Oral Answers to Questions
Nusrat Ghani Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I am happy to point out to m’learned friend that actually, there are 100,000 fewer children in absolute poverty and 500,000 fewer children falling below thresholds of low income and material deprivation. This Government, as he knows, are massively increasing universal credit with £7 billion more to help the poorest and neediest families in our country. We are getting on with it. We are taking the tough decisions. He still cannot make up his mind.
Talking about child poverty, the single biggest determinant of a child’s success is whether he or she goes to school. The right hon. and learned Gentleman still will not say whether children should go. I think it is absolutely infamous for him to come to the House one day and say he supports the programme and then, the next day, not to confirm that he wants kids to go to school now.
Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend knows a great deal about the subject whereof she now speaks. We remain fully committed to the welfare of all seafarers, regardless of their nationality. We ask all states to do the same. I look forward to discussing that in person with her.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nusrat Ghani Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman refers to divisions on the Conservative Benches. I have to say: which party was it that took three weeks to decide who its unity candidate should be? It is the Labour party that is divided.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks on type 1 diabetes. There are many youngsters out there, from tiny tots to teenagers, living with type 1 diabetes. It is important that we send a message to them that their future is not limited: they can do whatever they want.
The hon. Gentleman is the first hon. Member at Prime Minister’s questions to invite me to his constituency. I will, of course, look very closely at all invitations I receive. It is important that decisions about the construct of local NHS services are taken at a local level by the NHS. He made a point about the agreement in the official policy of the Conservative party and the Labour party on Trident. I simply remind him that where we did disagree at the election was that the Conservative party agreed to put in the money that was necessary for the NHS. The Labour party refused to commit to that.
Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
Q7. Extremism takes many forms, from the atrocity in Nice to the violent murder of Qandeel Baloch by her own brother in Pakistan. That murder was justified as an “honour killing”. There have been 11,000 incidents of self-styled honour crimes in the UK in the past five years. Does the Prime Minister agree that such crimes are in fact acts of terror, not honour? Will she therefore direct her new Government to choose to lead and end the use of the word “honour” to describe these vile acts in order to stop giving any legitimacy to the idea that women are the property of men?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend raises a very important issue, one that I think resonates across the whole House. She is absolutely right: extremism does take many forms. That is why, in the Government’s counter-extremism strategy, we are looking very widely across the breadth of issues of extremism, including tackling the root causes of some practices within communities, such as so-called honour-based violence. I absolutely agree with her that there is absolutely no honour in so-called honour-based violence. It is violence and a criminal act, pure and simple.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nusrat Ghani Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
We will set out the arguments clearly tomorrow, but there is a clear and present danger to the United Kingdom from ISIL, based in Iraq and Syria, planning attacks against our country today. We do not live in a perfect world and we cannot deliver a perfect strategy, but we can deliver a clear, long-term strategy that will work. The hon. Gentleman talks about the lessons we learned from the last century. One of the lessons I would say we should learn from the last century is that when your country is under threat, and when you face aggression against your country, you cannot endlessly sit around and dream about a perfect world—you need to act in the world we are in.
Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating all the staff at the Crowborough birthing unit, including the midwives and the matron Emma Chambers, and local activist Richard Hallett, on scoring 100% on their friends and family survey on satisfaction and care? The commitment of the midwives is matched only by the Conservatives’ commitment to the NHS, given the fact that for two elections in a row we have promised and delivered greater investment than Labour in our national health service.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the friends and family test. It is a simple way of measuring whether our hospitals are giving great care, and I think it has been a real advance in our NHS to have that. As well as a good scheme to make sure that you want your friends and family to be treated in a hospital, we need to provide the resources for that hospital, and that is exactly what we are doing with the spending figures announced today. Crucially on childbirth, it is not often that I stand here and cite the Daily Mirror, but it is worth looking at what it is saying about the importance of a seven-day NHS and making sure that we have high standards across our NHS every day of the week. As well as the extra money this Government are putting into the NHS, the seven-day NHS will also mean a much stronger NHS.