Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point: every increase in interest rates of 1% will add £1,000 to the typical family mortgage. The fact is that today British interest rates are below 2% because the world has confidence that in spite of our economic difficulties we have a plan to deal with our debt and our deficit. We can see from looking around Europe what happens when there is no plan. Interest rates go up, which is bad for business, bad for home owners and bad for the economy. That is what we would get if we listened to the Opposition.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

Q9. Many agencies let down the children involved in the Rochdale sex abuse cases, and the whole House must agree that offering our looked-after children a safe and secure place to live is paramount. In that context, given that there are wide concerns about the operation of private children’s homes in the area, will the Prime Minister do two things? Will he look at holding an inquiry into whether they are properly funded and have properly trained staff, and will he make sure that monitoring now works effectively? Clearly it has not done so.

[The Prime Minister]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman raises this issue. It is a truly shocking case and we need to look very carefully at what went wrong. I have asked my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education to do this. He, in turn, has asked the Children’s Commissioner to do a piece of work on it. We need to look at why information was not passed more rapidly from children’s homes to police, and why action was not taken more rapidly. There are obviously issues about inspection, which the hon. Gentleman mentions, but there are also issues about why action was not taken. It is very important that we get to the bottom of a truly, truly dreadful case.