PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Topical Questions - 11 May 2023 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

I want to begin by congratulating Their Majesties the King and Queen on a wonderful coronation weekend. The Government worked hand in hand with the royal household in planning for this historic event, conducting over 20 multi-agency exercises in preparation and hosting the unprecedentedly high number of 95 heads of state over the weekend. It really was a triumph of pomp, pageantry and pride in Britain. In addition, through Cobra we have co-ordinated the longest and largest evacuation of any western nation from war-torn Sudan. As with the coronation, this feat would not have been possible without our public servants, both the armed forces and our civil servants, who worked tirelessly to make both operations a success. I am sure the whole House will join me in thanking them.

I of course echo my right hon. Friend’s comments about the coronation and thank the dedicated servicemen, police officers and public servants who made it such a success. Does he agree with me and many of my Dudley constituents that we should never be shy about being proud of our country’s fantastic traditions and institutions?

I align myself entirely with the sentiments of my hon. Friend and the people of Dudley, and indeed the people of the whole United Kingdom. We witnessed the biggest military parade since the coronation of Her late Majesty, and it was a spectacular tribute to the values we all hold so dear. It is as true today as it was in 1953: only this country can bring so many people from so many different backgrounds together in celebration and such a shared uplifting experience.

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

First, may I offer my congratulations to the right hon. Gentleman, who is proving that being ginger is no barrier to becoming Deputy Prime Minister? I hope to take his example with me very soon one day, and in the meantime I look forward to facing him at Deputy PMQs to a bigger crowd in the future. I also want to offer my heartfelt commiserations to the right hon. Gentleman, who lost his local Conservative council this week. Those privet hedges of freedom were not quite as secure as he once boasted. Does he think that result is a reflection of the failure of his own local Tory party councillors or the failure of his Government and their Ministers?

The right hon. Lady started off so nicely—you never know, one day the Labour party might even allow a woman to lead it. In Hertsmere and nationally it is the same picture: while we in the Conservative party are focusing on delivering for the British people, Labour is working out grubby, dodgy deals with other parties. We are focused on the British people; they are focused on their own political interests.

The only grubbiness that I have seen over the last few years has been about dodgy personal protective equipment contracts. I hope the Deputy Prime Minister will start to get a grip of that, because the local elections last Thursday revealed a lot about not only the British public’s rejection of the mess created by the Conservatives over the last 13 years, but the impact of the Government’s new voter ID regulations, which caused chaos and confusion at polling stations.

Oona Preece, a 93-year-old cancer sufferer, was excluded from voting in the local elections last week. She first voted in 1950 and had voted in every local and general election since. Given that not a single person—not one —was prosecuted for voter personation last year, was the Deputy Prime Minister’s policy worth denying people like Oona her say?

Of course, I will look into Oona’s case, but I am not quite sure where the right hon. Lady and Labour Members have been, because I did not find any of the scenes that she describes in my constituency and nor did colleagues across the country. It was competently done, and actually it has aligned us with many other countries around the world such as Canada. It is a perfectly sensible reform.

As for the other invective thrown this way, I say to the right hon. Lady that she should perhaps take the log out of her own eye so that she can see more clearly to criticise us. Until the Labour party publishes the list of meetings that took place between it and Sue Gray, we will take absolutely no lectures whatsoever from it.

My hon. Friend knows the answer to this question all too well, having been on the Procurement Bill Committee. We are creating access to public procurement for small and medium-sized enterprises as never before. Alas, the Bill will not apply to Scotland because the Scottish Government refused to take part in it. That is a great shame, because it means that small and medium-sized enterprises in Scotland will be deprived of the opportunities that those south of the border will get.

One of the things that depressed me about leaving the Ministry of Defence was the fact that I would no longer be across the Dispatch Box from the right hon. Gentleman and his worthy campaign to make certain that, in defence in particular, orders go to UK companies. He is right, and the Government absolutely accept that many areas of our national life must, for defence and security reasons, be provided by UK companies. However, there are huge advantages to working internationally as well, including in the sphere of defence. He knows the answer: from Typhoon and F-35 to Type 31 orders, we can do both.

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We constantly have efficiency reviews, and those will continue, and we work closely with the Treasury to make certain that the customer on the ground gets the right service and that that happens as cost-effectively as is humanly possible. That is how we managed to get £3.4 billion of savings through the system last year. We will continue to work at it. It is a huge task, but we are absolutely committed to driving those savings and good service for the customer.

I am happy to look into the hon. Lady’s suggestion, and I am delighted that she sees our support for local communities and value for money.

I would like to highlight the hard work of local civil servants at East Sussex County Council, Rother District Council and Hastings Borough Council. I do not know their politics, and they have always worked with me in a positive way. Will my right hon. Friend join me in thanking them for their work locally to deliver services, especially during the local elections last week?

Come on!

We are all struggling over the opportunity to endorse what my hon. Friend says, because it is absolutely right and we do not say it enough. A huge amount of hard work is done by civil servants at local and national level. We appreciate the work undertaken by them and I very much welcome her bringing it to the Chamber today.

I take enormously seriously what the right hon. Lady says on this issue, on which she has campaigned long and hard and very successfully. We are now in the final stages, as she knows. We have received the second interim report on compensation, which we did not anticipate until February, but it has arrived and I am delighted that it has. It is real stuff to get our teeth into while we wait for the final report. We are doing a lot of work at pace.

To reassure the right hon. Lady, I chaired a meeting with Ministers from across Government last week. I have a bilateral meeting next week and I anticipate having more ministerial meetings, which I will chair, the week after. She has asked me to set out every single internal meeting I have on this subject, which is not normal in the formulation of policy. I do not intend to list every single meeting that I have internally or with other Ministers, but I assure her that we are working at pace to come up with a constructive response to the report.

I join the Deputy Prime Minister in congratulating all those who participated in the magnificent coronation, not least the armed forces, who enjoyed a few rehearsals to get it right and absolutely did so. Will the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs kindly update the House on our manifesto commitment to support veterans who served in Northern Ireland?

I pay tribute to all those who were on duty last weekend. When it comes to looking after those who served in Northern Ireland, this Government are committed to fulfilling our manifesto commitment to them. The Government are working hard to ensure that legacy is dealt with in a way that has victims at the centre. The Bill has its last day in Committee in the House of Lords today. We made commitments to our veterans in respect of Northern Ireland and we are determined to see them through.

A month ago, the Minister came to the House and told us that he was dealing with the contaminated blood report “at pace”. A month later, he has just repeated that phrase. Can he say what “at pace” means and when he will tell us the timescale?

I came promptly to the House to make a statement after receiving the second interim report, and I said then that the Government have always been focused on ensuring a comprehensive response at the conclusion of the inquiry. I also said that that did not preclude steps being taken earlier, if possible. I cannot illuminate that any further, but work is continuing. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that five years of work has been done by an extremely eminent individual, who has produced an extremely good and interesting report. It is for us to work through that, but it does need to be worked through and considered, as is the case with all reports presented to Government. We need to make certain that it is given the attention it requires.

I think it was about 10 years ago that I said to the Government that we ought to have an emergency test and an emergency system, so I am very pleased that we got it up and running and that 93% of people managed to get a signal, albeit that some of us got it one minute in advance of 3 o’clock, which I thought was particularly good. The Minister identified, quite rightly, that there was a problem with the Three network, which is being resolved. Will there be another test to show that at least 99% of alerts are getting through?

I am very happy to grant this to my hon. Friend as his legacy project. I do not believe that we need to have another test, for the simple reason that following my meeting with the chief executive, I am confident that the network has taken the necessary steps to resolve the issue.

My constituent, Brian, lost his mother in 2020. His family is one of far too many who have struggled for years as a result of the contaminated blood scandal. Those families want to see action now, not “in due course”, and “working at pace” does not cut it when it is the pace of a snail. I ask the Paymaster General, when will compensation be paid to all those infected or affected by the scandal?

I sympathise hugely with the hon. Lady’s constituent. That is one of many, many—far too many—tragic incidences that we are aware of in the House. That does not alter the fact that the compensation scheme needs to be done properly and effectively. We need to come back with a solution and an answer to the report, and to make certain that it is done appropriately. As the hon. Lady knows, those who were infected were paid interim compensation last year of £100,000 per person. We still need to work through what the report envisages.

In response to an earlier question about the emergency test, conversations with the Three network were mentioned. What reassurance can be given to constituents in remote rural areas, including some of my constituents who never received their alert and who are not with Three? I declare an interest: I am a Vodafone customer and my alert went off the next morning, as I was coming up the M5.

All these things point to the reason why we needed to have the test in the first place, which was to iron out these issues. In more rural areas, there are problems with signal, particularly with signal penetrating older houses. The answer is to extend the roll-out of mobile technology further, and the Government have very good plans for that.

Data from 2022 has identified that serving military personnel and military veterans have a high prevalence of mental health disorders, with depression and alcohol misuse among the most prevalent. What steps are Ministers taking to ensure that those personnel have access to the tailored mental health support they require?

The data tells us that people are less likely to have a mental health condition if they served in the military, but of course we take every case seriously. Mental health provision for both those who are serving and veterans has completely changed in this country. Op Courage is the UK’s first dedicated mental health care pathway for veterans, with £22 million a year and 19,000 referrals in its first year, which shows the huge unmet need that the Government are now meeting. The message is always the same: “Come forward, help is available, people do care and you can get better.”

Has the Secretary of State made any assessment or has he any estimates of the number of people who were turned away from the local elections last week? Does he have a number in mind that would suggest that the policy needs to be looked at again or to be abolished and scrapped, because people did not get the opportunity to vote?

This is a matter for the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. I know that his Department and the Government will be looking at the after-effects of this major change. What I can tell the hon. Gentleman is that in my constituency, and in the constituencies of many hon. Members, there were absolutely no problems at the polling booths, despite all the woeful predictions of people like himself.

I am always talking to DEFRA colleagues and always delighted to do so. I am pleased to tell the hon. Lady that the Crown Commercial Service is looking specifically at how we can involve small and medium-sized enterprises in public food procurement.

The Secretary of State referred earlier to cyber-security. Bearing in mind the fact that Belfast is now known as the cyber capital of the world, will the Cabinet Office and the Secretary of State build on that strong foundation, invest in the existing industry, and allocate the funding to create more jobs and use the highly skilled based that is already there?

At the conference we had a few weeks ago, I was enormously impressed by the strength and depth of the cyber-security industry in Northern Ireland and particularly in Belfast. I reassure the hon. Gentleman that the Government remain fully committed not only to the cyber industry but to Northern Ireland in particular. I am sure that further investment will be forthcoming.