Oral Answers to Questions

Maureen Burke Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am ready to make an offer to Wales similar to the one I recently made to the First Minister of Scotland, and I will do so on Friday. I am glad to hear of the right hon. Lady’s commitment to pushing power down for deeper devolution. What I will put on the table on Friday is an offer of greater devolution of employment support, so that we can have a different approach to supporting people in communities to get back to work and supporting the economy. That is a starting point; there will be more to come. I look forward to working with the right hon. Lady and her party on that issue.

[Maureen Burke (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

Q5. Having lived my whole life in Easterhouse, one of Scotland’s most deprived communities, I know the challenges that our young people face, but also their enormous potential. I was therefore encouraged to hear the Prime Minister commit to the Easterhouse principle, inspired by the work of Ian Montague and the charity FARE Scotland’s “names not numbers” approach. Will the Prime Minister accept my invitation to return to FARE with the Work and Pensions Secretary to discuss making that principle a guide for supporting young people across Britain?

[The Prime Minister]

I will give my hon. Friend that commitment, because the visit I made to FARE Scotland some years ago had a huge impact, and I know that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) was very much inspired by the same. FARE takes a very personal approach—a “names not numbers” approach—and I took that to our work in Greater Manchester on employment support. Exactly as I was saying to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) just a moment ago, that should be the way that we approach supporting people in work across the country, as pioneered in my hon. Friend’s constituency by FARE Scotland.