Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Straw Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for the warm welcome that he and people in Harrogate gave me during the stage of the Tour de France, marred only by Mark Cavendish’s tragic accident. It was an extraordinary event and showed his constituency and the whole of Yorkshire in their best light. He is quite right about the importance of superfast broadband. We are putting £790 million into superfast broadband access. We have half a million UK premises connected already and around 400,000 new premises are being upgraded every week. Everyone in the House has a duty to get out there to help to advertise what is happening with broadband and to encourage take-up rates.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

It is fundamental, is it not, that the holder of the office of Attorney-General should be fiercely independent, defend the rule of law and be ready to speak legal truth to power. Given the distinction and respect with which the holder of that office pursued that role, what possessed the Prime Minister to dismiss him yesterday?

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is vitally important that the Attorney-General gives unvarnished, independent advice, and is the Government’s legal adviser. But I also believe that, in government, when someone has served extremely well for four years, there are often times when it is right to bring on new talent and to make the most of all the talent in one’s party. That is the approach that I take as Prime Minister, and I explain that very clearly to my team.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Straw Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have managed to catch only a small amount of that programme, but I think that it brings home two vital points: first, we need a welfare system that is tailored to ensure that work always pays; and secondly, many people in our country have multiple disadvantages and problems and so need help to get out of poverty and benefit dependency. So it is not just about tailoring a benefit system to make work pay; it is about making sure that we intervene in people’s lives and try to correct the things that are keeping them out of work and out of earning a decent living.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

May I say to the Prime Minister, as someone who strongly supports shale gas extraction by fracking, that his current package, however well intentioned, will not assuage local communities, which on a cross-party basis in Lancashire have treated his latest offers as near derisory? Why can he and the Chancellor not sit down with the cross-party Local Government Association and negotiate on its proposal for 10% of revenues to be shared with local communities, as happens in other countries?

[The Prime Minister]

I thought that the proposal from some Members was that it should be 10% of profits. My point is that 1% of revenues, which obviously start running the moment shale gas starts coming out of the ground, could well be a better offer. I am very happy to sit down with anybody to discuss the issue, because I think that shale is so important for the future of our country. The point I would make, having been on Monday to see the oil platforms that are already on the Nottinghamshire-Lincolnshire border, is that those went ahead without any of the sorts of community benefits that we are promising with shale: £100,000 when a well is dug, before any gas has reached the surface; 1% of revenues, which could be between £7 million and £10 million for a typical fracking well; and 100% retention of business rates, which for a set of wells could be £1.7 million, or even £2 million, for a local authority. Hon. Members should think about how much council tax a small district or metropolitan authority raises and consider the difference that £1.7 million or £2 million in revenue could make. By all means let us talk about the facts and figures and what we can do, but we also need to persuade people that this can go ahead without the environmental damage or the problems that people are worried about. Those are the concerns more than anything.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Straw Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I will look closely at this. We do want to see a competitive market in financial services and conveyancing. It is a major issue in our economy at the moment to get that mortgage market moving.

There are good signs, as the Governor of the Bank of England said last night, that credit conditions are easing, but we need to make sure that they are easing for people who are trying to buy their first flat and first home, who do not have a big deposit or a lot of help from the bank of mum and dad. We need to make sure that we are on their side.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Q8. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), the Prime Minister justified very large cuts in defence spending, with 5,000 troops being sacked right now, on the basis that he had had to face some difficult decisions on expenditure. But those decisions were made in 2010. The security risk facing this country is now much worse, as he himself has acknowledged and as many of his own hon. Friends fear. Given those threats, including in the Sahel, is there not an overwhelming case for looking again at the strategic defence review and ensuring that our troops have the numbers needed to justify our defence?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a serious point. The point about our defence reviews is that they are every five years, so there will be the opportunity to look at this all over again. What I would say to him about the level of risk—I made this point in my statement to the House on Monday—is that the risks are changing. We still face the biggest risk from the Afghanistan-Pakistan area, but the proportion of the risks that we face from that area has declined, so we are able to use resources as we draw down in Afghanistan to cope with the other risks that we face.

The overall point is absolutely that, yes, we are going to have a smaller regular Army, although the extra reserves will mean that the overall level of our Army hardly changes size. But they will be better equipped, more capable, more mobile and more capable of dealing with the modern threats that we face.