Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Davey Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

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

I start by welcoming reports that the Chancellor will give winter fuel payments to more pensioners this winter, although because we still await the details, we will reserve our full judgment.

I recognise the efforts of the Prime Minister to pull out all the stops to avoid President Trump’s damaging tariffs: a letter from the King, offering to water down online safety laws and even trying to send the Open to one of Trump’s golf courses. The Prime Minister thought he had secured 0% tariffs for British steel, but now Trump is threatening us with 50% unless we comply with his new, five-week deadline. This is classic Trump—changing the terms of a deal he has already agreed. Does the Prime Minister share my fear that nothing will stop Trump messing the UK around, short of bunging a few hundred million pounds into his TrumpCoin?

[The Prime Minister]

We have a deal and we are implementing it. Within a very short time, I am very confident that we will get those tariffs down in accordance with the deal. I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman and update the House in due course, and I think the House will be very pleased at the outcome—[Interruption.] From a sedentary position, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) says no. This is zero tariffs on steel. [Interruption.] Let us come back to this in a couple of weeks when we have implemented it, but the Conservatives obviously do not want it. Labour has backed steel; the Conservatives laugh at attempts to do so. That is a big part of the problem.

[Ed Davey]

I had hoped the Prime Minister would now be beginning to see the sort of man Trump is and start getting tough on him, so we will come back to this issue.

I welcome the Prime Minister’s remarks about Gaza, because I am sure that all of us are appalled by the latest scenes: starving people desperate for food, water and medicine, met with chaos and violence. The US-Israeli programme is clearly failing and nothing short of lifting the full blockade on aid will do. Given that the Netanyahu Government refuse to do that, will the Prime Minister take more decisive action today? Will he push at the United Nations Security Council for humanitarian corridors to get the desperately needed aid urgently into Gaza?

[The Prime Minister]

I give the right hon. Gentleman my assurance, because this is a very important issue, that we are working at pace with our allies on that very issue, to take whatever measures we can to get that humanitarian aid in. We have been doing that intensively over recent weeks and I give him my assurance that we will continue to do that, because that aid needs to get in at speed and at volume, and he is absolutely right about that.