Business of the House

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Tim Loughton

Thursday 29th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Lady will know that, in part because of the particularly bad weather we have recently had, there has been a considerable uplift in money given to local authorities to tackle precisely the types of issues that she raises. Although that money was not strictly ringfenced, we want to be assured it has been spent on those things correctly, and all local authorities are required to place in the public domain, I think on 15 March, what they have done with that money and what repairs they have carried out. It is extremely important that that work is done. We want to ensure that it is being done and has been done, and I am sure the hon. Lady will be able to find out exactly what has been spent and on what.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The Leader of the House will have heard my challenge to Cabinet Office Ministers earlier about the worrying uncertainty swirling around the inspectorate for migration, immigration and borders after the sacking of David Neal, and it is disappointing that we have both not had a statement from the Home Office given the urgency of the situation and failed to get the urgent question I applied for on behalf of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. The issue is not just the status of the 15 unpublished reports—some unpublished for a very long time—but uncertainty about the status of the inspectorate and whether it can carry on with its current work and reviews, let alone take up its scheduled reviews and address how they will be reported in future, until we have a new inspector, which could take at least six months. Will the Leader of the House urgently get clarification from the Home Office about the working of this very important inspectorate on a very topical issue?

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend raises an important matter. The Home Secretary will not be at the Dispatch Box for questions until 15 April. I will raise this matter with the Home Secretary on behalf of my hon. Friend and the Committee on which he serves and ask him to update the Committee and this House.

Business of the House

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Tim Loughton

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am very sorry to hear about the situation in the hon. Lady’s constituency. Will she share some more information with my office? The Home Office may not be the Department that is best placed to help her; it may well be the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which is responsible for some of the new powers that we have introduced to protect homeowners and those in the rented sector with regard to poor landlords. I will be happy to assist the hon. Lady, and I hope we can help her get this matter resolved for her constituents.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend for her magnificence at the coronation. I am disappointed that she has not been asked to reprieve her role on the Eurovision stage, or at least read out the votes of the UK jury.

A less welcome guest at the coronation was the vice- president of China. This week, we hear that a British Trade Minister is feting the Chinese in Hong Kong and the Foreign Secretary is looking forward to a visit to China, as if the Chinese genocide were not still continuing, the Chinese Government were not continuing to flout international law and five Members of the House, including me, were not still sanctioned by the Chinese Communist party Government. May we have a debate on exactly what our relationship is with China going forward, and about making sure that every opportunity for meetings is prefaced by our calling out China’s continued abuses? We need a progress report on what is being done to lift the sanctions on five Members of the House, which is an insult to this House.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks regarding myself. He will know that the Foreign Secretary has recently set out his approach on China, and he knows how to apply for a debate on such a matter. I know the issue is of immense concern to Members from all parts of the House. While we know why we need to have that relationship and why it is incredibly important, given the size of the economy and our supply chains, it is important that we raise the ongoing breaches and abuses of human rights, as well as the matter he raises that concerns him directly. Foreign Office questions are a little way off, so I will make sure that the Foreign Secretary has heard what he has said today.

Business of the House

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Tim Loughton

Thursday 16th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, and I know the whole House will want to join with the sentiments she has expressed not just for the immediate family affected but all their classmates and the whole community. The Department for Education and the partners it works with have good practice and measures that can be put in place when a community has gone through this type of shocking event, and I will be very happy after this session to facilitate a meeting between the hon. Lady and someone from that Department who can assist her in that respect.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

You, Mr Speaker, are of course very familiar with my Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019, section 3 of which obliges the Secretary of State to produce a report on pregnancy loss and section 4 of which obliges the Secretary of State for Justice to produce a report on coroners investigations into stillbirths. This Act became law in February 2019, the last meeting of the pregnancy loss review advisory panel was in October 2018 and the consultation on the coroners issue closed on 18 June 2019. I have been trying to get meetings with the Under-Secretaries at Health and at Justice for the last six months, and I have raised this issue every time I am at Health or Justice questions, but that meeting has been cancelled, postponed or changed six times since Christmas alone, most recently this Monday, when one of the Ministers had the wrong date in the diary and then the date he did have he could not do either. This is really important and this is really shoddy treatment when trying to get support to get through legislation that the House has agreed to. Will the Leader of the House use her best offices to bang some heads together and get that meeting with those officials and me so that we can progress this important legislation?

[Penny Mordaunt]

That is an appalling situation and I am very sorry to hear about it. I will, after this session, raise it with the Secretary of State and the permanent secretary at that Department and ask them to get in touch with my hon. Friend’s office to set up those meetings. It is right that we make progress; this is a matter of law.

Business of the House

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Tim Loughton

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful guidance on Backbench Business Committee admin, which I am sure all Members will have heard. May I say how sorry I am to hear about the case that he raised? He will know that I recently met the permanent secretary at the Home Office, in addition to having raised Members’ concerns with the Home Secretary, and if he gives us the details of the case, we will, immediately after the business question, facilitate a surgery for him with the Home Office to ensure that the case is brought to a good conclusion.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The Home Affairs Committee was hoping to visit Manston today, but the man from the Home Office, he say no. Hopefully we can go next week. As the Leader of the House has heard, most of the questions she has been asked so far have been about the migration system. The Home Secretary herself referred to it as dysfunctional. We have had occasional chances to ask questions of the Home Secretary and the Immigration Minister, but is it not time for a full debate in Government time on the shambles that is the immigration system, which needs to take a holistic approach? We need a proper discussion on how we will tackle this urgent situation, which is filling up our email boxes and is the headline in all the media virtually every day at the moment.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue, various aspects of which are obviously of concern to all Members of this House. The Government have a good track record of trying to get ahead of these issues. I refer him to the work done swiftly after 2010, under the Cameron Administration, on conflict states, and the use made of expert advice from Professor Paul Collier. Clearly, we will also face challenges two years hence as a result of what is happening on global food security at the moment. These issues need to be debated. I will certainly raise the matter with the Cabinet Office, as well as the Home Office, and I encourage my hon. Friend to use the routes available to him to secure a debate on this very important topic.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Tim Loughton

Thursday 21st July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Topically, the Government have announced yet another deal with the American states, in no small part due to the allegedly “work-shy” efforts of the Minister for Trade Policy, my right hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt). Think what she could achieve if her focus was actually on the job!

The economies of many of these American states are larger than those of European countries. Texas is the 12th largest economy in the world. Can my right hon. Friend give us a cumulative total of the sort of economies that we are dealing with in these trade deals and that are likely to be signing up over the next few months? I think that total is considerable, thanks to her efforts.

[Penny Mordaunt]

States such as California and Texas are super-economies: if they were nations, they would be the seventh and eighth largest economies in the world. We hope that Texas will be in the first eight deals that we sign. In addition to the potential for their economies and ours, this is also about bringing together smart people, money and ideas to solve problems that we are all grappling with. Texas in particular is doing a huge amount on fintech blockchain; the synergy between what it is doing and the innovation in the City of London could be really special.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Tim Loughton

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

5. What support her Department provides to Tibetan cultural programmes for Tibetan refugees living outside China.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Penny Mordaunt)]

DFID provides funding to the UN Refugee Agency, to prioritise the greatest humanitarian and protection needs of refugees globally. This includes Tibetan refugees in need of urgent life-saving assistance.

[Tim Loughton]

I hope to attend the seventh world parliamentary convention on Tibet together with the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law), which will mark 60 years of the invasion and oppression of the Tibetan people, the 1 million lives lost and the oppression of the culture, language and human rights of those people. Many are refugees in Dharamsala and in desperate need of our help to keep the spirit of Tibet alive. Can we do more to help those refugees through the culture and education programmes that they value so much?

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Clearly, DFID’s funding is very much focused on education; but it is also focused on humanitarian assistance and support for refugees. I undertake to talk to my colleagues in both the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Foreign Office to see what more we can do to support culture and heritage for the Tibetan people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Penny Mordaunt]

If the hon. Gentleman would like to give me the details of the case I should be happy to look into it—I think it is often possible to resolve such cases by talking to the relevant Minister.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

T5. On a recent trip to Jordan, I was lucky enough to see a fantastic British-funded project at the UNESCO world heritage site of Jerash, where a stonemason from Barnsley was training Jordanians and Syrian refugees to restore ancient monuments. Does the Secretary of State agree that cultural aid, including continued support for UNSCO, is an important part of her Department’s budget?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I absolutely agree that supporting culture and heritage matters is incredibly important, not least because it helps generate and support a tourism economy and provides nations with further ways to alleviate poverty and grow their economies. The Department has a new initiative called Great Partnerships, which is pairing British expertise, as my hon. Friend outlined, with those who can benefit from that, and he has given a great example.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Tim Loughton

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

May I declare an interest, having recently joined the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on a visit with Oxfam in Jordan? I very much welcome the London initiative. Will urgent steps be taken to take account of the fact that youth unemployment in the country is now some 38%? Not only is there a high level of female unemployment, but the participation rate of women in the workforce in Jordan is even lower than that in Saudi Arabia. Will those urgent objectives be at the heart of what the Secretary of State is trying to achieve?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that that will absolutely be the case. This issue has been a focus for me personally on my visits to Jordan, and I will be focusing on it at the London conference.