Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is this Government who are on the side of hard-working families: we have kept interest rates low; we have frozen the council tax; we have cut income tax for 24 million people; we have taken more than 2 million people out of income tax altogether; and our welfare reforms—sadly, not supported by the Opposition—are making sure that work always pays.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Q4. Today’s Daily Telegraph reports that 1 million people have been declared fit for work by the Department for Work and Pensions. Does that include people like my constituent, Michael Moore, who, despite multiple illnesses and disability, was declared fit for work in July 2011? Mr Speaker, Michael died in February this year, aged just 56.

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously, I am very sorry, on behalf of the whole House, about the loss of the hon. Lady’s constituent, but I am sure that she—and, indeed, I would have thought everyone in this House—would accept that it is necessary to have a system to check who is available for work, and who is able to work and who is not. The whole point of the employment and support allowance programme is that we can judge those people who can work but who need extra help and those who cannot work, who should always be looked after. I find it extraordinary that heads are shaking among Labour Members; I thought it was the Labour party, not the welfare party.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

This is the news that the Opposition do not want to hear. Four fifths of that growth was coming from the private sector, and that is an encouraging sign that we should celebrate rather than look miserable about.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister talks of difficult decisions, and last week the Chancellor said that government is about choices. The Opposition agree, but we would have made different choices—

[Hon. Members]

What?

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

[Mrs Hodgson]

For instance, we would have chosen to tax the bankers more heavily in order to avoid the shameful attack yesterday on women and children in the form of the abolition of the child trust fund and the health in pregnancy grant. Does the Prime Minister agree with his Chancellor’s choices continually to penalise women and children in that way?

Please, Mr Speaker—

[Hon. Members]

Speech!

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Please, Mr Speaker, will you ask the Prime Minister not continually to blame the Opposition? He is in government now—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am grateful. I call the Prime Minister to reply.