Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Clarke and Hannah Bardell

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Skills are at the heart of our wider work on levelling up, which is why £3.8 billion has been allocated throughout the course of this Parliament to make sure we get the right skills for the right people in the right sectors, so that we can grow the economy in the way that is needed. I warmly commend what is going on in my right hon. Friend’s constituency, because it is precisely that kind of work that will ensure that jobs and growth really level up opportunity throughout the country.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

9. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of his fiscal policies on gender equality.

[Mr Speaker]

Does anybody want a question? Ah, Minister.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)]

Our fiscal policies support the Government’s ambition of creating a fairer and more equal society, and women are among those who will benefit the most. For example, women are expected to benefit disproportionately from the Government’s increase to the national living wage to £9.50 for workers aged 23 and above, as well as the rise in the national minimum wage for young people and apprentices.

[Hannah Bardell]

I am glad you found someone to answer, Mr Speaker.

Some 6,500 women in my Livingston constituency are WASPI women and they are furious. When I recently met them with the Women Against State Pension Inequality co-ordinator Carla O’Hara, there was anger and anxiety and there were many, many tears. Will the Minister tell me and the WASPI women from his constituency and from the constituencies of Members throughout this Chamber whether the

“fresh vigour and new eyes”

that the Prime Minister promised back in July 2019 is still on the table? Or is it, yet again, another broken promise?

[Mr Clarke]

The Government have always considered this issue, which goes back over the past decade, very carefully. For the purposes of intergenerational fairness and the wider sustainability of our pension settlement into the future, it is vital that that settlement is reflective of longer life expectancy. I am afraid that is the underpinning principle of the Government’s work and we stand resolutely behind it.

No-deal Brexit: Short Positions against the Pound

Debate between Simon Clarke and Hannah Bardell

Monday 30th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Yes, I did vote for a deal on 29 March, and I did so because I feared losing Brexit altogether. I think that was a real risk at that point, and it remains a real risk now, thanks to the antics of the Opposition. If only all of Scotland was as well represented as those areas represented by the Scottish Conservatives, who of course have adopted a totally sensible and unifying position, which is that we should get on and deliver, as one country, what our one country voted for.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The economies of the UK were damaged almost irreparably by spivs and speculators in 2008. Have the Government and the Prime Minister learned nothing from that experience, which hit the poorest in our society the worst? This is not about whose policy position is best or worst; this is about transparency, honesty and the Prime Minister’s relationships with these short-changers to society. Will the Minister acknowledge the seriousness of the matter and call an independent investigation into the Prime Minister’s conduct?

[Mr Clarke]

Actually, this is about democracy and whether we implement the result of a national referendum in which more than 34 million of our fellow citizens expressed their view. For my part, I intend to honour what they voted for. That is the position of this Government, and I think that view is shared by anybody who understands the damage that preventing our leaving the European Union would do to faith in democracy.