PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Engagements - 1 May 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

I know the thoughts of the whole House are with the people of Hainault in east London following yesterday’s appalling attacks. Such violence has no place on our streets. It is absolutely heartbreaking that a teenage boy has died, and I cannot imagine what his family are going through. We send them our heartfelt condolences and offer our very best wishes to all those injured. I reiterate my thanks to the police and other emergency first responders for embodying the highest standards of public service under such awful circumstances. I know our thoughts are also with those injured this morning in an attack at a school in Sheffield.

This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

We know that more than one in five teenagers are vaping, with some experts describing it as an epidemic. Yesterday, new research suggested that teenagers who vape could be at risk of exposure to toxic metals, potentially harming brain or organ development. I agree with the Prime Minister in his wish to reduce the harms caused by smoking and vaping through the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. Does he agree that permitting football strips to be sponsored by vaping companies sends entirely the wrong message to young people, and that it is time to ban vape companies from advertising on sports strips?

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Obviously, decisions about kit sponsorship will rest with individual teams, but I agree with her that it is important that we do everything we can to tackle the scourge of teenage vaping. That is why I am glad that she supports our Bill, which will not only clamp down on marketing and availability of flavours, targeting point-of-sale purchases, but improve funding for trading standards to clamp down on those selling vapes illegally to children.

I start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend’s husband and all our veterans for their service to our country. In the most uncertain times since the cold war, it is right that we build our security, protecting our values, our interests and indeed our nation. That is why this Government have taken the step to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, making us the biggest spender in Europe under NATO. When the Labour leader stands up, I hope he stops dithering, does the right thing and confirms that he will back our plan to increase defence spending.

I call the Leader of the Opposition.

I join the Prime Minister in his words about yesterday’s awful events in Hainault. I am sure that the whole House will want to commend the first responders and send our deepest condolences to the family of the 14-year-old boy who was murdered. I join the Prime Minister in his remarks about the attack in the school in Sheffield as well.

I know that everyone in the House will be delighted to see His Majesty the King returning to his public duties and looking so well. We all wish him and the Princess of Wales the best in their continued recovery.

I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) to his place on the Labour Benches. After nearly two decades as a Tory politician and an NHS doctor, he has concluded that if you care about the future of our country and our NHS, it is time for change; it is time for this changed Labour party. As of today, he is our newest Labour MP, but I am sure he will not mind my saying that I hope he loses that title on Friday. When a lifelong Tory and doctor says that “the only cure” for the NHS is a Labour Government, is it not time that the Prime Minister admits that he has utterly failed?

I am glad to actually see the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) in the House, because he recently pointed out that residents under his local Labour council are

“charged much more in council tax but in return receive…lower quality”

services. He has been wrong about some things recently, but on that point he is absolutely right, and this week, people everywhere should vote Conservative.

The Prime Minister comes out with all that nonsense, but he locks himself away in his Downing Street bunker, moaning that people are not grateful enough to him. The reality is that Tory MPs are following Tory voters in concluding that only the Labour party can deliver the change that the country needs. I say to those Tory voters that if they believe in a better Britain, they are safe with this changed Labour party, and it is for them. In the two weeks since we last met at the Dispatch Box, has the Prime Minister managed to find the money for his completely unfunded £46 billion promise to scrap national insurance?

We addressed that a few weeks ago, and I am happy to address it again. I know that economics is not the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s strong point, but he would do well to listen to his shadow Education Secretary, the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), who just this morning said, “No, that’s not how it works.” Indeed, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has also said that the link between national insurance and public services funding is “illusory”—just like Labour’s economic plans. However, it is crystal clear that there is one party that will deliver tax cuts for working Britain, and it is the Conservative party. [Interruption.]

Order. Whoever is banging the furniture will have to pay for it if they damage it. Can we have less of that? We are not in the sixth form now.

That was a long, rambling non-answer to the question, which was: has the Prime Minister found the money to fund his £46 billion promise to abolish national insurance? Whenever he is asked about the date of the election, or about people’s pensions, he acts as if answering straightforward questions is somehow beneath him, but pensioners and those who are planning their retirement deserve better than his contempt for their questions. If £46 billion were cut from its funding, the value of the state pension would almost halve, so I do not apologise for asking him again—[Interruption.]

Order. Mr Gullis, you have the next question, which you are not going to reach at this rate, and you have the ten-minute rule Bill. I would be quiet for a while if I were you.

I do not apologise for asking on pensioners’ behalf again whether the Prime Minister will finally rule out cutting their state pension to fulfil the enormous black hole in his spending plans.

Of course we can rule that out. The right hon. and learned Gentleman should stop scaremongering, because it is thanks to the triple lock that we have increased pensions by £3,700 since 2010, and they will rise in each and every year of the next Parliament. It is Labour who always hit pensioners hard. It is his mentors, Blair and Brown, who broke their promises, raised pension taxes by £118 billion, and delivered an insulting 75p rise in the state pension. As one former Labour adviser just said, Brown “destroyed our pensions system”. They did it before, they will do it again. Labour always betrays our pensioners.

It is clear that the Prime Minister cannot answer the question of where he is going to find this £46 billion. [Interruption.] No, he has said where it is not coming from; he has not said where it is coming from. Luckily for him, one of his peers, Lord Frost—yes, him again—does know. He says that to solve the problem of the Tories’ spending plans, the state pension age should be raised to 75. Understandably, that will cause some alarm, so will the Prime Minister rule out forcing people to delay their retirement by years and years in order to fulfil his £46 billion black hole?

I have answered this multiple times for the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but I am happy to say it again: the Conservative party is the party that has delivered and protected the triple lock. Ultimately, he is not worried about any of this, because as we all remember, he has his very own personal pension plan. Indeed, it comes with its very own special law: it was called the Pensions Increase (Pension Scheme for Keir Starmer QC) Regulations. It is literally one law for him and another one for everyone else.

The Prime Minister wants to abolish national insurance, which will cost £46 billion, and he will not tell us where the money is coming from. We are no closer to an answer. I am going to persevere. Last year, the Prime Minister was apparently drawing up plans to remove the winter fuel allowance from pensioners. His Paymaster General went a step further, saying:

“these are the sorts of things I think we need to look at”.

Will the Prime Minister now rule out taking pensioners’ winter fuel payments off them to help fund his £46 billion black hole?

It was this Government who, just this winter, provided double the winter fuel payment to support pensioners. What is crystal clear is that we believe that the double taxation on work is unfair. We believe that hard work should be rewarded, which is why this week, we are cutting taxes by £900 for everyone in work. In contrast, it is Labour’s newest tax adviser who thinks that pensioners should be taxed more—those are his words. This adviser calls them “codgers”. He thinks that supporting them is a “disgrace”, and he believes that their free TV licences are “ridiculous”. It is Labour who hit pensioners with tax after tax, and they would do it all over again.

Is it any wonder that the Prime Minister’s MPs are following Tory voters in queuing up to dump his party? Even the Mayors who he is apparently pinning his political survival on do not want to be seen anywhere near him, because until he starts setting out how he is paying for his fantasy economics, he has a completely unfunded £46 billion promise that puts people’s retirement at risk. How does it feel to be one day out from elections with the message, “Vote Tory, risk your pension”?

Tomorrow, voters will have a choice. It will be a choice between Mayors like Andy Street and Ben Houchen, who are delivering, or Mayors like Sadiq Khan, who simply virtue-signal. It is higher taxes, more crime and the ultra low emission zone with Labour, or lower taxes and better services with the Conservatives—that is the choice. From the West Midlands to Teesside to London, there is only one choice: vote Conservative.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our plan is working. Legal migration, the latest figures show, is down by 24% and student dependants down by 80%. We all know Labour’s big idea: it is to scrap the Rwanda plan even when it is operational. However, as one senior Labour adviser said to Andrew Marr just yesterday:

“'We can’t just come in, tear it up, and have nothing to put in its place”.

I am sorry to break it to Labour Members, but that is exactly their policy. While we are getting on and stopping the boats, all Labour would do is stop the planes.

I call the SNP leader.

On Monday, the Armed Forces Minister could neither confirm nor deny that UK troops may soon be deployed on the ground in the middle east. The public watching will be hoping that Members of this House do not have a short memory when it comes to the potential deployment and involvement of our military in the middle east. Can I ask the Prime Minister to provide some much-needed clarity: is he giving active consideration to the deployment of UK forces in the middle east—yes or no?

Mr Speaker, you would not expect me to get into any operational planning details, but what I will say is that we are absolutely committed to supporting international effort to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza, which I think the whole House would support, by land, sea and air. We have tripled our aid commitment, and right now—together with the US, Cyprus and other partners—we are setting up a new temporary pier off the coast of Gaza to get aid in as securely and quickly as possible.

Let us all be in no doubt: aid is required in Gaza, and it is required because, when people are not being bombed, they are starving to death. The solution to that is a ceasefire and the opening of safe ground aid routes, not the involvement on the ground of UK military personnel. These are dramatic and potentially dangerous developments, so will the Prime Minister confirm to the House today that, before he makes a decision, all Members will be afforded a vote?

I am not going to apologise for our armed forces playing a leading role in supporting international effort to get more aid in. Indeed, we are sending Royal Navy support ship RFA Cardigan Bay to the region to support that effort. The right hon. Gentleman talks about this conflict; the fastest way to end it is to ensure that we have a hostage deal that gets hostages out and aid in, and for there to be a sustainable pause in the fighting. It seems clear that there now is a workable offer on the table, so I hope he joins me in encouraging all parties, including Hamas, to accept that deal so we can move towards a sustainable solution.

I am thankful for my hon. Friend highlighting the work that the Government are doing, whether that is increasing our defence spending to keep us safe, securing our borders with our Rwanda Act, cutting taxes by £900 or raising the state pension by £900. I am also pleased that, locally in Herefordshire, we are filling in potholes, helping to save the River Wye and improving local health services. It is crystal clear that it is the Conservative Government who have a plan and are delivering a brighter future for our country.

In February, the Foreign Secretary said that it would be difficult for a ground offensive on Rafah to avoid harming civilians and destroying homes, and just yesterday, the Deputy Foreign Secretary admitted that he was struggling to see how such an attack could be compliant with international humanitarian law. All the signs are that Netanyahu is about to defy the international community, and that an attack on the 1.5 million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah is imminent. If that attack begins, will that be the moment when the Prime Minister finally finds the moral backbone to ban arms exports to Israel, and if not, how much more suffering has to happen before he acts to prevent further UK complicity in crimes against humanity?

What the hon. Lady did not acknowledge at all is that Israel suffered an appalling terrorist attack that killed hundreds of its citizens, and it does have the right to defend itself. Of course, as I have been crystal clear, we want to see humanitarian law respected and adhered to by all parties. Too many civilians have been killed, and we want to see Israel take greater care to avoid harming civilians. I have made these points repeatedly to Prime Minister Netanyahu, specifically about the impact of any military incursion into Rafah, and we continue to say to the Israelis at all levels that we want to see more aid going in, and bring about a hostage deal so that we can move towards a sustainable ceasefire.

My hon. Friend is right, and he joins me in welcoming the significant action that we have already taken to improve children’s health, whether that is reducing sugar in children’s food, or the £600 million we have invested to improve the quality of sport and physical activity in schools. The NHS has established a special group to ensure that the recovery of paediatric services keeps pace with that of adult elective care, and he will be pleased that the NHS long-term workforce plan, which we have fully backed, doubles the number of medical school places in England and increases specialty training places. That will increase the size of the pool from which community paediatricians can be drawn in the future.

I understand that an agreement has now been reached to ensure that radio teleswitch services will continue until June next year. Ofgem is also engaging with energy suppliers on their plans to support consumers through the transition. While households currently covered by the service should not be disadvantaged by the switch-off, energy suppliers are best placed to advise on tariffs for those who have been switched to a smart meter. However, I will ensure that the right hon. Gentleman gets a meeting with the relevant Minister, to ensure that his constituents are not left behind during the transition.

We are levelling up across the United Kingdom and investing in places that need it the most, including, as my hon. Friend rightly highlights, our coastal communities. Almost £1 billion of levelling-up funding has been allocated to the east of England, including £75 million for coastal places. I know that he welcomes the town deal for Lowestoft in particular. I will ensure that he gets a meeting with the relevant Minister to discuss how we can further support his region with its role in our energy security, and, in particular, its coastal communities.

I am not aware of the topic that the hon. Lady raises, but I am not going to make any apology for Conservatives pointing out the record of the SNP in Scotland or the Labour Government in Wales, because that is exactly what the democratic process is about. She might not like it when we highlight their record, but we will keep doing that so that we can deliver for people across the United Kingdom.

I join my hon. Friend in thanking people up and down the country, including his constituents, for their fantastic work in supporting the Ukrainian community in the face of Putin’s illegal invasion. We remain steadfast in support of Ukraine.

In total, since the war began, we have pledged over £12 billion of aid to Ukraine. Last week, we announced an additional half a billion pounds of funding, which will be used to deliver much-needed ammunition, air defence and engineering support and drones. More importantly—President Zelensky welcomed this—we are now able to say, because of the historic increase in our defence spending, that we will continue with this level of support for as long as it takes. It is crystal clear that, on the Government Benches, we can say that our support for Ukraine will never waver.

I thank and commend the hon. Lady for raising that case, and I pay tribute to Georgina for what she is doing. I often say that one of the most incredible things about doing this job is meeting people like Georgina, who have suffered tragedy in their lives but used that to campaign, inspire and bring about a better life for everyone else. She is a prime example of that, and she deserves nothing but our praise and admiration. I am so pleased that she has brought comfort to so many other people, too.

On a recent visit, I was pleased to see for myself that my hon. Friend is a great champion for his constituents. I was very pleased to see the thriving local technology and manufacturing industry, which will help us deliver on our ambitions to make the UK a science and technology superpower. He is right that we have a record 1 million fewer workless households, and unemployment near record lows. He is also right that we need to stick to the plan, because that is how we will deliver the long-term change that our country needs and a brighter future for families up and down the country, including in his constituency.

The House will be aware that we have made commitments to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. The hon. Lady makes a very important point that the Irish Government must uphold their promises, too. We cannot have cherry-picking of important international agreements. The Secretary of State is seeking urgent clarification that there will be no disruption or police checkpoints at or near the border. I can confirm that the United Kingdom has no legal obligation to accept returns of illegal migrants from Ireland. It is no surprise that our robust approach to illegal migration is providing a deterrent, but the answer is not to send police to villages in Donegal but to work with us in partnership to strengthen our external borders all around the common travel area that we share.

My right hon. Gentleman is right that we will provide dignity to all those in retirement. That is why we introduced the triple lock and why this year the state pension is rising by £900. I am also proud of our record to bring 200,000 pensioners out of poverty. As I have said previously, the state pension will increase in each and every year of the next Parliament. He reminds us of the 75p increase—unlike Labour, pensioners in this country can trust the Conservatives.

When it comes to ambulance waiting times in A&E, of course there is work to do, but the place where they are the worst in the country is in Labour-run Wales. Thanks to our plan, we have seen an improvement in A&E and ambulance times this winter compared with last winter. We have 800 more ambulances on the road, faster discharge out of our emergency care centres and 10,000 virtual ward beds. As I said, there is more to do, but the contrast with Labour-run Wales is crystal clear: it has the worst A&E performance anywhere in Great Britain.

For six months, thousands of my constituents have lived with foul polluted air from the Withyhedge landfill site. The company is owned by someone with previous convictions for environmental crimes, who a few months ago gave £200,000 to help Vaughan Gething become First Minister of Wales, after another of his companies was loaned £400,000 from the Development Bank of Wales, overseen by the then Economy Minister Vaughan Gething. Does the Prime Minister agree that this serious matter demands an independent investigation? It is not some internal Labour party matter. Ultimately, that company needs to get out of my constituency and let people in Pembrokeshire have their quality of life back.

My right hon. Friend brings up an incredibly important issue. I know that people in Wales are concerned about the relationship he mentions. I also agree with him on the need for transparency and an investigation regarding the Welsh Labour leader, because it is very clear that the situation is not at all transparent and answers are needed.

It has been revealed by The Observer newspaper that the Conservative candidate for the Mayor of London is a member of the six Facebook groups mentioned by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock). They are full of Islamophobia, antisemitism and the most disgraceful incitement to damaging property. The worst bit, for those of us who were in the House when our Members of Parliament were taken, are the death threats to the current Mayor of London, Mr Khan. Will the Prime Minister close down those Facebook pages, which were begun by Conservative members of staff, and will he investigate the role of the current candidate and her membership of those disgraceful racist Facebook groups?

The election tomorrow will be fought on the substance of the issues that Londoners face. The Labour record is crystal clear: house building in London has collapsed; knife crime is rising; mayoral taxes are up 70%; and drivers have been hit with ULEZ charges. The Labour Mayor simply panders to unions and has decimated London’s night-time economy. That is his record and that is how he will be judged. People across London know that they will be safer with the Conservatives, with lower taxes and better services.

Today is Staffordshire Day, when we celebrate all the brilliant things about the county of Staffordshire. Will my right hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to our brilliant police, fire and crime commissioner, Ben Adams, and encourage the people of Staffordshire to vote for Ben tomorrow to ensure that Staffordshire remains one of the safest places to live, work and visit?

I wish everyone a happy Staffordshire Day. My right hon. Friend mentions the police and crime commissioner elections. It is right that she does, because under this Conservative Government and previous Conservative Governments we have cut crime by over 50% and delivered 20,000 more police officers. People with a Labour police and crime commissioner are more likely to be victims of burglary and are twice as likely to be victims of robbery. As I said, last year knife crime in London went up by 20%. The facts speak for themselves: vote Conservative for safer streets.