Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Sarah Newton

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Ministerial Corrections

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s prescient remarks in recent weeks about the need to expand our naval presence. To help with that, will he ask the Defence Secretary to change the classification of our much-valued Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships to warships, as our allies classify them, so that we can bring forward the building of planned new ships in the UK?

[Mr Hunt]

I have just asked the Defence Secretary that very question, to which the answer is yes.

[Official Report, 22 July 2019, Vol. 663, c. 1131.]

Letter of correction from the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

An error has been identified in the response I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) during the statement on the situation in the Gulf.

The correct response should have been:

Situation in the Gulf

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Sarah Newton

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will let us and particularly the Home Office and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government know if he comes across any examples of that, because those Iranian nationals—the vast majority of them have now become British citizens—are extremely welcome and make a tremendous contribution to our country.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s prescient remarks in recent weeks about the need to expand our naval presence. To help with that, will he ask the Defence Secretary to change the classification of our much-valued Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships to warships, as our allies classify them, so that we can bring forward the building of planned new ships in the UK?

[Mr Hunt]

I have just asked the Defence Secretary that very question, to which the answer is yes.[Official Report, 24 July 2019, Vol. 663, c. 16MC.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Sarah Newton

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We have not had good relations with the Houthis since the start of the Yemen conflict. I have met them twice, most recently on 1 March and before that on 13 December, and we are establishing a sort of relationship. We can start to raise that issue.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

T7. The Foreign Secretary made an important speech last night at the Mansion House, where he rightly said that “Britain at its best has followed a global vocation.”The greatest challenge facing the planet is ecological and climate change, and it is our duty to fulfil that global vocation with redoubled effort to tackle that challenge. What further action will my right hon. Friend take?

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The honest answer to the demonstrations organised by Greta Thunberg and others is that while we have done more than many countries on climate change, we have not done enough. The biggest single thing we can do is to host a really impactful COP 26—the next big climate change conference—in 2020 to demonstrate global leadership on this very important issue.