PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Engagements - 28 April 2021 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

I know that the thoughts of Members across the House are with the people of India. We are supporting India with vital medical equipment and we will continue to work closely with the Indian authorities to determine what further help they may need.

I also welcome last week’s Court of Appeal decision to overturn the convictions of 39 former sub-postmasters in the Horizon dispute—an appalling injustice. Sir Wyn Williams is leading an ongoing independent inquiry that will report this summer.

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

You are on mute, I think, Andrea.

Have you got the answer, Prime Minister? Tell us more about PMQs. I am sure the Prime Minister knows the answer. [Interruption.] We will try to come back to that question, and I will go to the Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer.

I join the Prime Minister in his remarks about the humanitarian disaster we are witnessing in India. I know the UK has already committed some support, but given the scale and gravity of the disaster, I hope the Foreign Secretary will set out today what more the UK will do to help the Indian people in their hour of need.

I also join the Prime Minister in his remarks about the Post Office case—an ongoing injustice. Of course, today is International Workers Memorial Day. This year, after all the sacrifices our frontline workers have made during the pandemic, it is even more poignant than usual. I join in solidarity with all those mourning loved ones today.

It was reported this week, including in the Daily Mail and by the BBC and ITV, backed up by numerous sources, that at the end of October the Prime Minister said he would rather have “bodies pile high” than implement another lockdown. Can the Prime Minister tell the House categorically, yes or no: did he make those remarks or remarks to that effect?

No, Mr Speaker. The right hon. And learned Gentleman is a lawyer, I am given to understand, and I think that if he is going to repeat allegations like that, he should come to this House and substantiate those allegations and say where he heard them and who exactly is supposed to have said those things. What I certainly can tell him—he asks about the October decisions—is that they were very bitter, very difficult decisions, as they would be for any Prime Minister, because no one wants to put this country into a lockdown, with all the consequences that means for loss of education, the damage to people’s life chances, and the huge medical backlog that it entails. But it was thanks to that lockdown—the tough decision that we took—and thanks to the heroic efforts of the British people that we have got through to this stage in the pandemic where we find ourselves rolling out our vaccine, where we have done 50% of the population and 25% of the adult population have now had two doses. Lockdowns are miserable. Lockdowns are appalling things to have to do. But I have to say that I believe that we had absolutely no choice.

Well, somebody here is not telling the truth. The House will have heard the Prime Minister’s answer, and I remind him that the ministerial code says:

“Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation”.

I will leave it there for now. [Hon. Members: “Ooh!] There will be further on this, believe you me. Who initially —and “initially” is the key word here—paid for the redecoration of his Downing Street flat?

When it comes to misleading Parliament, the right hon. and learned Gentleman may recollect that it was only a few weeks ago that he said that he did not oppose this country leaving the European Medicines Agency—a fact that he was then forced to retract—and that leaving the European Medicines Agency was absolutely invaluable for our vaccine roll-out. Actually, it was just last week that he said that James Dyson was a personal friend of mine—a fact that James Dyson has corrected in the newspaper this morning. As for the latest stuff that he is bringing up, he should know that I paid for Downing Street refurbishment personally. Any further declaration that I have to make—if any—I will be advised upon by Lord Geidt.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about housing costs. The people of this country can make their own decision in just eight days’ time, because on average, Labour councils charge you £93 more in band D than Conservative councils, and Liberal Democrat councils charge you £120 more. That, I think, is the issue upon which the British people would like him to focus.

Normally when people do not want to incriminate themselves, they go, “No comment.” Let us explore this a bit further. Let me ask it a different way. This is the initial invoice, Prime Minister. Either the taxpayer paid the initial invoice, or it was the Conservative party, or it was a private donor, or it was the Prime Minister. I am making it easy for the Prime Minister—it is now multiple choice. There are only four options. It should be easier than finding the chatty rat. I ask him again: who paid the initial invoice—the initial invoice, Prime Minister—for the redecoration of the Prime Minister’s flat?

I have given the right hon. and learned Gentleman the answer, and the answer is that I have covered the costs. Of course, the Electoral Commission is investigating this, and I can tell him that have I conformed in full with the code of conduct and the ministerial code, and officials have been advising me throughout this whole thing. But I think people will find it absolutely bizarre that he is focusing on this issue, when what people want to know is what plans a Labour Government might have to improve the lives of people in this country.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about housing again. I would rather not spend taxpayers’ money like the last Labour Government, who spent £500,000 of taxpayers’ money on the Downing Street flat. [Interruption.] Yes they did, tarting it up. I would much rather help people get on the property ladder, and it is this Conservative Government who have built 244,000 homes in the last year, which is a record over 30 years. This is a Government who get on with delivering on the people’s priorities, while he continually raises issues that most people would find irrelevant to their concerns.

The Prime Minister talks of priorities. What is he spending his time doing? This is a Prime Minister who, during the pandemic, was nipping out of meetings to choose wallpaper at £840 a roll. Just last week, he spent his time phoning journalists to moan about his old friend Dominic Cummings. He is telling the civil service to find out who paid for the redecoration of his flat—the Cabinet Secretary has been asked to investigate who paid for the refurbishment of the flat. Why doesn’t the Prime Minister just tell him? That would be the end of the investigation.

It has been widely reported that Lord Brownlow, who just happens to have been given a peerage by the Conservative party, was asked to donate £58,000 to help pay for the cost of this refurbishment. Can the Prime Minister, if he is so keen to answer, confirm: did Lord Brownlow make that payment for that purpose?

I think I have answered this question several times now, and the answer is that I have covered the costs. I have met the requirements that I have been obliged to meet in full. When it comes to the taxpayer and the costs of No. 10 Downing Street, it was under the previous Labour Government that I think Tony Blair racked up a bill of £350,000. I think what the people of this country want to see is minimising taxpayer expense. They want to see a Government who are focused on their needs and delivering more homes for the people of this country and cutting council tax, which is what we are doing. It is on that basis that I think people are going to judge our parties on 6 May.

Answer the question! That is what the public scream at their televisions every PMQs: “Answer the question!” The Prime Minister has not answered the question. He knows he has not answered the question. He never answers the question.

The Prime Minister will be aware that he is required to declare any benefits that relate to his political activities, including loans or credit arrangements, within 28 days—[Interruption.] Twenty-eight days, Prime Minister, yes. He will also know that any donation must be recorded in the register of Ministers’ interests, and that under the law any donation of over £500 to a political party must be registered and declared, so the rules are very clear. The Electoral Commission now thinks that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence or offences may have occurred. That is incredibly serious.

Can the Prime Minister tell the House: does he believe that any rules or laws have been broken in relation to the refurbishment of the Prime Minister’s flat?

No, I don’t. What I believe has been strained to breaking point is the credulity of the public. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has half an hour every week to put serious and sensible questions to me about the state of the pandemic, about the vaccine roll-out, about what we are doing to support our NHS, about what we are doing to fight crime, about what we are doing to bounce back from this pandemic, about the economic recovery, about jobs for the people of this country, and he goes on and on about wallpaper when, as I have told him umpteen times now, I paid for it.

Can I remind the Prime Minister of the Nolan principles, which are meant to govern the behaviour of those in public office? They are these: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. Instead, what do we get from this Prime Minister and this Conservative Government? Dodgy contracts, jobs for their mates and cash for access. And who is at the heart of it? The Prime Minister. Major Sleaze, sitting there.

Meanwhile—the Prime Minister talks about priorities—crime is going up, NHS waiting lists are at record levels and millions of people are worried about their jobs, including at Liberty Steel. Do not the British people deserve a Prime Minister they can trust, not a Government who are mired in sleaze, cronyism and scandal?

Last week, the right hon. and learned Gentleman came to this Chamber and he attacked me for talking to James Dyson about ventilators, when we are now sending ventilators to help the people of India, and the following day—the following day—Labour Front Benchers said that any Prime Minister in my position would have done exactly the same thing. It was only a few months ago that they were actually attacking Kate Bingham, saying she was a crony when she helped to set up the vaccine taskforce that delivered millions of vaccines for the people of this country and is helping us to get out of the pandemic.

This is a Government who are getting on with delivering on the people’s priorities. We are rolling out many more nurses, with 10,000 more nurses in the NHS now than there were this time last year, and 8,771 more police officers on our streets now than they were when I was elected, with tougher sentences for serious sexual and violent criminals, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposed. And, by the way, I forgot to mention it but last night our friends in the European Union voted to approve our Brexit deal, which he opposed. That enables us not just to take back control of our borders, but to deliver free—[Interruption.] It does, which he fervently opposed, enabling us, among other things, to deal with such threats as the European super league. It enables us to deliver freeports in places like Teesside. Above all, taking back control of our country has allowed us to deliver the fastest vaccine roll-out in Europe, as he well knows, which would not have been possible if we had stayed in the European Medicines Agency, which he voted for.

Week after week, the people of this country can see the difference between a Labour party that twists and turns with the wind and thinks of nothing except playing political games, whereas this party gets on with delivering on the people’s priorities, and I hope the people will vote Conservative on 6 May. [Interruption.]

Order. Let us see if we can calm it down a little.

My hon. Friend should thank everybody involved, and it has been a fantastic national effort, led by the NHS—led overwhelmingly by GPs, but also by many others, including local council officers and officials and the Army, and of course huge numbers of volunteers in her constituency and elsewhere, and I thank Kirsty Griffiths, Guy Hollis and Paul Bass very much for everything they have done.

May I associate myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition on the humanitarian crisis in India and the injustice in the Horizon issue at the Post Office?

Over 127,000 people have died from covid in the United Kingdom. People have lost their mothers and fathers, their grandparents and even their children. NHS staff have given their all, fighting to keep people alive. That is why so many people find the Prime Minister’s remark that he would rather let the bodies pile high in their thousands than go into lockdown utterly, utterly sickening. The BBC and ITV have multiple sources confirming that this is what the Prime Minister said. People are willing to go under oath confirming that the Prime Minister said these exact words—under oath, Mr Speaker. Parliamentary rules stop me saying that the Prime Minister has repeatedly lied to the public over the last week, but may I ask the question: are you a liar, Prime Minister?

Mr Speaker, I leave it to you to judge whether the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks were in order, but what I will say to him—

Order. Unfortunately, they were in order, but were not savoury and not what we would expect.

I am grateful, Mr Speaker, but what I would say to the right hon. Gentleman is that if he is going to relay that kind of quotation, it is up to him in a place like Parliament to produce the author—the person who claims to have heard it— because I cannot find them. He says that they are willing to go on oath; perhaps they are sitting somewhere in this building; I rather doubt it, because I did not say those words.

What I do believe is that a lockdown is a miserable, miserable thing, and I did everything I could to try to protect the British public throughout the pandemic—to protect them from lockdowns, but also to protect them from disease. The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the wretched toll that covid has brought, and I know the whole House grieves for every family that has lost a loved one. It has been a horrendous time, but it is thanks to that lockdown combined with the vaccine roll-out that we are making the progress we are, and I may say that we are making progress across the whole of the United Kingdom.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and of course it is the Prime Minister’s behaviour which is not in order. This is a Prime Minister who is up to his neck in a swamp of Tory sleaze. We have seen contracts for cronies, texts for tax breaks and cash for curtains. The Prime Minister has dodged these questions all week, and he has dodged them again today, but these questions simply are not going to go away. When exactly was money funnelled through Tory HQ into his personal bank account, when did he pay back this money, was it an interest-free loan, and who are the donor or donors who originally funded it? Is the Prime Minister aware that if he continues to fail to answer these questions, the Electoral Commission has the powers to prosecute him? Will the Prime Minister publish these details today, or is he going to wait until the police come knocking at his door?

As I have said, I look forward to what the Electoral Commission has to say, but I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that, for the rest of it, he is talking complete nonsense. The only thing I will say is that it is thanks to our investment in policing that we are going to have 20,000 more officers on the streets of our country, which is fantastic, and we will be making sure that that gets through to Scotland as well. What we want to see is a Scottish nationalist Government stopping obsessing about breaking up our country, which is all they can think and talk about, and instead talking about tackling crime and using that investment to fight crime, which is what I think the people of Scotland want to see.

I am lost in admiration for what Andy Street is doing. He is a fantastic Mayor of the West Midlands and he has a fantastic vision for transport, jobs, growth and recovery. I hope everybody votes for Andy Street on 6 May.

Let us go to Liz Saville Roberts.

Diolch yn fawr, Llefarydd. I think it is worth repeating the ministerial code’s seven guiding principles: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. The Prime Minister has spent the week ticking them off his “don’t do” list. At the same time, he tries to play down allegations that he said “let the bodies pile high”. Given that the sole judge on questions relating to the conduct of Ministers and the conduct of the Prime Minister is the Prime Minister himself, what happens when a Prime Minister goes rogue?

The people of this country have the chance to make up their own minds on 6 May. When they look at what is happening in Wales, they have a chance to make a choice between, I am afraid, a continually failing Welsh Labour Government or a Welsh Conservative Administration in Cardiff who I believe have a fantastic vision: 65,000 high-skilled, high-paid jobs; finally addressing the problems of the A55; 5,000 more teachers; getting 3,000 more nurses into the Welsh NHS; and solving the problems of the M4, which I have spoken about so movingly many times in this Chamber. I hope that people will avoid voting for Plaid Cymru and that they will vote for Welsh Conservatives on 6 May in Wales.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his expertise in this matter and thank him for what he has just said, because he is totally right. What happened to those Post Office workers—the postmasters and sub-postmasters—was appalling. It was one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in our history, and we are indeed looking at the issues involved. The former High Court judge Sir Wyn Williams will be making recommendations about what further actions—what further apologies—we need to make.

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is completely wrong in what he says about tests, but he is right about one thing, which is that Wales has made an amazing contribution to our national fightback—our UK fightback—against covid. It was incredible again to go to the Wockhardt factory in Wrexham. It is Wockhardt, working together with Oxford Biomedica, that has enabled us to roll out the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine that has made such a difference. I want to say a massive thank you, again, to those Welsh scientists and all those people working in that factory, because they have helped to save countless lives across the UK.

I would be honoured to take up my hon. Friend’s invitation as soon as I can. In terms of female representation in that sector, she will know that Alison Atkinson became the chief executive officer and managing director of AWE in May 2020, and there are huge numbers of opportunities for women to join our armed services, thanks above all to the biggest uplift in defence spending since the end of the cold war.

The third runway at Heathrow, as the hon. Lady knows, is a private sector venture, and it is up to them to produce the capital to do it. I do not see any immediate sign of that particular project coming off. I think what we should look at instead, and what we are looking at, is the prospect of jet-zero aviation and flying without emissions, or with far lower carbon emissions. It is in that area that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Department for Transport are working together with manufacturers so that this country leads in guilt-free flying.

Absolutely. I do not know why the Leader of the Opposition’s PPS, the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), is shaking her head, because surely she would agree with that. We want to work together across the whole of the UK, and I pay tribute, as I have just said, to the incredible work of the Wockhardt factory in Wales, but there is also the Valneva factory in Scotland, and the whole of the United Kingdom coming together, represented by our armed services and, above all, by our NHS helping to deliver that vaccine roll-out to protect the country and take it forward.

I tell you what, Mr Speaker, I think it is because people are absolutely determined to find anything they can hang on to talk about, except the vaccine roll-out, except our plans to unite and level up across the country, except our plans to fight crime and give people the opportunity to buy their own homes; because they do not want to discuss those issues, because they cannot win on those issues, because they have absolutely nothing to say, and that is what has become clear over the last year.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. [Interruption.] Hang on. He is right to want to thank all the staff of Doncaster Royal Infirmary for what they did for the emergency services in dealing with the incident last night, and I am glad to take the opportunity to do that. I am also glad to take the opportunity to support him in his campaign for James Hart. I do hope that the people of Doncaster will go out to vote and support him on 6 May.

I promised to publish the account of my dealings with James Dyson, which is exactly what I have done. I cannot believe that the Opposition do not learn their lesson. They attacked the Government last week for having any kind of discussions with a potential British ventilator maker, and the following day they did a U-turn and said that any Prime Minister would do it. They have now done a W-turn, and they are trying to bash me again. Which is it? Do they believe the Government should be supporting British manufacturing in delivering ventilators—yes or no? That is the question for Labour.

I thank my hon. Friend. No matter how many pints I joined him in lifting in the pubs of Bosworth, it could not do as much for the economy of Bosworth as what we are already doing with the £56 million welcome back fund, which is probably even more welcome than my presence in Bosworth, I venture to suggest—that is hotly contested, perhaps. We have extended the cut in VAT for tourism and hospitality to 5% right the way through until the end of September.

I think that what people think is that the Labour party is losing all the arguments across British politics, that it has nothing to say, and that it has no plan for our future and no vision for our country. People see a Conservative Government who are getting on with uniting and levelling up, with the most ambitious agenda any Government have had for generations, and I think that is what they are listening to.

I do, and I thank my hon. Friend for all the wonderful work that he does for his constituency. My message would be, yes, I hope that the people of Nottinghamshire will get out and vote Conservative. It is we who share their priorities on crime, on the NHS, on investment in infrastructure and on levelling up across our country, so I hope they will vote Conservative on 6 May.

I first was made aware of the plan for a European super league on, I think, the Sunday night, and we acted decisively using the arsenal of legislative freedoms that we now have thanks to leaving the European Union, which the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) opposed, of course. We acted decisively to make clear that the UK Government took a dim view of this matter. [Interruption.] And the same goes for my chief of staff.

My constituency of Stroud recently won the title of best place to live. There is much to visit there, including an historic lamp standard that was erected to celebrate Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. Next year, our own Queen will mark 70 years since her accession to the throne. Will the Prime Minister join me in supporting the gift being proposed by Parliament to mark Her Majesty’s platinum jubilee?

I thank my hon. Friend for that wonderful proposal, and I certainly encourage all colleagues to support and contribute to her project.

We are going back to Andrea Jenkyns.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Next week, we will elect our first Mayor of West Yorkshire.

Does the Prime Minister agree that for far too long Labour has taken our northern heartlands for granted? On Thursday 6 May, we have the opportunity to elect patriotic, hard-working northerners such as Matt Robinson, Ben Houchen, and Jill Mortimer in Hartlepool. They will be strong voices and champions for infrastructure, housing and jobs. We must seize the chance to build back better after the pandemic, and only the Conservatives will deliver on that. [Interruption.]

Well, Mr Speaker, they don’t like that sort of thing, do they? They don’t like focusing on the issues that actually matter to the British people and the people of West Yorkshire.

I thank my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right. I hope that on 6 May the people will get out and vote for a party that believes in supporting our NHS; that believes in fighting crime, not being soft on crime; and that will bring jobs and regeneration across the country. I hope that they will vote Conservative on 6 May.

I am suspending the House for a few minutes to enable the necessary arrangements for the next business.