adults with PKU?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady very much for raising the case, which I well remember. I am glad that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has now extended the treatment’s availability to children with PKU. Clearly, we need to do more, and I am very happy to take it up.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend noted that the integrated review has been widely and rightly welcomed as a bold British vision for our role in the world, but not in Scotland, of course, where the nationalist Administration think that it is more important to put indyref2 on the ballot paper at the Scottish elections? Does he realise that they are rejecting the jobs and security that the review guarantees for Scotland, because they hate the UK more than they want jobs for their own people?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support for the integrated review. It is hard to know what motivates our friends in the Scottish national party, but I think that they are mistaken in their approach. We are better as one United Kingdom; we are stronger together as one United Kingdom; and the contribution of the people of Scotland to the defence of our United Kingdom is absolutely incredible, and has been for centuries. That is what I want to maintain—I think it is a fine thing, and they should champion it.

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab) [V]]

Throughout the past year, NHS staff have been working tirelessly to keep our communities healthy and safe during the pandemic. I would like to ask the Prime Minister why he has been economical with the truth, when he says that a 1% pay increase is all that the Government can afford.

[Mr Speaker]

May I just say that no hon. Member on any side would actually mislead or lie to the House? But I am sure that the Prime Minister can answer something.

[The Prime Minister]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. No—I am grateful for your clarification—because what we are doing is saying that we so value the incredible contribution of nurses to our country over the past year or more that we want them, exceptionally of all the public services, to be looked at for a pay increase at a time of real difficulty in the public finances, which I think people understand. That is on top of the 12.8% increase in starting salary for nurses, plus the £5,000 bursary and the £3,000 that we have given for special help for childcare and other training needs.

If the hon. Gentleman looks at the figures, he will see that they are leading to a big increase in the number of nurses in the NHS—10,600 more this year than last year; more nurses in the NHS—and 60,000 more in training. When I talk to nurses—of course everyone wants better pay and conditions; I totally understand that—they say what they also want is an extra pair of hands next to them to give them the help and reassurance that they need. That is what we are recruiting for.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Recent horrific events have brought the important debate on women’s and girls’ rights into the spotlight, specifically their right to be safe and feel safe as they go about their daily lives. Does my right hon. Friend agree that such issues need to be treated sensitively, and false claims made by the Labour party last night on social media about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill are misleading and certainly not helpful?

[The Prime Minister]

It was certainly a mistake, and a regrettable mistake, for anybody to suggest that rape had been decriminalised in this country, because we must do everything we can to reassure victims of rape and sexual violence and get them to come forward. That is what we are doing. I also think it would be a good thing if, together, we could vote for some of the tougher sentences that we have put forward in the Bill. I liked the collegiate spirit that we had earlier on, and I hope it can be extended to voting for the tougher sentences that we have put forward.

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

Today the Welsh Labour Government have announced a special bonus payment for NHS and social care staff in Wales, with the Government covering the basic tax and national insurance so that most people will receive around £500. Will the Prime Minister join me in welcoming that payment in recognition of the dedication and commitment of our NHS and social care staff?

[The Prime Minister]

I do indeed recognise the amazing dedication and commitment of NHS and social care staff who have been at the forefront of this pandemic and who have borne the brunt of it, personally in many cases. That is why I will repeat the point I made a little while ago about what we are doing to recognise the contribution of the public sector, and nurses in particular, in these very difficult times, and say how relieved and glad I am to see the number of nurses now in training. I think there has been a 34% increase in applications to be nurses this year in this country. That is great, but we are going to drive things forward. We have a target of 50,000 more nurses, as well as 20,000 more police.

[Mr Speaker]

I am suspending the House to enable the necessary arrangements to be made for the next business.

Oral Answers to Questions

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 3 February.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

Captain Sir Tom Moore—or Captain Tom, as we all came to know him—dedicated his life to serving his country and others. His was a long life lived well, whether during his time defending our nation as an Army officer or, last year, bringing the country together through his incredible fundraising drive for the NHS that gave millions a chance to thank the extraordinary men and women of our NHS who have protected us in this pandemic. As Captain Tom repeatedly reminded us, “Please remember, tomorrow will be a good day”. He inspired the very best in us all, and his legacy will continue to do so for generations to come. We now all have the opportunity to show our appreciation for him and all that he stood for and believed in, and that is why I encourage everyone to join in a national clap for Captain Tom and all those health workers for whom he raised money at 6 pm this evening.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Claire Hanna [V]]

I certainly echo those words about Captain Tom, a decent and inspiring man.

The Social Democratic and Labour party has warned for the last five years about the destabilising impact Brexit would have on Northern Ireland, though we take no pleasure in the disruption or in the injury some feel to their British identity. The last few days have seen a rash decision—thankfully withdrawn—by the European Commission, which was condemned by all parties here and both Governments and which, unfortunately, was followed by sporadic criminal behaviour and threats. Will the Prime Minister, in affirming the rule of law in Northern Ireland, consider seriously the impact of their words, and work together through the available structures to ensure that the new arrangements work for everybody in Northern Ireland?

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly agree with the hon. Lady that it was most regrettable that the EU should seem to cast doubt on the Good Friday agreement and the principles of the peace process by seeming to call for a border across the island of Ireland. I can tell her that we will work to ensure that there are no such borders—we will respect the peace process—and, indeed, no barriers down the Irish sea, and that the principle of unfettered access across all parts of our United Kingdom is upheld.

[Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)]

I join the whole House in paying tribute to Captain Sir Tom Moore, who was indeed an inspiration to all of us, a beacon of light at a time of darkness and a true gentleman.

I am sure my right hon. Friend is aware that my ten-minute rule Bill would increase the maximum penalty for death by dangerous driving to life imprisonment. The policy and the Bill have cross-party support. The policy has Government support; the Bill does not. The Government say they will introduce the policy in their sentencing Bill, of which we have as yet seen no sign. So, will the Government now give Government time to my Bill to ensure that this necessary change is put on the statute book as soon as possible?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend, and she is absolutely right to campaign for punishments that fit the crime; we are therefore bringing forward exactly those changes in our forthcoming sentencing Bill. Our proposals will, I believe, go as far as, if not even further than, those that she wants by raising the maximum penalty for causing death by careless driving when under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and they will tighten the law for those who cause serious injury by careless driving.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

May I join you, Mr Speaker, and the Prime Minister in sending my condolences to the family of Captain Sir Tom Moore? He perhaps more than anyone embodied the spirit of Britain; he will be sadly missed, and I welcome the initiative that the Prime Minister spoke of for a clap this evening. Our thoughts are also with the family of Maureen Colquhoun, the first openly lesbian MP and a great champion of women’s rights.

Let me pay tribute to our NHS and all those on the frontline who are delivering the vaccine. Today we are likely to hit 10 million vaccinations, which is remarkable. The biggest risk to the vaccine programme at the moment is the arrival of new variants, such as the South African variant. On that issue, the Government’s own scientists in the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies said two weeks ago that

“only a complete pre-emptive closure of borders or the mandatory quarantine of all visitors upon arrival can get close to fully preventing new cases or new variants.”

That is pretty clear, so why did the Prime Minister choose not to do the one thing that SAGE said could prevent new variants coming to the United Kingdom?

[The Prime Minister]

Actually, SAGE did not recommend a complete ban and says that a travel ban should not be relied upon to stop the importation of new variants, but we do have one of the toughest regimes in the world. Anybody coming from South Africa not only has to do a test before they come here, but anybody now coming from South Africa—a British citizen coming from South Africa now—will find themselves obliged to go into quarantine for 10 days, and will have an isolation assurance agency checking up on them. It is illegal now to go on holiday in this country; it is illegal to travel from South Africa or all the countries on the current red list, and we will be going forward with a plan to ensure that people coming into this country from those red list countries immediately have to go into Government-mandated quarantine hospitality.

[Keir Starmer]

I am intrigued by the Prime Minister’s answer. I do not think he disputes what SAGE’s view was—that only a complete closure or comprehensive quarantine of all arrivals will work. He does not seem to dispute that; he says it simply was not a recommendation. I ask the Prime Minister to publish the full SAGE minutes so we can see what was said in full; or, if there is some other advice, perhaps he can publish that.

The situation is this: we know that the South African variant is spreading across England, and measures are in place to try to deal with that. We also know that other variants are out there in other parts of the world. Just as a matter of common sense, is the Prime Minister really saying that quarantining all arrivals would make no difference to fighting new variants of the virus, or is he saying that quarantining all arrivals at the border would make a difference but it is too difficult?

[The Prime Minister]

This is the right hon. and learned Gentleman who only recently said that quarantine measures are “a blunt instrument” and whose shadow Transport Secretary said that quarantine should be “lessened”. We have one of the toughest regimes in the world. When the right hon. and learned Gentleman calls for a complete closure of borders, or suggests that that might be an option, he should be aware that 75% of our medicines come into this country from the European continent, as does 45% of our food, and 250,000 businesses in this country rely on imports. It is not practical completely to close off this country as he seems to be suggesting. What is practical is to have one of the toughest regimes in the world and to get on with vaccinating the people of this country, which is what we are doing.

[Keir Starmer]

What the Prime Minister says about the Labour position is complete nonsense; he knows it. It is 3 February 2021; with new variants in the country, our schools are shut and our borders are open. Everybody knows there are exceptions whatever the quarantine regime. Everybody knows that. That is not what this question is about.

The position is this: 21,000 people are coming into this country every day. The Prime Minister’s new border arrangements are still weeks away from being implemented and will only affect direct flights from some countries. We know from the first wave of the pandemic that only 0.1% of virus cases came from China, where we had restrictions, whereas 62% came indirectly from France and Spain, where there were no restrictions. Why does the Prime Minister think that the variants of the virus will behave differently and arrive in the UK only by direct flights?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman cannot have it both ways. He simultaneously says that he wants the borders to be kept open for freight reasons or to allow businesses to carry on as now—I think that was what he was saying—while calling for tougher quarantine measures, which is exactly what this Government imposed as soon as we became aware of the new variant.

I repeat what someone has to do if they want to come into this country from abroad. Seventy-two hours before they fly, they have to get a test. They have to have a passenger locator form; they are kicked off the plane if they do not have it. They then have to spend 10 days in quarantine. If they come from one of the red list countries, they have to go straight into quarantine. All that, of course, is to allow us to get on with the vaccination programme. If we had listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, we would still be at the starting blocks, because he wanted to stay in the European Medicines Agency and said so four times from that Dispatch Box.

[Keir Starmer]

Complete nonsense. Don’t let the truth get in the way of a pre-prepared gag: the Prime Minister knows that I have never said that, from this Dispatch Box or anywhere else, but the truth escapes him. He describes the current arrangements. If they were working, the variant—the single biggest threat to the vaccine system—would not be in the country.

Let me turn to another area where the Government have been slow to act: the cladding crisis. This is affecting millions of people, and I cannot tell the Prime Minister how anxious and angry people feel about it. It is now three and a half years since the Grenfell tragedy, which took 72 lives. Can the Prime Minister tell the House and the country why, three and a half years on, there are still hundreds of thousands of people living in homes with unsafe cladding, and why millions of leaseholders are in homes that they cannot sell and are facing extortionate costs?

[The Prime Minister]

In respect of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s last answer, may I advise him to consult YouTube, where he will find an answer?

The right hon. and learned Gentleman raises a very important point about cladding and the predicament of some leaseholders—many leaseholders—and he is absolutely right that this is a problem that needs to be fixed. This Government are getting on with it. On 95% of the high-rise buildings with unsafe ACM cladding, work is either complete or under way to remove that cladding. I very much appreciate and sympathise with the predicament of leaseholders who are in that situation, but we are working to clear the backlog, and I can tell him that my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Communities Secretary will be coming forward with a full package to address the issue.

[Keir Starmer]

Whatever the Prime Minister claims is being done is not working, because this is the situation. Through no fault of their own, huge numbers of people, especially leaseholders, are stuck in the middle. They are living in unsafe homes. They cannot sell and they are being asked to foot the bill. That is the situation they are in. Take, for example, Will Martin. He is a doctor who has a flat in Sheffield. He has been spending his days on the frontline fighting covid in the NHS. He spends his nights worrying about the £52,000 bill that he now has to pay for fire safety repairs. He does not want future promises, Prime Minister. He does not want to hear that it has all been sorted when he knows that it has not. He wants to know, here and now: will he or will he not have to pay that £52,000 bill?

[The Prime Minister]

We are determined that no leaseholder should have to pay for the unaffordable costs of fixing safety defects that they did not cause and are no fault of their own. That is why, in addition to the £1.6 billion we are putting in to remove the HPL—high-pressure laminate—cladding, we have also set up a £1 billion building safety fund that has already processed over almost 3,000 claims. I sympathise very much with Dr Martin, the gentleman the right hon. and learned Gentleman mentions, and I hope very much that his particular case can be addressed in the course of the forthcoming package that will be produced by my right hon. Friends.

[Keir Starmer]

There are thousands and thousands of people in exactly the same position. I spoke to leaseholders caught in the middle of this on Monday. One of them was Hayley. She has already gone bankrupt, Prime Minister. She is 27. She bought a flat, she has lost it and she is now bankrupt. It is too late for her. Those leaseholders I spoke to had three very simple asks. This is what they want: immediate up-front funding for unsafe blocks; a deadline of next year to make buildings safe; and protection for leaseholders. We put those forward for a vote on Monday. The Prime Minister says he is determined to do something about it. What did he do? He ordered his MPs to abstain. If the Prime Minister is serious about moving this forward and ending this injustice, will he commit today to those simple asks from leaseholders?

[The Prime Minister]

We are getting on with the job of helping leaseholders across the country by remediating their buildings. In addition to the funds I have already mentioned, I can tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman that we are also introducing a £30 million fund to install alarms and other interim measures. We are making it very clear to the mortgage industry that they should support people living in such accommodation, and making it clear to all sectors in the industry that people living in such homes should not be tied up in the whole EWS1 process. That will benefit about 450,000 homeowners. I think he is right to raise the problem, but we are getting on with addressing it.

We are getting on with addressing the fundamental problem that afflicts this country and that is the covid pandemic. That is why I am pleased we have now done 10 million first vaccinations across the country. I repeat, Mr Speaker, that had we listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman we would be stuck at go. He is shaking his head, but he can check the record. Several times he said that this country should remain in the European Medicines Agency. If he wishes he can, on a point of order, correct me. He said it was wrong just now. I think he should study the record and he will find that that is exactly what he did.

We want to get this country safe again. We want schools to come back. The right hon. and learned Gentleman continues to refuse to say that schools are not safe. On the contrary, he spends his time looking at Labour focus groups, who tell him that he should stop sitting on the fence—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. In fairness, Prime Minister, we have to be somewhere near the question that was asked. I do not want you to go around answering every problem and issue. There are a lot more questions that will allow you to do that and the first one is from Marco Longhi.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

I join the Prime Minister in his moving words about Captain Sir Tom Moore, who was an inspiration to each and every one of us in this country and beyond. The Priory Park boxing club in Dudley has produced many champions, including Ryan Aston, who became champion five times in this country. Will the Prime Minister join me in paying tribute to Paul Gough at the club, who is working with young boys and girls who have been excluded from mainstream education? Will he also pay tribute to the council leader Patrick Harley, who has agreed to and is supporting a new school, in partnership with the club, to ensure that these young people will get academic qualifications as well as increased strength, belief and new opportunities for the future?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this excellent club. I am happy to join him in paying tribute to the work of Paul Gough and Patrick Harley, and everybody at Priory Park boxing club. I know from personal experience what a huge difference it can make, not just to young people’s fitness, but to their educational success, to attend boxing clubs.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP) [V]]

May I associate myself with your remarks, Mr Speaker, about the remarkable gentleman Captain Sir Tom Moore and everything that he has done? He has been an inspiration to each and every one of us and I send my condolences to his family and friends.

Last week, we told the Prime Minister that it was wrong for him to visit Scotland in the middle of a pandemic. We told him that it was a non-essential visit. This morning, the Daily Record newspaper revealed that the Prime Minister knew that the Livingston plant that he was visiting had an outbreak of 14 covid cases just 24 hours earlier. There are serious questions to answer. Did the Prime Minister and his advisers know about the covid outbreak? When did they know, and when did the Prime Minister make the irresponsible decision to go ahead with what was a PR stunt?

[The Prime Minister]

I can think of few things more important than to see the roll-out of the vaccination programme across this country, to encourage the wonderful companies who are doing great work across the whole of Scotland and to see the commitment of those Scottish scientists to helping us all to defeat the pandemic. It was fantastic to talk to them. I would just repeat that the Government remain, as I said yesterday, very willing to help Scotland with the roll-out of vaccines across the whole of the UK.

[Ian Blackford]

There is the wow factor once again with the Prime Minister. What an absolute shambles that he has gone to a plant where there was a covid outbreak. The Prime Minister cannot just explain away this absolutely shocking error of judgment. Anyone can see that his campaign trip to Scotland was utterly reckless. The Daily Record story is very clear. The Prime Minister and his advisers knew there was a serious covid outbreak at this plant. They knew the visit posed a risk, but they made a deliberate choice. They made the irresponsible choice. The Prime Minister put politics before public health. Prime Minister, why be so reckless? Is it any wonder that people in Scotland have no faith in this Prime Minister? Is not he the worst possible leader at the worst possible time?

[The Prime Minister]

I think what the people of Scotland want to see is the whole country pulling together and working to develop the vaccine, as that fantastic plant in Scotland is doing. One of the advantages of the Valneva vaccine is that it may be able to combat all sorts of variants in a very comprehensive way. It is amazing and wonderful to see Scottish scientists working to do that. I had a fantastic time. Nobody, by the way, raised that issue with me before or since, and it is my job to visit every part of this country. Nothing and no one is going to stop me, and I am very, very proud of the Government’s record in rolling out the vaccine. As I say, the offer remains open to the Scottish nationalist party. We are there—[Interruption.] Scottish National party—if they insist, though they are also nationalists, Mr Speaker. We are there to help the roll-out of the vaccine and do more, were they to decide that is necessary.

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

Closing the attainment gap has always been at the heart of our education policy, yet we know that the pandemic is having a devastating effect on our children’s education. I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to prioritise the opening of our schools, but would he also agree that we must put the catch-up of children’s missed education at the centre of our recovery programme?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed. Of all the challenges now facing the country, the single most important is remedying the damage to children’s education. Yes, of course, we have to clear up the backlog in the NHS and we have problems in the courts, but it is education that is going to be the focus of this Government, and repairing the differential learning that has taken place during the crisis.

[Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance) [V]]

We need to be open and honest on the reasons why the Northern Ireland protocol exists, but also do all we can to make its implementation as easy as possible. So in that spirit, in the talks with the EU that will take place over the coming days, will the Prime Minister make it a priority to seek a UK-EU veterinary agreement? That would help in respect of the Northern Ireland protocol and also help all UK food exporters.

[The Prime Minister]

We think it is very important that the protocol should not place unnecessary barriers—or barriers of any kind—down the Irish sea. As I said to a colleague earlier, I think it was most unfortunate that the EU seemed to want to impose a barrier across the island of Ireland. We seek to make sure there are no such barriers down the Irish sea.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con) [V]]

Some of my constituents had their Christmases ruined because the heavy rainfall and local inappropriate development caused foul water to enter their homes, causing them great difficulties. Will the Prime Minister appoint a statutory body with the specific and undeniable responsibility of ensuring that no development can automatically tap into existing drainage systems, and that before developments begin, a full assessment is made of the local drainage capacity and if that capacity would be inadequate, the development does not begin until the infrastructure is upgraded?

[The Prime Minister]

I will study the very interesting proposals that my hon. Friend makes, but in the meantime I will raise them particularly with the Environment Agency, which does a fantastic job in managing local areas that are prone to flooding and putting in the necessary defences. I know that colleagues across the House will have seen the work of the Environment Agency across the country, and we are making another £5.2 billion investment in traditional flood defences, which I know will benefit my hon. Friend’s constituents in Gloucestershire and across the country.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

  The Prime Minister was not born in this country, and my parents were not born in this country; I was, but we are all British. There are, however, hundreds of thousands of children, including in my constituency, who, like us, were born or raised here and are entitled to citizenship but are being priced out by the £1,012 fee. Without citizenship, they face barriers to university, work, healthcare, renting a home or opening a bank account. Does the Prime Minister agree that it is wrong that the Government make a 60% profit on these applications, and will he take steps to reduce or even end citizenship fees for children?

[The Prime Minister]

British citizenship is a wonderful thing, and it is fantastic that so many EU nationals have taken up the opportunity to become British in the course of the last few years. I am interested in the point that the hon. Lady makes and I will study it, but clearly there are costs that must be borne by the taxpayer. I think she will appreciate that citizenship at any time of life is a very considerable prize and worth investing in.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

The police are one of our public services that has been absolutely essential during the pandemic, so will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the fact that the Kent police and crime commissioner, Matthew Scott, has announced another 145 police officers during this year, bringing the total to 800 extra police on the streets of Kent? Most importantly, this has been accompanied by a reduction of 17,000 in the crime numbers in Kent this year.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend, who is a long-standing and redoubtable campaigner for law and order and for the police. I also congratulate the PCC, Matthew Scott, on what he is doing to back the police and to recruit more police in Kent. That is why we are putting another 20,000 more officers on the streets of this country, and I think we have already recruited about 6,000.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab) [V]]

  Last week, the Government responded to concerns from our care workers by stating:“We are immensely proud of all our care workers do”.That is a sentiment we all share, yet in the very same statement the Government sought to pass the buck for the way our care workers have been treated by saying:“The vast majority of care workers are employed by private sector providers”and that“the Government does not set levels of pay for care workers”.Why will this Government not commit to ensuring that our care workers are paid a wage they can live on?

[The Prime Minister]

This Government are proud of not only setting up the national living wage, but making sure we had record-breaking increases both last year and this year. That is the most important thing we can do for care workers and workers across the country.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con) [V]]

I thank the Prime Minister for prioritising schools during this pandemic. Will he confirm that that remains the case? In Children’s Mental Health Week, will he work with parents and frontline children’s charities to minimise the disruption to children and their mental health caused by this pandemic?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what she does to champion this very, very important cause. It is Children’s Mental Health Week this week, and partly in recognition of the extent of the problem and the issue across the whole of the country, we have announced a new youth mental health ambassador, Dr Alex George, who will be working with the Government to underline the importance of mental health resilience and making everybody in our country better able to deal with some of the problems that life throws in our way.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP) [V]]

May I, too, express condolences to the family of Captain Sir Tom Moore, an inspirational and wonderful gentleman?Prime Minister, you say that your commitment to Northern Ireland is “unshakeable”. I speak for all of my constituents today when I tell you that the protocol has betrayed us and has made us feel like foreigners in our own country. Tea and sympathy will not cut the mustard, so, Prime Minister, what are you actually going to do when you realise that the EU will do nothing to help Northern Ireland? Will you use all of the instruments at your disposal? Will you use, if necessary, your parliamentary majority? Will you legislate, if necessary, to remove the impediments to trade in Northern Ireland? Will you be a man of your word and allow businessmen in my constituency to bin the unnecessary documentation that you told us we could bin? Prime Minister, be the Unionist we need you to be.

[The Prime Minister]

I utterly share the hon. Gentleman’s frustration about the way in which the EU, particularly the EU Commission, temporarily seemed to use the protocol in such a way as to impose a border, contrary to the spirit of the Good Friday agreement—contrary to the letter of the Good Friday agreement. We will do everything we need to do, whether legislatively or indeed by invoking article 16 of the protocol, to ensure that there is no barrier down the Irish sea and that the hon. Gentleman’s business constituents, some of whom I know very well and admire very much, can continue to do business, unfettered, between Northern Ireland and the rest of this country.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his calm handling of the European Commission’s misbehaviour over vaccines and Northern Ireland? Nevertheless, we can learn something from our European friends. Andalucia, a Spanish province of 8 million people, had a covid death rate of about 190 deaths per million in November—higher than ours at the time. After giving activated vitamin D—calcifediol—to care home residents and some GP patients, that death rate almost halved, whilst ours was doubling. Will he ask his advisers to look urgently again at the very latest Spanish research about that cheap, safe and apparently effective treatment?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. We will continue to monitor all the evidence about the efficacy of vitamin D and the treatment that he mentions. I am well aware of it; indeed, we have discussed it before personally. I will keep him updated on the review that is taking place.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab) [V]]

Skelmersdale residents believe that they are an island of forgotten people. It is a ’60s new town, with very poor public transport and one of the lowest levels of car and vehicle ownership. For many, the only means of getting to doctors, schools or shops or visiting loved ones is through some of the 87 underpasses, many of which flood every time there is rain. Will the right hon. Gentleman ask his officials to work with Lancashire County Council to find and fund a permanent—and I do mean permanent—solution, which does not involve providing canoes?

[The Prime Minister]

I appreciate the desire of the hon. Lady to find a solution. I am aware of the problem she refers to and the flooding in the tunnels. We will certainly work with Lancashire County Council to mitigate the problem—to sort it out. To repeat: we have the funds available and will make sure that it is done.

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

We were delighted to hear that Maryport, in my constituency of Workington, was successful in our bid for the future high streets fund, one of my right hon. Friend’s 50 additional towns announced last August—a bid that I led when I was deputy leader of Allerdale Borough Council. We are hoping, too, for a positive outcome to our towns fund bid for Workington. May I take the opportunity to thank my right hon. Friend for all he is doing for my constituents and in levelling up across the United Kingdom, and invite him, as soon as he is able, to visit my constituency to see for himself its potential?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is a fantastic advocate for the people of Workington and never fails to put their interests before me. I will do everything I can to help him and will check my diary commitments to see when I can get there. I hope it will be as soon as possible.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC) [V]]

The delivery of important letters, packets and parcels in the Caernarfon area has been delayed for days and weeks by a covid outbreak amongst local postal workers. The Prime Minister will, I am sure, join me in wishing my constituents a speedy recovery, but what are his Government doing, during this health crisis, to ensure that the once world-beating but now privatised Royal Mail is sufficiently robust to fulfil its duty to the public, particularly in rural areas?

[The Prime Minister]

I pass on my sympathies to all those affected by the outbreak of covid that the hon. Gentleman describes. The most important thing we can do is continue to roll out the vaccination programme. We want to get to key workers, such as postal workers, as fast as we possibly can. We are already at 10 million across the whole country. We have got to get through JCVI groups 1 to 9, the most vulnerable groups. Postal workers over 50 will certainly be included in those. After that, we want to get down to all key workers who come into regular contact with others who may be exposed to the virus.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con) [V]]

The Prime Minister will be aware that the second wave of coronavirus has had a significant impact on the mental wellbeing of frontline nurses and doctors, with many in critical care units facing continuous shifts with dismal survival rates, causing a level of psychological harm that may result in post-traumatic stress disorder. With that in mind, will he look at utilising the military understanding of that condition, and urgently invest in training sufficient numbers of psychology professionals to support our heroic nurses and doctors fighting on the frontline of this battle against covid-19?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point about PTSD in the NHS, and NHS staff, who do an amazing job treating us all. I will certainly look at the particular recommendation that she now makes; but clearly, as part of the £52 billion package of investment in the NHS that we have been making in the last year, we will be ensuring that we support the mental health of staff working on the frontline, and making sure that they have all the health and wellbeing helplines, all the advice and counselling, that they need to get through what has been, for all of them, a really difficult time.

[Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP) [V]]

Yesterday, the Scottish Government announced that they would go further than the Prime Minister and introduce a comprehensive system of supervised quarantine for those entering the country. It is evidently clear that countries that have employed effective international quarantine measures are now reaping the rewards of reopening their economies and reducing the unnecessary loss of life. Faced with the overwhelming evidence that importing new cases of variants could undermine our efforts again, why is the Prime Minister watching, waiting and hoping for the best, when we know that his dithering on crucial decisions has already had catastrophic consequences?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not think anybody wants to take any lectures on speed of roll-out or delivery of programmes from the Scottish nationalist party, but I want the hon. Lady to know that the Government will be very happy to help with accelerating the roll-out of the vaccine programme, as we said yesterday. The offer is there. The vaccination of the people of this country is the single most important thing that we need to do now, together, to beat this pandemic.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con) [V]]

Millions of leaseholders are living in fear because they have no idea how safe their buildings are, and they are also facing staggering bills that they cannot afford. Can the Prime Minister assure me that leaseholders will not have to pay to fix these historic fire safety defects, and rule out loans to leaseholders, which are not a solution?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said earlier on, we are absolutely clear that leaseholders should not have to worry about the costs of fixing historic safety defects that they did not cause. But I appreciate the sympathy and care with which my hon. Friend represents their interests.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab) [V]]

  It has been estimated that 40,000 people were scammed out of their pensions in the five years after the pension freedoms took effect in 2015; attractive deals on Google or Facebook turn out all too often to be a fraud. Will the Prime Minister ensure that the planned online harms Bill tackles online financial harms, to address this very serious problem?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point about online fraud, which is becoming an increasing concern of the Government. People across the country must be vigilant. As he suggests, we will look at what we can do with the online harms Bill or any other measures to protect people, particularly pensioners, against fraudsters online.

[Mr Speaker]

Don’t forget that the Prime Minister is asking the country to get together and clap at six o’clock.

Oral Answers to Questions

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 16 December.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

Yesterday, I made a written ministerial statement updating the House on the latest position on the leak investigation,

as you requested, Mr Speaker.

I am sure the whole House will want to join me in wishing all Members and staff a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Members from across the House will also want to join me in sending our warmest wishes to all our armed forces, both in the United Kingdom and those who are stationed overseas. Members will also, I hope, want to join me in sending our very best wishes to all members of the emergency services, health and care workers, and those who will be working over Christmas.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Michael Fabricant [V]]

May I join the Prime Minister in those good wishes for Christmas and add my own good wishes to you, Mr Speaker, and to the Prime Minister and hope that you both have a peaceful and safe Christmas period?

Look, on the subject of Christmas, my constituents in Lichfield and Burntwood and those in the rest of the country have had a torrid year with the covid pandemic, and we have this very small break over Christmas. People must use common sense, of course: do not start hugging granny; do not go wild over Christmas; and, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister previously said, let us be jolly careful over Christmas. I want to say to my Prime Minister that it would not be helpful if some smarmy lawyer, or somebody now at this late stage, were to argue for a change in the laws. May I ask my right hon. Friend, here and now, who is neither smarmy nor a lawyer—

[Mr Speaker]

We’ve got the message!

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is right in many ways, but right to stress the importance of people taking care this Christmas, because although some things are unquestionably going well—I am very pleased to tell the House that we have had a good start with the roll-out of the vaccination programme and in just seven days 108,000 people in England and 138,000 across the whole of the UK have received their first vaccination—we must remember that transmission takes place asymptomatically in so many cases: one in three people are currently asymptomatic with covid. That is why my hon. Friend is absolutely right that we should exercise extreme caution in the way we celebrate Christmas. We can celebrate it sensibly but we have to be extremely cautious in the way we behave.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

May I join the Prime Minister in his good wishes to all the staff, the armed forces and our emergency services, and thank you, Mr Speaker, and the House authorities for doing all that you have done this year to keep Parliament safe, and open, in challenging circumstances?

Since this is—probably—the last PMQs of the year, I want to look at some of the decisions that the Prime Minister has made in the last 12 months. Let me start at the beginning of the pandemic, when images from hospitals in Italy and Spain were being shown on our televisions and the infection rates were rising in the UK. Does the Prime Minister now accept that his slowness to respond led to more deaths, a longer lockdown, and deeper economic damage?

[The Prime Minister]

No, because at every stage we followed the scientific guidance, and continue to do so. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to draw attention to what is happening across the whole of Europe, and indeed there are spikes now taking place across the whole of the EU. Thanks to the tiering system that we have in place in large parts of the country, and thanks to the heroic efforts of the people of the north-west, the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber, we are seeing those rates coming down. Yes, it is true that we have spikes now in some parts of London and the south-east, but we will make sure, with our adjustments to the tiering that we conduct over the next weeks, that we will address those issues. That is the right way forward for this country, and that is how we will defeat the virus—with vaccines, with community testing and with tough tiering. I think that what people would like to hear in this season of good will to all men is a little bit of support from the right hon. and learned Gentleman for what the Government are trying to do to beat coronavirus, and perhaps just a little less carping.

[Keir Starmer]

If the Prime Minister will not listen to me, let me quote his own spending watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility. It said that the UK locked down later and for longer than some of its European neighbours and experienced a deeper fall and slower economic recovery. This is not bad luck. It is not inevitable. It is the result of the Prime Minister’s choices. But if the Prime Minister disagrees, perhaps he can tell us why Britain, the sixth-richest country in the world, with all our brilliant scientists and amazing NHS, ends the year with one of the highest numbers of covid deaths in Europe—over 64,000, each one leaving a grieving family—and the deepest recession of any major economy. Why does he think that has happened?

[The Prime Minister]

The House will have noted the slight change of tune in the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s criticisms of the UK’s performance. But perhaps he could tell me why the UK is the first to produce a viable treatment for coronavirus in the form of dexamethasone or the first country in the world to roll out a clinically tested stage 3 vaccine. This is a pandemic that has affected the whole of Europe, and this Government have continued to take the tough decisions necessary to beat it. If I may say so, without wishing to cast aspersions on the point of the view of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, I would take his criticisms of the UK Government’s decisions a little more seriously, frankly, if he had been able to decide last week, or the week before, whether he even supported the approach we were taking or opposed it. He could not do either: he abstained.

[Keir Starmer]

I said two weeks ago at this Dispatch Box that I was very concerned that tier 2 would not be strong enough to hold the virus. The Prime Minister said, “Don’t worry about that. Just support us. Throw away the problems.” Two weeks later, what have we got? The virus rising in tier 2 and tier 3, and I will come back to that. If the Prime Minister thinks that the highest death numbers and the deepest recession is somehow delivering for the British people, he is a long way removed from the truth.

The problem is that the Prime Minister makes the same mistakes over and over again. Two weeks ago, he unveiled the latest covid plan. He told the House, as he has many times before, that his plan would suppress the virus, but the latest figures show the opposite. The Prime Minister talked about spikes here and there. Let me tell the House that in three out of four tier 2 areas, infections are going up. In over half of the tier 3 areas, infections are going up—exactly the concern that I put to the Prime Minister two weeks ago, when he said, “Just back us anyway.” As a result, this morning 10 million people moved into tougher restrictions—exactly what we said would happen: areas going up the tiers. Does the Prime Minister not recognise that his latest plan has once again failed to control the virus and protect the NHS and our economy?

[The Prime Minister]

Once again, the right hon. and learned Gentleman criticises the Government’s plans without producing any kind of plan of his own, except I seem to remember that he was the mastermind author of the Labour firebreak in Wales. If we look at what is happening across the country, it is thanks to the efforts of the British people that we are seeing significant reductions in the virus in some of the areas where it was really surging. That is because of the hard work of the people of this country. We will, of course, continue to reflect that as we go forward with the tiering approach, and we will continue to roll out the vaccine and community testing. I think that his time would be better employed supporting those wonderful initiatives, supporting community testing, encouraging people to get a test and encouraging people to get a vaccine, rather than continually attacking what the NHS and the Government are trying to do.

[Keir Starmer]

I have encouraged everybody to have the vaccine every time I have stood up and talked about it. The Prime Minister is avoiding the issue. In some places, the infection rate has gone up 70% in the last seven days. Everybody knows that this is a problem. The Prime Minister is yet again pretending that it is not.

Another major mistake of the last 12 months was losing public trust. We all know what the tipping point was: the 520-mile round trip to Barnard Castle and the humiliating way in which the Prime Minister and his Cabinet chose to defend it. Now we learn that, while the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are telling the armed forces, police officers, careworkers and firefighters that they will get a pay freeze, Dominic Cummings has been handed at least a £40,000 pay rise. How on earth does the Prime Minister justify that?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman totally trivialises the efforts of the British people in getting the virus down. He says that none of the lockdown measures have worked. That is absolutely untrue. From 5 November to 3 December, the people of this country came together once again to get the virus under control, and they have made a huge amount of progress. We will continue with that tiering system, and we will get the virus down. That is the best way forward for this country. All he wants to do is to lock the whole country down—he is a one-club golfer; that is the only solution he has—and then, all he does is attack the economic consequences of lockdowns.

[Keir Starmer]

Mr Speaker, you could script that from October and November, when the Prime Minister was saying that a lockdown was the last thing the country needed and would be disastrous. Two weeks later, he put it on the table and voted for it—ridiculous! This is exactly the problem: not learning from mistakes. Obviously, we know that for Dominic Cummings, it was not performance- related pay. I think that the British people will find it pretty hard to understand why it is one rule for our key workers and another for his advisers.

It is now likely that the next big mistake will be over the easing of restrictions over Christmas—and it is not smarmy lawyers saying this. Let me tell the House what the British Medical Journal has said. The British Medical Journal said yesterday:

“we believe the government is about to blunder into another major error that will cost many lives.”

The Prime Minister should listen to that advice, not just ignore it as usual. If he really is going to press ahead with this, can he tell us what assessment has been done of the impact that it will have on infection rates and increased pressure on the NHS? What is the impact?

[The Prime Minister]

I wish the right hon. and learned Gentleman had had the guts just to say what he really wants to do, which is to cancel the plans people have made and cancel Christmas. That is really, I think, what he is driving at. He is looking a bit blank; I think that is what he is driving at. But I can tell him that, as of today—just this morning—there is actually, as I say, unanimous agreement across the UK Government and across all the devolved Administrations, including members of all parties, including his own, that we should proceed, in principle, with the existing regulations, because we do not want to criminalise people’s long-made plans. We do think it is absolutely vital that people should at this very, very tricky time exercise a high degree of personal responsibility, especially when they come into contact with elderly people, and avoid contact with elderly people wherever possible. That is how, by being sensible and cautious, not by imposing endless lockdowns or cancelling Christmas, as he would appear to want to do—that is the only implication I can draw from what he has said, unless he wants to announce some other idea—we will continue to work together to keep this virus under control, to defeat it and take the country forward.

[Keir Starmer]

Here we go again: ignoring the medical advice, and we know where that leads, because we have seen what happened in the last nine months. Whatever the Prime Minister says, there is no escaping the brutal facts that Britain has one of the highest numbers of covid deaths in Europe and the worst economic damage.

This is the last PMQs of the year, and I for one often wonder where the Prime Minister gets his advice from. Well, now I know, because I have here the official newsletter of the Wellingborough Conservative party. It is not on everyone’s Christmas reading list, but it is a fascinating read, because it gives a lot of advice to wannabe politicians. It says this:

“say the first thing that comes into your head… It’ll probably be nonsense… You may get a bad headline… but… If you make enough dubious claims, fast enough”,

you can get away with it. The December edition, includes the advice:

“Sometimes, it is better to give the WRONG answer at the RIGHT time, than the RIGHT answer at the WRONG time.”

So my final question to the Prime Minister is this: is he the inspiration for the newsletter, or is he the author?

[The Prime Minister]

I think what the people of this country would love to hear from the right hon. and learned Gentleman in this season of good will is any kind of point of view at all on some of the key issues. This week, he could not make up his mind whether it was right for kids to be in school or not, and havering completely. He could not make up his mind last week whether or not to support what the Government were doing to fight covid, and told his troops, heroically, to abstain. He could not make up his mind about Brexit, we all seem to remember. We do not know whether he will vote for a deal or not. He cannot attack the Government if he cannot come up with a view of his own. In the words of the song, “All I want for Christmas is” a view, and it would be wonderful if he could produce one.

This Government are getting on with delivering on the people’s priorities, with 20,000 more police, 50,000 more nurses, 48 new hospitals and—although it has been very tough and very difficult, and everybody appreciates the suffering and hardship that the people of this country have been going through—by rolling out the vaccine, by community testing and by tough tiering, which I hope the right hon. and learned Gentleman supports, we are going to defeat coronavirus and we are going to take this country forward into a great 2021.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

At the beginning of this year, the Prime Minister delivered the historic British people’s votes for Brexit. Regardless of the outcome of the current talks with the EU, does he agree with me that this great outward-looking nation has a world of global opportunities ahead of it?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend, who has campaigned nobly in that cause. As he knows, already we have not only set up a points-based immigration system, taking back control of our borders, but we will ensure that—and we have already done many free trade deals—we will use the economic advantages of Brexit, coming out of the European Union, to do free ports, to make this country the most attractive place for investment for business and for enterprise around the world and, above all, to resist the depredations of the socialists opposite, who would destroy that opportunity and do everything they possibly could to take us straight back into the lunar pull of the European Union, which is the true ambition of the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer).

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

May I wish you, Mr Speaker, and all colleagues, staff, essential workers, health workers, and everyone in these nations all the best for Christmas? I hope everyone does their best to keep everybody safe.

In the past few hours, the President of the European Commission has said that the next few days are going to be “decisive” in the Brexit negotiations. With just two weeks to go, it is a disgrace that businesses and people have been left with that crippling uncertainty, and the real threat of food and medicine shortages come the new year. One year ago, at the general election, Scotland rejected this Prime Minister. It rejected this Tory Government, and it rejected their extreme Brexit. People in Scotland now need to know the price they will be forced to pay. Ahead of any vote in Parliament, will the Prime Minister commit to releasing a detailed economic impact assessment of the cost to the UK of his extreme Tory Brexit plans?

[The Prime Minister]

Notwithstanding the slight uncharacteristic air of gloom from the right hon. Gentleman, there is every opportunity—and hope I have—that our friends and partners across the channel will see sense and do a deal. All that takes is for them to understand that the UK has a natural right, like every other country, to want to be able to control its own laws and its own fishing grounds —I would have thought that would be important to the right hon. Gentleman. Whatever happens in the next few days, I know that this country will prosper mightily on the terms that we agree with our European friends, and whatever those terms may be—whether they are Australian or Canadian—he can go forward with a high heart and confidence into 2021, knowing that there are great opportunities for Scotland and the rest of the UK.

[Ian Blackford]

I am not quite sure what that was, Mr Speaker, but it certainly wasn’t an answer to the question. I am not surprised, because the Prime Minister did not want to answer the question. He knows that the United Kingdom is poorer and worse off as a result of the extreme Tory Brexit, and the costs continue to soar. The Warwick study estimates that Scotland has already lost £4 billion as a result of Brexit, and Bloomberg Economics estimates that the UK will have lost £200 billion by the end of this year. Scottish Government analysis estimates that every person in Scotland will, on average, be worse off to the tune of £1,600.

Scotland has been completely ignored by Westminster throughout the Brexit process, and we are now being kept in the dark over the devastating price that we will be forced to pay. People in Scotland are not willing to suffer the consequences of this economic vandalism, and 16 consecutive polls have shown a majority for independence—that is little wonder, Mr Speaker. Is it not as clear as day that the only way left to protect Scotland’s interests and our place in Europe is for Scotland to become an independent country?

[The Prime Minister]

Again, despite the gloom that the right hon. Gentleman seeks to spread about Scotland and the rest of the UK, the UK currently has the highest youth employment in the G7—I could perhaps have made that point to the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer)—and lower unemployment than France, Italy, Spain, the United States and Canada. There is a threat to the Scottish economy, sadly, and that is the high tax regime and mismanagement of the Scottish nationalist party. That is the problem that Scotland faces, and I hope that the people of Scotland can see it.

[Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

  As my right hon. Friend knows, the tourism and hospitality sector in constituencies across the country, but particularly in Derbyshire Dales, has been severely affected by the pandemic and the national restrictions. That includes places such as the Flying Childers Inn in Stanton in the Peak. What support and hope can the Government give that sector in the weeks and months ahead?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for everything she does to campaign for Derbyshire Dales and for hospitality. It has been a terrible time for hospitality. We all share the anguish of those who work in the hospitality sector. That is why we have cut VAT overall, as she knows, from 20% to 5% in those sectors until the end of March, and we are going to develop, with her help, a tourism recovery plan to help people come to see the beauties of the Derbyshire Dales in particular.

[Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Last week, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said that Northern Ireland would have the “best of both worlds” as a result of the talks with the European Union. For that to be true, we need access to both UK and EU trade deals. Will the Prime Minister confirm whether he is pushing for that in those talks?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, as the agreement with our friends has already made clear, the whole of the UK, including Northern Ireland, will participate fully in all trade deals that the UK does, and Northern Ireland will continue to have unfettered access to the whole of the UK market.

[Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)]

At the recent spending review, over £14 billion was allocated for research and development. That was excellent news, but there is a concern that charity-funded medical research, which has been hit hard by the pandemic, will still be left behind. Will my right hon. Friend intervene to ensure that some of that funding is used to set up a life sciences charity partnership fund to boost medical research, protect thousands of skilled jobs and promote the UK’s position as a science superpower?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes indeed. I know that my hon. Friend, as a doctor, knows the vital importance of medical research and pure science. That is why this Government are investing record sums in science R&D—£14.6 billion in 2021-22. That is going to support all the life sciences sectors. If anybody wants evidence of why it is so vital to support those sectors, they have only to look at the events of the last few months.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

HS2, in full, will transform the east midlands and the north, reversing a 40-year trend of losing skilled work. In February, the Prime Minister promised that it would be built in full. Yesterday’s National Infrastructure Commission review reduces the eastern leg to a small line between Birmingham and the disliked station at East Midlands Parkway. That will not deliver the connectivity or the economic uplift that the midlands and the north need. Will the Prime Minister reaffirm his previous commitment and reject the NIC’s plan, or is this yet another broken promise to our community?

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is quite wrong. What the NIC is saying is that there are other things we can do as well, including massively improving the midland main line—I think everybody would want to do that—but the ambition to do the eastern leg, as I have said in the House before, remains absolutely unchanged.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Like schools and teachers across the country, those in South Cambridgeshire have been working miracles to continue providing education throughout the pandemic. They are grateful for the support they have had from the Government, they welcome the new exams regime and they also very much welcome the new testing regime for coronavirus. But schools in Cambridgeshire started with some of the lowest funding of any in the country, and many have been left with deficits that they cannot fill. Will my right hon. Friend work with me to make sure that schools in Cambridgeshire get the resources they need? Will the Prime Minister be Santa for Cambridgeshire’s schoolkids?

[Mr Speaker]

Father Christmas?

[The Prime Minister]

Mr Speaker, the whole of the country and the taxpayers of this country play that role; it is our job to make sure that we spend the money sensibly, and that is what we were doing. I am delighted that, thanks in part to the campaigning by my hon. Friend, his constituency is attracting an average of 3.8% more per pupil next year compared with this year through the national funding formula—a total of £4.8 million more, in addition, of course, to our commitment to pay every teacher a starting salary of £30,000.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

  The hospitality sector, and in particular pubs in my constituency such as the Black Bull in Blaydon, a wet pub with a fine live local music tradition, has been devastated by the restrictions placed on it, in our case since September. Pubs such as the Black Bull are at the heart of our communities. The various compensation schemes do not offer enough support to allow those pubs to survive. Will the Prime Minister commit to bringing forward a financial support scheme that will allow our pubs and hospitality sector to survive?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Member is quite right to raise the problem in the hospitality sector. We are committed to doing everything we can. She knows about the £3,000 grant, the additional £2,100, plus the £1,000 for wet pubs. But the best thing of all—in addition to the cuts in business rates and VAT that I have already mentioned—is for areas in the west midlands to work together—

[Liz Twist]

North-east.

[The Prime Minister]

Sorry; forgive me. The best thing is for areas in the north-east to work together to reduce the virus through community testing in the way that Liverpool has succeeded in doing. I appreciate that the hon. Member’s constituency is in in tier 3 and things are very, very tough, but if we all work together, we can get the virus down and get our pubs open again.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

What steps the Government have taken to help ensure that businesses are prepared for the end of the transition period.

[The Prime Minister]

We are confident that the UK will prosper, whether on a Canada-style arrangement or Australia-style terms.

[Joy Morrissey]

In the light of the new opportunities that the end of the transition period will bring, is the Prime Minister aware of the ambitious economic growth proposition developed in Buckinghamshire? Will he back this bold bid for Bucks to ensure that Buckinghamshire continues to increase its contribution to the Exchequer: a win for the businesses of Bucks and a win for the levelling-up agenda?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed. I know that Buckinghamshire Council is working closely with my hon. Friend and partners across the voluntary sector. We have been in initial discussions with Buckinghamshire about its proposals and are happy to taken them forward.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP) [V]]

  Prime Minister, were you as dismayed as I was by the number of drug-related deaths reported in Scotland yesterday? If you were, then you can do something about it. Not just in Scotland, but across the United Kingdom, obstacles exist to the creation of drug consumption rooms, and those obstacles can be removed—

[Ronnie Cowan]

My apologies, Mr Speaker. I am obviously addressing my question to the Prime Minister. There are obstacles that exist across the United Kingdom to the creation of drug consumption rooms, and those obstacles can be removed at Westminster. Previously the UK Government have held an ideological view that drug consumption rooms encourage drug taking. Will the Prime Minister engage with me and allow me the opportunity to help him do a good thing?

[The Prime Minister]

I listened very carefully to the hon. Gentleman. I must say that we do not want to do anything that would encourage the consumption of more drugs, nor do we want to decriminalise the possession of drugs, because I believe that they ruin lives and drive criminality across the whole United Kingdom. I am more than happy to look at the proposals made by the hon. Gentleman one more time, and to pursue the agenda of tackling drugs, but the vast panoply of powers that are needed to tackle drugs and drugs crime are already vested with the devolved Administration in Scotland, and I am afraid that the failures that he talks about are very largely down to them.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

  Mr Speaker, may I wish you and everyone in Parliament a merry Christmas, and thank you for keeping us in our place? I extend those best wishes to the Prime Minister as well; it has been a tumultuous 12 months, but he has shown great resolve and determination in leading our nation through it.This has been a wretched year due to covid, but the vaccination offers us a ray of hope in 2021. Does the Prime Minister agree that all those called upon to take the vaccine will not only be protecting their own health, but doing their civic duty in helping the health of others, keeping people in jobs and getting us back to our cherished way of life?

[The Prime Minister]

It is great to hear my hon. Friend, because he speaks such good sense on this matter; I hope that he is heard up and down the land. It is absolutely vital that people who are offered the vaccine do take steps to get it immediately. They will be protecting themselves and they will be protecting everyone else.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab) [V]]

  Highly skilled engineers at Centrica’s British Gas in my constituency were told last week that they had to sign new contracts before Christmas, or else they would be fired and rehired in the new year on worse terms. Fire and rehire is an exploitative and illegitimate negotiation tactic, and causes real hurt and anger. Will the Prime Minister join me in calling on Centrica to withdraw its threat and return to the negotiation table with workers and their union, the GMB, and will he work with Labour and the trade unions to introduce legislation to ban fire and rehire as soon as possible?

[The Prime Minister]

It is very important that all businesses treat their employees with fairness and respect. In that sense, I utterly share the point of view of the hon. Lady, but it is also vital that we have a flexible economy that is able to generate jobs, particularly when we are going to go through a very difficult and bumpy time. We have had a proud record of keeping employment high and unemployment low in this country, and we want to continue with that approach.

[Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con)]

Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, working with the council and local enterprise partnership Kirklees College has managed to open its new campus at the Pioneer House in the centre of Dewsbury. Not only will the influx of students give a much-needed boost to the town centre, but it will open up skills and apprenticeships to young people throughout my constituency. Would my right hon. Friend agree to accompany me on a visit to look round this iconic building, and to view the amazing sculpture loaned by renowned artist Antony Gormley, as soon as my right hon. Friend’s schedule, and restrictions, allow?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend. I will do what I can to fit in his very kind invitation to inspect this sculpture. I admire Mr Gormley’s work greatly, by the way. I am delighted that Kirklees College has opened the Pioneer Higher Skills Centre, providing high level education and skills training for the people of Dewsbury. I thank my hon. Friend for what he is doing to campaign for that.

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP) [V]]

The Prime Minister promised to fund 4,000 zero-emission buses by 2024, but the spending review delivers just 800 such buses. Why has he put the handbrake on when it comes to supporting the bus building sector? With COP26 less than a year away, does he agree that it is time to put the pedal to the floor, get the low and zero-emission bus production lines in Falkirk, Yorkshire and Ballymena full, and support the bus building sector in full, as he promised?

[The Prime Minister]

I can confidently say that I do not believe that there is another Member of this House who has built as many buses, or caused as many buses to be built, as I have. We are absolutely committed to rolling out, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, 4,000 zero- emission buses and the country’s first all electric bus town. He is right to lobby for the wonderful Alexander Dennis buses that are built in in Falkirk. We will certainly champion them, as well as buses built in Ballymena and elsewhere. He can take it from me that, in a zero-carbon way, we are putting the pedal to the floor until we get to 4,000.

[Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw) (Con)]

Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating Kevin Sinfield and Leeds Rhinos rugby league club on raising over £2.5 million for the Motor Neurone Disease Association by running seven marathons in seven days in honour of Rob Burrow, who is living with motor neurone disease? Will the Government commit to increasing their investment in MND research and marching on together to find a cure?

[Mr Speaker]

Hear, hear, Prime Minister!

[The Prime Minister]

Thank you, Mr Speaker—I share your enthusiasm for what Kevin Sinfield—

[Mr Speaker]

Sir Kev.

[The Prime Minister]

For what Sir Kevin—thank you, Mr Speaker—and Leeds Rhinos have done. MND is indeed a devastating condition. I congratulate Sir Kevin on his actions, and the Government are certainly in full support.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituent Charlotte, a single parent, has twice this term had to stop work due to her five-year-old son’s class self-isolating. She has been told that, because it is her son who is self-isolating, she is ineligible for the £500 support payment. The Library has confirmed that parents may need to use annual or unpaid leave in such circumstances. Is it not wrong to exclude parents on the lowest income from support to look after their children, and will the Prime Minister urgently look again at that? Wales and Scotland have done it, so why will he not now support parents in England?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is of course right to draw attention to the hardship of parents who have had to cope with kids coming home from school because of self-isolation rules. One of the things that we are trying to do now is roll out lateral flow testing on a grand scale for schools, so that we reduce the size of the bubbles that have to self-isolate. We are doing whatever we can to support families throughout the crisis, as she knows, with big uprates in universal credit and all manner of support that we are providing, in addition to free childcare for 30 hours a week.

The best answer for this crisis is to keep our kids in school, to test them and to roll out that programme of mass community testing, which I am sure the hon. Lady supports in her neighbourhood, in order to drive the virus down, allow the vaccine time really to kick in, and protect our elderly and vulnerable so that we can all move forward together as a society. That is what this Government are aiming for, but in the meantime I fully appreciate the problem that she has raised, and we will do our very best to address it.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. In order to allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business, and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I will now suspend the sitting for three minutes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Prime Minister; congratulations on the christening.

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

Today marks 400 years since the sailing of the Mayflower, a reminder to us of the beginning of an enduring alliance between our two nations. Around 35 million Americans today trace their ancestry to a Mayflower passenger, and I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in marking this historic anniversary.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[James Daly]

On National Teaching Assistants Day, will the Prime Minister join me in thanking teachers, teaching assistants and all support staff for the extraordinary work they are undertaking to bring our children back to schools, colleges and nurseries in covid-secure environments throughout Bury, Ramsbottom and Tottington, and will he update the House on the implementation of the national tutoring programme, as many of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children in my seat need this help at the earliest opportunity?

[The Prime Minister]

I strongly echo my hon. Friend’s congratulations and thanks to teachers, and just say that I believe passionately in the tutoring programme we are launching. We expect the first group of tutors to be supporting schools from November, with provision ramping up through the remainder of the autumn and spring term.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Angela Rayner, who is deputy Labour leader.

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

Many people in the Chamber will think that the battle of Britain is today, but actually we marked the 80th anniversary of those veterans yesterday, and I want to put on record our thanks to all those who fought for our country in the past.

I want to start by reading to the Prime Minister a message that I have received from a man called Keir. Keir was not able to go to work today and his children could not go to school because his family had to wait for their coronavirus test results, despite the Prime Minister’s promise of results within 24 hours. Keir was able to do the right thing and self-isolate and work from home, but other people are not in this position, and many of them are the very people who were getting us through this crisis, such as the care workers, who I used to work alongside before I was elected to this House. The Prime Minister once earned £2,300 an hour; can he tell us the average hourly rate of a care worker in this country?

[The Prime Minister]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her elevation. She speaks of the constituent Keir, and I can tell her that—allegedly, apparently—he has had a negative test, and I do not know quite why he is not here. But 89% of those who have in-person tests get them the next day, and we are working very fast to turn around all the test requests that we get. I think that most people looking at the record of this country in delivering tests across the nation will see that that compares extremely well with any other European country. We have conducted more testing than any other European country, and that is why we are able to deliver tests and results in 80% of cases where we know the contacts.

The hon. Lady asks about care homes, and I can tell the House that today we are launching the winter care home action plan. She is right to raise the issue of care homes, and we are concerned about infection rates in care homes, but we will do everything we can to ensure that care homes and their workers are protected.

On the hon. Lady’s final point, I am proud that it is this Government who have instituted the national living wage to ensure that every worker in this country, including care home workers, is paid substantially more, thanks to the care and the work of the people of this country.

[Angela Rayner]

Ah, he’s finished. The whole country will have seen that the Prime Minister does not know how much a care worker earns—that was my question. The shameful fact is that the average wage in social care is barely more than £8 an hour and half our social care workers earn less than the real living wage. On his first day in office, the Prime Minister said that

“we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared.”

Yet still there is no sign of the plan, and the additional funding to prevent infection will run out at the end of this month. So will the Prime Minister commit today to give our social care sector the funding that it needs now to get through the looming winter crisis?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is asking an important point, and we are concerned about the rates of infection in care homes. Clearly, they have come down massively since we instituted the £600 million care home action plan. Tomorrow, we will be announcing a further winter care home action plan. It will not surprise her to know that we want to see a toughening up of the rules governing the movement of workers from one care home to another. We want to make sure that we protect care homes from further infections, and that is the right thing to do. I pay tribute to all the care home workers in this country for what they have done to help us bring down the disease. We will make sure, as we have done over the past few months, that they get the personal protective equipment that they need, that they get the guidance that they need and that they get the cash that they need, and that is what this Government are committed to doing.

[Angela Rayner]

I do welcome the Prime Minister’s comments, but I must say to him, get some skates on it. Those care workers are still not getting the PPE they need. They are still not getting the testing they need. I urge the Prime Minister to get on top of this problem now before the winter crisis hits.

The Prime Minister has put his faith in Operation Moonshot, but, meanwhile, on planet Earth, there were no NHS tests available for several high-infection areas, including for Tameside and Oldham in my own constituency. In July, the Government promised that there would be weekly tests in care homes, and they promised this for September, so can the Prime Minister confirm—yes or no—do all care homes in this country have weekly tests?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, to the best of my knowledge, care homes in this country should get weekly tests for all staff members and tests every 28 days for the residents in the care homes. Of course the hon. Lady is right to express the frustration of people across this country about the massive demand there is now for tests—it has hugely increased. Everybody can see just in the past few days a colossal spike in the number of people who want tests and who want to ascertain whether they have coronavirus. What we are trying to do now is meet that demand at record speed. Just in the past couple of weeks, we have increased the capacity of our testing systems by 10%. We have four new labs that we are building in Newport, Newcastle, Charnwood and Brants Bridge. Just so she knows the scale of the ambition, we want to get up to 500,000 tests per day by the end of October. As I have said, that is a huge, huge number. I really do pay tribute to all those who are delivering it. I know that Opposition Members like to make these international comparisons, so I will just repeat that we are testing more than any other European country.

[Angela Rayner]

Well, Mr Speaker, I heard what the Prime Minister had to say, but I have to say to him that, yesterday, the chief executive of Care England said,

“We were promised weekly testing for staff. That has not been delivered.” Time and again, the Prime Minister makes promises and then breaks those promises. In June, he told this House that

“I can undertake…now to get all tests turned around in 24 hours by the end of June.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2020; Vol. 676, c. 839.]

The Government have had six months to get this right and yet the Prime Minister still cannot deliver on his promises. The Health Secretary said yesterday that it would take weeks to sort the situation out. Well, we do not have weeks. The Government’s latest figures show that there was an average of 62,000 people tested per day, not 500,000. The Prime Minister has said that testing capacity is at 300,000, but the average is 62,000 a day. How does he explain this?

[The Prime Minister]

We have delivered on, as I say, the most thoroughgoing testing regime anywhere in Europe. We now have capacity; I think capacity has gone up from—sorry the number of tests per day conducted, not capacity, has gone up from 210,000 last week to 240,000 this week. Just to repeat the statistics, per thousand people, this country is testing 2.54, Germany 1.88, Spain 1.91 and France 1.89. In other words, we are delivering exactly what we said we would do. What is happening is that the British people, quite understandably, are responding to that system with a huge, huge surge in demand, so it is very important that everybody follows the guidance about when they should be getting a test—the guidance sent out by Public Health England, which has been sent to schools, and from NHS Test and Trace.

[Angela Rayner]

Once again, I see that the Prime Minister says that it is somebody else’s fault—it is the public who are using up the tests. These were the Government’s own figures and own targets that they failed on. The next time a man with covid symptoms drives from London to Durham, it will probably be for the nearest covid test.

I want to move on to another very serious issue. Alongside the tragic stories we have heard of relatives dying alone in care homes and people not being able to say goodbye to their loved ones, we have heard from mothers who have had to give birth without the support of their partners or their families. The Health Secretary yesterday said that the new guidance had been issued, but even under that new guidance, many birth partners will not be allowed to join until the moment of established labour, leaving women enduring difficult labours or, even worse, traumatic and devastating miscarriages alone without support. Will the Prime Minister agree to meet with me and my hon. Friends and work with us to ensure that no woman is forced to give birth without the support that they need?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise the issue that she does, and I know that Members across the House will share her feelings entirely. I totally agree that birth partners should be able to attend the birth. That is why we changed the guidance in the way that we did. Of course, I am very happy to encourage co-operation between her and my right hon. Friends in the Health Department to take the matter forward. I perfectly understand the point that she makes, and she is entirely right.

[Angela Rayner]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s comments; I think that was a yes, but I will follow it up. Thank you for those comments.

Infections are rising. The testing system is collapsing. When you are the Prime Minister, you cannot keep trying to blame other people for your own incompetence. We have the highest death toll in Europe, and we are on course for one of the worst recessions in the developed world. This winter, we are staring down the barrel of a second wave, with no plan for the looming crisis. People cannot say goodbye to their loved ones. Grandparents cannot see their grandchildren. Frontline staff cannot get the tests that they need. And what was the top priority for the covid war Cabinet this weekend? Restoring grouse shooting.

I suppose that is good news for people like the Prime Minister’s friend who paid for a luxury Christmas getaway to a Caribbean island and funded his leadership campaign, and just so happens to own two grouse moor estates. So Prime Minister, is this really your top priority?

[The Prime Minister]

While the Labour Opposition have been consistently carping from the sidelines throughout this crisis and raising, frankly, issues that are tangential, if not scare stories about what is going on, we are getting on with delivering for the British public. We are not only massively ramping up. She has not contested any of my statistics today about the extent to which this country is now testing more than any other European country.

She has not disputed the massive acceleration in our programme. [Interruption.] I will answer the substance of her question, thank you very much. We are getting on with delivering on the priorities of the British people: getting us through this covid crisis; delivering on making our country safer, bringing forward measures to stop the early release of dangerous sexual and violent offenders, which I hope she will support; strengthening our Union, which in principle Opposition Front Benchers should support; and building more homes across this country and more affordable homes across this country, which she should support. That is in addition to recruiting more doctors and more nurses, and building more hospitals.

I do not think anybody is in any doubt that this Government are facing some of the most difficult dilemmas that any modern Government have had to face, but every day we are helping to solve them, thanks to the massive common sense of the British people, who are getting on with delivering our programme and our fight against coronavirus. It is with the common sense of the British people that we will succeed, and build back better and stronger than ever before.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

The Prime Minister is rightly levelling up across the country, giving that issue both barrels, but I know that the south-west has often been overlooked. Will he reassure this House and Members from across the south-west that we will invest in digital and transport infrastructure, we will turbocharge opportunity and we will provide the growth that they need in south-west? To that effect, will he meet a delegation from the south-west to discuss the opportunities before us?

[The Prime Minister]

It is precisely because we believe in my hon. Friend’s vision, which I share, of a great south-west that we are allocating considerable sums to the maintenance and improvement of school estates in his constituency; I might single out West Alvington Church of England Academy and Eden Park Primary and Nursery School, which will benefit from just some of this funding. As for his request, I will happily consult my diary.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

In his previous life as a Daily Telegraph journalist, this Prime Minister wrote:

“Devolution is causing all the strains that its opponents predicted, and in allowing the Scots to make their own laws, while free-riding on English taxpayers, it is simply unjust.”

So let me ask the Prime Minister two specific questions, which need two specific answers. First, does he still think that devolution in Scotland is unjust? Secondly, where does he believe full spending and decision-making powers over our NHS, education, infrastructure, economic development, culture and sport should be held—is it with Scotland’s Parliament or with Westminster?

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously, there is a very considerable, and has been a massive, devolution of powers to Scotland, and the Scottish people had the opportunity to vote for more in 2014, as the right hon. Gentleman will recall, in a once-in-a-generation event. They chose decisively to reject that. I think he said it was a once-in-a-generation event as well. They now have the opportunity to vote to support the further devolution of powers in the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, and I hope that he will join us in the Lobby in support of that.

[Ian Blackford]

My goodness, what nonsense. I never once talked about “a once-in-a-generation”, and the Prime Minister should withdraw that.

As usual, the Prime Minister is all over the place. He does not remember what he has written, he does not understand his own Brexit deal and he does not even know what is in the Internal Market Bill—I will tell him. Clause 46 allows this Tory Government to bypass Scotland’s Parliament and take decisions on the NHS, education, infrastructure, economic development, culture and sport—it is a blatant power grab. We all know what the Tory Back Benchers are saying behind closed doors: that the Prime Minister is incompetent, that he cannot govern and that they want him away before the next election. Scotland’s legacy will be in a being a fair, decent, law-abiding, independent nation state. Will the Prime Minister’s legacy be leading the UK to break international law and break this failing Union?

[The Prime Minister]

I am not quite clear from that question whether the right hon. Gentleman is in favour of the Union or not. I take it from his hostility to me that he wants to support the Union. So do I. The best thing he can do is to support the UK Internal Market Bill, which buttresses a surge of powers transferred to the devolved Administrations in more than 70 areas. I should just remind him that in the recent coronavirus crisis £5.4 billion has been transferred to be spent in Scotland as a result of Barnett consequentials, and I am proud to say that 70% of the testing that has taken place in Scotland has been supported by the UK Government. If he is a convert to the Union, which is what I take from his question, that is just one of the reasons he should back it.

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

  Please allow me to push back against what has just been said. The Prime Minister has done a stellar job in fending off economic depression right across the United Kingdom, including Scotland. Now, my worry turns to a psychological depression. Tighter restrictions have forced more businesses to shut in Bolton and, while 13,900 jobs were saved through furlough, more needs to be done. I invite the Prime Minister, when the time is right, to pound the streets of Bolton North East and, before then, to send in the pennies from the Exchequer and more testing kits from Health.

[The Prime Minister]

Yes indeed, we will do that, and I am delighted to say that, in addition to the £40 billion we have spent on the coronavirus job retention scheme and the £130 billion plan for jobs, Bolton will receive at least £500,000 from the towns fund to spend on its high street and community.

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

Research by the Disabled Children’s Partnership shows that three quarters of families with disabled children had their care support stopped during lockdown. The Coronavirus Act 2020 is partly to blame, as it relaxed the duties to assess and meet the needs of disabled people. As the father of a disabled child and a patron of the Disability Law Service, I have seen legal advice that suggests that the Prime Minister’s Government broke international law when the Coronavirus Act reduced the rights of disabled people. So before the House is asked to renew the Coronavirus Act, will he meet me to discuss how we can protect the right to care of disabled people and act lawfully?

[The Prime Minister]

First, I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the leadership of his party. I must say that I am not aware of that particular allegation about the legal effect of the Coronavirus Act, and I would be only too happy to write to him very shortly to clarify the matter.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

  The residents of Amber Valley were relieved yesterday when a proposal for a 1,000-strong festival was finally withdrawn, because it had become clear that the council did not have the power to resist it despite the ongoing public health crisis. Will the Prime Minister ensure that, while covid restrictions remain in place, councils can resist such festivals in the interest of public health?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important question, because I believe that it illuminates a question that councils are asking themselves. I wish to affirm very strongly that they do have the power to stop such events in the interest of public health, and that the council has taken the right decision.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Last week the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said that the UK Internal Market Bill would breach our obligations under international law. Yesterday the Advocate General for Scotland said that the Secretary of State was wrong to say that. Today the Secretary of State says that the Advocate General was wrong to say that he was wrong. It is of course possible that they are both right in saying that the other is wrong, but surely an important matter such as this requires clarity. For that reason, will the Prime Minister now undertake to publish the advice he has had from all his Law Officers so that the House can make an informed decision on the question of legality, come Monday?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman. I think he asked substantially the same question last week. As he knows, we do not publish the Attorney General’s advice—Governments do not normally publish such advice—but what I can certainly say is what I have said to the right hon. Gentleman the leader of the Scottish nationalists: that, of course, this Bill is intended to uphold the economic, political and territorial integrity of the United Kingdom, and I believe it should be supported by every Member of this House.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has always highlighted the importance of gigabit connectivity, and digital infrastructure has been vital in keeping us connected throughout the pandemic. Could he update the House on the Government’s progress towards the roll-out of gigabit broadband across the country, and in particular whether the £5 billion of Government funding is being used to connect hard-to-reach areas like those in my North Devon constituency?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I can. I thank my hon. Friend very much. We are rolling out full-fibre broadband to the North Moor area, investing £10 million in partnership with the local authority and gearing up to invest over £30 million across Devon and Somerset to target 70,000 premises in her constituency that do not have good enough connectivity.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

The figures released this week by the Trussell Trust forecast that we will give out six emergency food parcels every minute this winter. Will the Prime Minister commit to two urgent measures to tackle this humanitarian disaster, which is happening in all our communities? First, will he commit to an additional £250 million investment in local welfare assistance schemes to bring England in line with the rest of the UK, as requested by the Children’s Trust and the Trussell Trust; and, secondly, will he meet me and partner organisations as a matter of urgency to discuss bringing the right to food into UK law?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. What the Government are doing is, of course, supporting local councils to the tune of £3.7 billion for the extra needs occasioned by coronavirus; £380 million has gone into supporting food, with meals for pupils or for young people who need it; and a massive programme of investment—a £9 billion investment—to lift up universal credit to support the neediest in our society. But I can tell him that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will continue to apply the maximum creativity to putting our arms around the British people as we go forward through this crisis.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that this Government’s Internal Market Bill will protect our United Kingdom, strengthen our mission to level up and back our negotiators?

[The Prime Minister]

I could not have put it better myself.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

In the week in which the Prime Minister announced the Government’s new strategy on obesity, the eating disorder charity Beat experienced a 165% increase in the number of people contacting its support services. I am pleased that the Prime Minister is focused on obesity, which is a very serious national health issue, but as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on eating disorders, I have been contacted by many who suffer from eating disorders who have approached me with concerns about certain aspects of his obesity strategy and the adverse effects it would have on them. Will the Prime Minister take these concerns seriously and commit to a meeting between sufferers of an eating disorder, myself and the relevant Minister in his Health team?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I am acutely conscious that there are no glib, easy answers in this area of public policy, and I happily undertake that the relevant Minister should meet the hon. Lady as fast as possible to understand her concerns and the concerns of her constituents.

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

Regional airports are going to play a crucial role in our recovery from the pandemic and in levelling up our country, but many of them, such as Cornwall Airport Newquay, have been very hard hit not only because of the lockdown, but because of the demise of Flybe. There is a very real concern that if our smaller airports close at this time, they may never open again, which will make the Government’s levelling-up agenda even harder to deliver. So could my right hon. Friend please ensure that our regional airports get all the help that they need, whether that be through grants or the Government backing more public sector obligation routes, and would he carefully look at reducing air passenger duty, particularly on domestic flights?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I thank my hon. Friend for sticking up in the way that he does for Cornwall Airport Newquay—a vital airport, which I have happily used many times. We will continue to consider applications for public service obligations on routes into Newquay and elsewhere. We will certainly look at air passenger duty, although it would be wrong of me to make any fiscal commitment at this stage.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister holds the power to save jobs or sacrifice the livelihoods of my constituents. Currently, 17,700 people living in my constituency of York Central are furloughed; their future rests in his hands. Next month, 22% of my constituents could lose their jobs and futures unless furlough is extended. Reformed, yes; more flexible, a must; targeted, absolutely. Extend and review is the only way forward. My question is: will the Prime Minister do that?

[The Prime Minister]

I hope the hon. Lady is not saying that she simply wants to extend the furlough scheme, because I do not believe that that is the right way—the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) is shaking her head. I do not think that is sensible. We need to get people off furlough and into work, and that is what the Government are doing. That is why we have the £2 billion kickstart fund, in particular to help young people into work, and why we have the job retention bonus to encourage employers to take people back on and continue to employ people. To answer the point of the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) directly, we will continue to apply, as I said just now, the maximum creativity—as we have—in putting our arms round the workforce of the UK.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I recently visited the beautiful Micklefield Hall wedding venue in Sarratt, run by Anna and Jamie Rankin, to listen to their concerns about the wedding industry. Would the Prime Minister consider changing the number of attendees from a blanket limit of 30 to a fairer system that allows venues to hold a percentage— say, 50%—of their usual licenced activity? That would allow many venues to bounce back and keep on their furloughed staff.

[The Prime Minister]

I so understand and appreciate my hon. Friend’s constituents’ concerns. Similar concerns will have been raised with other Members from across the House, not just about the weddings businesses but about many other businesses that are facing restrictions as a result of the social distancing rules that we have had to bring in. The trouble is that, with all these things, there is an increase in the risk of spread and contagion. We simply have to balance that risk against what we are seeing now with the spread of the virus. I must reluctantly say to my hon. Friend that, although we will work as fast as possible to get our whole economy open and take all these restrictions off, the way to do that is for the whole country to work together, as we have done so far, to enforce social distancing, obey the basic rules about hands, face, space; getting a test if you have symptoms; and the rule of six, indoors and outdoors. That is the way that we will beat this virus. That is the way we will control it and allow weddings and all other sectors to open up again.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I, too, have had constituents in Cardiff South and Penarth contact me with serious concerns about testing. It is clear that the problems originate not in Wales, but with the UK testing and online system, which is leading to rationing, chaos and confusion, and all the while the virus spreads further. We are told that the Prime Minister’s chum Cummings has a seeing room. Well, it is clearly not working, because this should have been seen coming months ago, like the exams fiasco. The truth is that the Prime Minister has not got control of this. When is he going to get a grip?

[The Prime Minister]

Once again, the Opposition are at risk of undermining the colossal work of NHS Test and Trace. Let me give the hon. Gentleman one statistic: just in the last week, the average distance that people have had to go for a test has come down from 6 or 7 miles to 5 miles. We are continuing to improve this system the whole time, and I remind the House and those who want to run it down that we are conducting more tests than any other European country, testing more people per thousand population than any other European—[Interruption.] Those are the facts. He doesn’t like it; all he wants to do is score party political points.

[Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)]

Every day, I receive messages from Bishop Auckland residents about crime and how they want to see us politicians taking a tougher stance. My own history involves learning about violent crime in a way I never wished to learn about it, and that is part of the reason that I stand here today. The first duty of any Government is to protect the public they serve, but for too long our criminal justice system has fallen short of the mark. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the Government he leads will take all steps necessary to keep criminals off our streets, to crack down on crime and to keep the public safe?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, and that is why we are not only recruiting another 20,000 police officers, I think about 5,000 of whom have already been recruited, but also—[Interruption.] The Opposition Front Benchers are making a noise. We are also introducing measures to stop the early release of serious sexual and violent offenders. I take it from the noises I hear from the Opposition that they approve of that and will support us in the Lobby.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

  Given that the 1950s-born women lost their case at the Court of Appeal yesterday, any restitution for the women affected, 350,000 of whom are in Scotland, needs political action. What will the Prime Minister now do to honour his own words from last year and “return to this issue with fresh vigour and new eyes”and see what he can do to sort it out?

[The Prime Minister]

I will have to study the judgment in detail. I will be happy to write to the hon. Member.

[Mr Speaker]

In order to allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I suspend the House for a few minutes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Anna McMorrin]

I am shocked and angered at workers in UK clothing factories such as Boohoo being paid a mere £3.50 an hour and being forced to work in totally unacceptable conditions. In the 21st century, there must be no room for exploitation and modern slavery. We must call time on fast fashion for the sake of people and our planet, so my question is simple: what will the Prime Minister do about it?

[The Prime Minister]

First, it is this Conservative Government who set out laws against modern slavery. It is this Conservative Government who massively increased the living wage—not only instituted the living wage, but massively increased it. We hoped that it would be the Labour mayor of Leicester who would stand up for the interests of the workforce in his community. That is what we will do.

[Mr Speaker]

We are heading to the shadows of Lichfield cathedral with Michael Fabricant.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con) [V]]

It is not just the 800-year-old Lichfield cathedral that we have; we also have the beautiful leafy lanes, wonderful restaurants and bars. But I will tell you what we also have: the Lichfield Garrick, which is a major theatre in the area, and The Hub at St Mary’s. This is what I would like to know: I welcome the £1.7 billion grant that is being given to support our theatres and performing artists, but are we going to see any of it at all outside the west end, and here in Lichfield?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend. I can tell him that Lichfield has been at the centre of our cultural life since Dr Johnson and David Garrick made their famous walk and ride from Lichfield to London in the 18th century, and it will continue to be so. We are working closely with Arts Council England to support and develop the projects that I know are so dear to his heart.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

On Monday, when asked why care home deaths had been so high, the Prime Minister said that

“too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures in the way that they could have.”

That has caused huge offence to frontline care workers. It has now been 48 hours. Will the Prime Minister apologise to care workers?

[The Prime Minister]

The last thing I wanted to do was to blame careworkers for what has happened, or for any of them to think that I was blaming them, because they have worked incredibly hard throughout this crisis, looking after some of the most vulnerable people in our country and doing an outstanding job, and as the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, tragically, 257 of them have lost their lives. When it comes to taking blame, I take full responsibility for what has happened. But the one thing that nobody knew early on during this pandemic was that the virus was being passed asymptomatically from person to person in the way that it is, and that is why the guidance and the procedures changed. It is thanks to the hard work of careworkers that we have now got incidents and outbreaks down in our care homes to the lowest level since the crisis began. That is thanks to our careworkers and I pay tribute to them.

[Keir Starmer]

That is not an apology, and it just will not wash. The Prime Minister said that

“too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures in the way that they could have”.

It was clear what he was saying. The Prime Minister must understand just how raw this is for many people on the frontline and for those who have lost loved ones. I quote Mark Adams, who runs a social care charity, who spoke yesterday. He said:

“You’ve got 1.6 million social care workers going into work to protect our parents, our grandparents, our children, putting their own health and potentially lives at risk. And then to get the most senior man in the country turning round and blaming them on what has been an absolute travesty of leadership from the Government, I just think it is appalling.”

Those are his words. I ask the Prime Minister again: will he apologise to careworkers? Yes or no?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman keeps saying that I blamed or tried to blame care workers, and that is simply not the case. The reality is that we now know things about the way the coronavirus is passed from person to person without symptoms that we just did not know. That is why we instituted the care home action plan on 15 April. That is why we changed the procedures. Perhaps he did know that it was being transmitted asymptomatically—I did not hear it at the time. Perhaps Captain Hindsight would like to tell us that he knew that it was being transmitted asymptomatically. Of course it was necessary to change our procedures. I want to thank our care workers for what they have done, and this Government will continue to invest massively in our care homes and in our care workers. By the way, it is this Government, as I said just now, that put up the living wage by record amounts, and that is something that we can do directly to help every care worker in the country.

[Keir Starmer]

By refusing to apologise, the Prime Minister rubs salt into the wounds of the very people that he stood at his front door and clapped. The Prime Minister and the Health Secretary must be the only people left in the country who think that they put a “protective ring” around care homes. Those on the frontline know that that was not the case. I quote one care home manager from ITN News yesterday. She said this:

“I’m absolutely livid at the fact that he says we didn’t follow the procedures. Because the care assistants, the nurses, everyone in the care home, have worked so hard. And then he’s got the audacity to blame us.”

Those are her words. What would the Prime Minister like to say to that care home manager?

[The Prime Minister]

What I would like to say to the lady in question, and indeed to every care home worker in the country, is that this Government appreciate the incredible work that they have done, and we thank them for the incredible work they have done. Let me say further that we will invest in our care homes and we will reform the care home sector. I hope, by the way, that we will do it on the basis of cross-party consensus and get a lasting solution to the problems in our care homes and the difficulties many people face in funding the cost of their old age. That is what we want to do. That is what this Government have pledged to do after 30 years of inaction, and I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will join us in doing it.

[Keir Starmer]

I am glad to hear it. I gently point out that his Government have been in power for 10 years, with no plan and no White Paper. Of course we will join in plans for reforming social care, but 10 years have been wasted. The reality is that more than 19,000 care home residents have died from covid-19. It is a far higher number when we include excess deaths. Overall, around one in 20 care home residents are estimated to have died from the virus. One in 20—it is chilling. These are extraordinary numbers, yet the Prime Minister has consistently ducked responsibility for this. Will he accept that it is not care workers who are to blame; it is his Government?

[The Prime Minister]

I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman has got the old vice of reading out the pre-prepared question without listening to the answer I have just given. I have made it absolutely clear that this Government take responsibility for everything that we have done throughout this crisis. Of course I pay tribute once again to the work of every care worker in the country and I thank them, but what we have also done is put forward a care home action plan that has helped our care workers and our care home industry to get the incidence of coronavirus right down in every care home in the country to the lowest level, and we are now putting in monthly testing for every resident in our care homes and weekly testing for every care home worker. That is thanks to the fantastic efforts of everybody involved in NHS testing and tracing—and I think, by the way, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should pay tribute to them as well.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister continues to insult those on the frontline by not taking these issues seriously. The Prime Minister must recognise that huge mistakes have been made. Two months ago at PMQs I highlighted the weakness of the early guidance on care homes. The Prime Minister, typically flippant, simply said it was “not true”. There were repeated warnings from the care sector and repeated delays in providing protective equipment —this was not hindsight; they were raised here day in, day out and week in, week out. It was not hindsight; it was real-time for the frontline. It was the same with routine testing. And the decision to discharge 25,000 people to care homes without tests was clearly a mistake. Will the Prime Minister simply accept that his Government were just too slow to act on care homes, full stop?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows very well—or he should know very well—that the understanding of the disease has changed dramatically in the months that we have had it. When he looks at the action plan that we brought in to help our care workers, I think he would appreciate the vast amount of work that they have done, the PPE that they have been supplied with and the testing that they have been supplied with. That has helped them to get the incidence of the disease down to record lows, and it has enabled us to get on with our work, as the Government, in getting this country through this epidemic—getting this country back on its feet. That is what this country wants to see. We have stuck to our plan to open up our economy gradually and cautiously; one week he is in favour of it, the next week he is against it. What this country wants to see is a steady, stable approach to getting our country back on its feet. That is what we are delivering.

[Keir Starmer]

Finally, to add further insult to injury, there are reports this morning that the Government are to remove free hospital parking for NHS workers in England. The Prime Minister will know that this could cost hundreds of pounds a month for our nurses, our doctors, our carers and our support staff. We owe our NHS workers so much. We all clap for them; we should be rewarding them, not making it more expensive to go to work. The Prime Minister must know that this is wrong; will he reconsider and rule it out?

[The Prime Minister]

The hospital car parks are free for NHS staff for this pandemic—they are free now—and we are going to get on with our manifesto commitment to make them free for patients who need them as well. The House will know that that was never the case under the Labour Government—neither for staff nor for patients. May I respectfully suggest that the right hon. and learned Gentleman takes his latest bandwagon and parks it free somewhere else? One week he is backing us; the next week he is not. One week he is in favour of a tax on wealth and tax on homes; the next week he tries to tiptoe away from it. We know how it works: he takes one brief one week, one brief the next. He is consistent only in his opportunism, whereas we get on with our agenda: build, build, build for jobs, jobs, jobs. The House will hear more about that shortly.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

My well-known and much loved constituent Alan Young died of cancer last year, having been cared for at Myton Hospice in Warwick. I am sure the Prime Minister will remember the very moving letter that he received from Alan’s brave nine-year-old son Tommy—which Tommy read out on local radio—praising Myton for looking after his dad and asking for the hospice to receive support. The Government are providing £200 million per quarter for hospices during the current emergency, so it is very clear that the Prime Minister appreciates their work. Will he join me, Tommy, his brother Shay and his mum Kelly in thanking Myton and all hospices throughout the country for the invaluable care that they provide to people like Alan?

[The Prime Minister]

I do indeed remember that letter, and I know that the thoughts and sympathies of the whole House will be with Alan and his family. I would like to join Tommy, Shay, Kelly and indeed my hon. Friend in thanking all hospices for the incredible work that they do.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP) [V]]

I am sure that you, Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister and indeed the whole House will want to join me in marking Srebrenica memorial day, which takes place this Saturday, for the first time happening online. We should never forget the terrible genocide that took place 25 years ago. May I associate myself with the concerns about Tory hospital parking charges? The Scottish National party Government abolished them in Scotland 12 years ago, and I urge the Tory Government to do the same, so that NHS workers and patients will not be penalised.

Some 3.8 million people across the United Kingdom could face unemployment when the furlough scheme ends. The job retention scheme has been a lifeline to millions; yet we could see progress unravel as the scheme ends. Millions of people could find themselves out of work, struggling to pay bills and to put food on the table. Will the Prime Minister commit today to extending the furlough scheme? People must not lose their jobs because the Tories refused to act.

[The Prime Minister]

I think that most people looking at what has happened in the UK over the last three or four months around the world have been overwhelmingly impressed by the way that we, as a Government, have put our arms around people, with £164 billion invested in jobs, in incomes and in supporting people. It has been a massive effort. I know that a lot of people in this House will agree with me that we cannot go on forever with a furlough scheme that keeps employees in suspended animation in the way that it does. We need to get our economy moving again. That is what I think the people of this country want to see, in a sustainable and cautious way.

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is constantly saying this, but I would just remind him that the reason the job retention scheme—the furlough scheme—has worked is because of the power and the efficiency of the UK Treasury. It is the UK Government that have funded the furlough scheme and £4.8 billion in Barnett consequentials to Scotland alone. I am sure that he does not hesitate to remind his colleagues of that.

[Ian Blackford]

Of course, it is about the future, and it is about making sure that people can be protected. Just this week, we have seen Spain look to extend its furlough scheme into 2021. Research has shown that prematurely ending the job retention scheme risks higher unemployment and weaker productivity, with a potential loss of up to £50 billion to GDP. The Resolution Foundation is calling for £3 billion to £5 billion to be spent on extending furlough payments for the hardest-hit sectors, and the TUC is warning of the effect that ending the furlough scheme early will have on people who are shielding and in difficulties. This is about not throwing away the benefits that we have accrued. The Prime Minister seems intent on sinking the lifeboat that has been keeping so many people afloat. If the Prime Minister will not extend the furlough scheme, will he give Scotland the powers so that we can do it ourselves?

[The Prime Minister]

I think I have answered the right hon. Gentleman’s question already. I believe it is absolutely essential that we invest in our people and protect them from the effects of this epidemic, as we have done at huge expenditure, quite rightly, but it is also essential that we get the economy moving, including in Scotland. I hope that he supports that objective as well.

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree with me and my constituents that calls from some in this House for a raid on homes, pensions and savings would hammer hard-working families and undermine Britain’s economic recovery?

[The Prime Minister]

Absolutely right. I have been amazed to hear that Labour is proposing to bring forward a wealth tax—a tax on homes. New leader, same old Labour policies—exactly what this country does not need. What we need is investment in people and investment in their wages, increasing the living wage and taking this country forward. They want to tax, tax, tax; we want jobs, jobs, jobs.

[Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP) [V]]

Given the devastating impact of Brexit on my constituency and the decades of under-investment and neglect by successive British Governments, will the Prime Minister agree to work with the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure that a freeport area is developed in Derry to try to address the long-term economic imbalance? Will he agree to meet me and a delegation from the city to progress this project?

[The Prime Minister]

I note the paradox that the hon. Gentleman wants a freeport in Londonderry/Derry, which is something that can only be achieved by Brexit, by the way. I am more than happy to study the plans he proposes. We will see what we can do to take them forward.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

The coronavirus has hit young people in work and those about to enter the jobs market particularly hard. Will my right hon. Friend continue to build on his excellent package of announcements so far, so that young people have hope, encouragement and the very best prospects for the start of their working life?

[The Prime Minister]

Absolutely. We want young people to have the self-confidence brought by the experience of work, to keep learning on the job and to get the jobs that they need. If my hon. Friend waits just a few minutes, he will hear rather more from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor about that very matter.

[Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP) [V]]

Hundreds of my constituents have been excluded from the furlough scheme or support for the self-employed due to gaps in the legislation. Barriers to that support include real-time information cut-off dates and the 50% cap on non-trading income. The Government’s solution for those constituents is to take out loans, which for many is untenable and will lead to unemployment and bankruptcy. Will the Prime Minister commit to widening access to these schemes for the many people who are left behind?

[The Prime Minister]

There are, in fact, 12,000 people who have taken advantage of the furlough scheme in the hon. Lady’s constituency. They are getting 80% of their income up to £2,500 a month. It is a fantastic, massive scheme. In addition, for those she rightly identifies who have had difficulties accessing furlough, we have massively increased universal credit, which is up by £1,040 for families across the country. That is in addition to the panoply of other loans and grants we have made.

[Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)]

I am sure that the Prime Minister will join me in thanking Richard Parker, the chief executive officer of Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and his staff for all their hard work during the covid pandemic. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that Doncaster needs a new hospital? Does he believe that by building a new hospital in the town, the Government will send a clear message to the people of Don Valley that we are committed to levelling up the north?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for an apposite question, because the Health Secretary has committed not just to building 40 new hospitals, but to visiting Doncaster very shortly to discuss investment in healthcare there.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

Luton airport provides direct funding to Luton Borough Council and many local charities in my constituency, but covid-19 has had a huge impact on that commercial and charitable income. Without urgent Government action, Luton council will be forced into making £22 million of in-year cuts next week. I have raised this issue repeatedly in Parliament on behalf of the thousands of Lutonians. Will the Prime Minister meet me to discuss how emergency funding for Luton council would save crucial local services and the jobs of hundreds of key workers?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady raises a very important issue. The aviation industry has been very hard hit. We are supporting the sector in all kinds of ways, not just by supporting employees, but through the time-to-pay scheme and loans from the Bank of England and the Government to aviation. Of course, we are supporting local councils as well with billions of pounds—£3.2 billion. The most important thing is to get a medium and long-term solution that enables airlines to start flying again, so that Luton council can get the revenue it needs. I perfectly understand and support the points she makes.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

It has been said, I hope not uncharitably, that my right hon. Friend has never met a bridge that he did not want to build. Off the Cumbrian coast, we have an opportunity to steal a march with a tidal barrage that would supply 5% of the UK’s energy needs in a green, sustainable way. It would leave a legacy of jobs in Copeland, Barrow-in-Furness and Workington—7,000 jobs. It would allow us to connect communities that have a terrible transport network at the moment with a shiny new bridge and it would allow us to build, build, build our way into a green revolution. Will the Prime Minister agree to meet me and my Cumbrian colleagues to explore this deal further?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing that attractive idea to my attention. I know that several projects are being considered along the Cumbrian coast. I would advise him, first, to get in touch with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to see what he can do to take it forward, and I will give what support I can.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Yesterday, after a delay of more than a year, the Government published their response to their call for evidence regarding violence and abuse against shopworkers. In that period, there have been 150,000 such incidents, which are completely unacceptable. There are a lot of good things in the Government’s response, but it is disappointing that they have stopped short of a change in the law. Will the Prime Minister make a commitment that if his plans do not reduce the 400-plus incidents every day, within six months he will support legislative change?

[The Prime Minister]

I think we should have absolutely zero tolerance for violence or aggression towards people who work in shops, just as we have zero tolerance for people who are aggressive towards those who work in our public services, and we will do everything we can to ensure that that is the case.

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

There was a welcome relaxation of lockdown rules on Saturday, but some sectors, such as health and beauty, the performing arts, language schools, events providers and the wedding industry, are still not able to open. Will my right hon. Friend publish a timetable so that there can be some hope and certainty for these industries?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. As he knows, on 10 May we set out our plan for cautiously getting our economy open again, and we will be saying more later this week about the next steps and the timetable we hope to follow.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab) [V]]

A care home owner in my constituency was told that if it refused to accept the return from hospital of a covid-positive patient, they would be discharged to an unfamiliar home. The procedure that the owner was obliged to follow was this Government’s, so rather than point the finger at care workers for his failures, will the Prime Minister do the right thing, apologise and pay tribute to the professionalism of the care home owners, managers and staff in Bedford, who went above and beyond this Government’s guidelines in order to save lives?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and renew the points I made earlier and the tributes I pay to care home workers. The particular case he raises is important and troubling, so if he would be kind enough to write to me with details, setting out exactly what happened, I would be very happy to reply.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

We have seen the most amazing upsurge in community spirit in this country, with millions of people coming together to support their neighbours. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to sustain this community spirit into the future, which means supporting the social infrastructure of local places, such as libraries, youth clubs and community businesses, and it means Whitehall giving away power, so that, finally, local communities can take back control?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for everything he has done to champion the voluntary sector and community spirit over many years. I have followed his campaigns with interest and with support. I think there is now an opportunity to build on the way the nation came together during the covid crisis and to deliver even more of the kind of projects that he wants. We will certainly be putting our support behind those types of community initiatives.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Some 230,000 renters are going to be at risk of homelessness or eviction as we emerge from lockdown. Will the Prime Minister urgently, today, lay legislation so that, on a cross-party basis, we can support those people at risk of homelessness before we break up for the summer recess?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She is right to draw attention to one of the most remarkable features of the covid crisis, which was the way that the country and the Government were able to help thousands and thousands of homeless people to find accommodation. In other countries, where they were less fortunate, we saw serious epidemics among the homeless. Thankfully, we have so far avoided that, and we are taking forward plans with Dame Louise Casey and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to ensure that the 15,000 do not just come back on to the streets. We will do everything we can to stamp out homelessness in this country.

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn serves more than 300,000 people across Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. On the 40th anniversary of a hospital only built to last 30 years, does my right hon. Friend agree that the dedication shown by staff in responding to coronavirus deserves to be recognised by including the Queen Elizabeth in our new hospital building programme?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, this Government were elected to build 40 new hospitals, and that is what we are going to do. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will be setting out the list, but I can also tell my hon. Friend that the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was awarded £9 million in October for urgent upgrades to protect vital frontline care. I am sure he will understand that further, long-term solutions are now under active consideration.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for getting things moving on the disclosure and barring scheme. It was also good to hear him belatedly adopting the policy of jobs, jobs, jobs, but does he mean jobs in the UK, or in France, Poland, Germany, Korea and China? It is all very well announcing, for example, blue passports, but those are now not being produced in the north-east, but by a French company in a Polish factory. Will the Prime Minister now take back control and give instructions to the Treasury, the Cabinet Office, Whitehall and town halls to buy British and protect British jobs, jobs, jobs?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) behind me says from a sedentary position, “What has the right hon. Gentleman got against Poland?” We will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country. We will actively buy British. We will ensure that contracts go to great British companies, but what we will not do is turn our faces against the notion of international free trade and the market, which has brought colossal wealth to the people of this country. Those are the politics and the economics of the madhouse.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

To avoid drama later, we need to complete the process of getting Brexit done in the next few months. Will my right hon. Friend therefore please confirm for the benefit of everyone listening that nothing in the Northern Ireland protocol will be allowed to stop the United Kingdom charging our own tariffs for the whole United Kingdom from 1 January 2021?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. Not a sausage, not a jot and not a tittle of the Northern Irish protocol will provide any such impediment to the unfettered access of goods and services between all parts of the UK.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I am totally on board with the Prime Minister’s rhetoric that for too long money has piled into the south-east corner of this island. Investment is needed now to bolster and boost universal confidence. Can he explain, therefore, why his Secretary of State for Wales took to Twitter this week to argue that Wales is too poor, with too few businesses and taxpayers, to be successful? Surely he cannot condone the Welsh Secretary’s off-message pessimism.

[The Prime Minister]

I have seldom met anybody who was more boosterish for the future of Wales than the Secretary of State for Wales, and that is because this Government are absolutely committed to levelling up throughout the whole UK—in Wales and everywhere—with infrastructure and investment in education and in technology. We will do the things, by the way, that the Welsh Labour Government have failed to do, such as unblocking the Brynglas tunnels and allowing that proper M4 bypass, which has long been needed. We will provide the Vicks inhaler to the nostrils of the Welsh dragon and get Wales moving.

[Mr Speaker]

Are you trying to put the fire out of the dragon, Prime Minister?

In order to allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I suspend the House for three minutes.