PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Topical Questions - 25 July 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his response. Given that it is the Department’s responsibility to investigate waste, will it also investigate the impact? My inquiries have revealed that £242 million of taxpayers’ money was spent on covid aid that was handed out to holiday home owners in Cornwall during that period, whereas only a fraction of that amount has been given to support those who are desperately in need of affordable homes, with many locals being displaced by the massive growth of holiday homes in the area. Will the Government please investigate the impact—be it positive or negative—of spending that kind of public money?

Can we pick up the pace of questions and answers? We are on topicals now. Rachel Hopkins will set a good example.

Growth is a central mission of the Government. We want to use all the levers available to us, including procurement, to support good growth, jobs and local communities.

I call the shadow Minister.

I begin by welcoming the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to his position. I know that he will be supported by a brilliant team of civil servants who are truly dedicated to public service. As we saw in module 1 of the covid inquiry report last week, biological threats pose potentially catastrophic risks to our nation, and those risks will be exacerbated by long-term trends such as climate change. To help to prepare us, I published the UK biological security strategy. Will he take the opportunity to recommit to its objectives and to provide an annual update to the House on its implementation?

Let us keep going in that way.

I welcome that answer and I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words. An effective strategy must be underpinned by dedicated resources, which is why one of my final acts in the Cabinet Office was to announce that we would ringfence biological security spending across Government. Will he uphold that commitment, so that important resilience spending does not fall victim to day-to-day spending pressures?

I call the Lib Dem spokesperson.

This summer, we have been celebrating 25 years of devolution in Scotland. In the last Parliament, the Scottish Affairs Committee looked at how the relationship between the UK and Scottish Governments has deteriorated in the past decade and how we can improve it. Does the Minister agree that in the next tranche of devolution, we should look at how to improve relationships with the devolved Administrations and regional authorities? Perhaps we should set up a UK council of Ministers to involve Ministers from all the Administrations and regional mayors.

I thank my hon. Friend for the question; I know that the issue is close to his heart, as it is to mine. The publication of the report will mark an important milestone for the Grenfell community, and Parliament will have the opportunity to provide the full and proper scrutiny that the issues deserve. As my hon. Friend said, it is important that bereaved families are also part of that process, and we will work closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that all those residents are part of it. The Government will do everything possible to drive the change to ensure that lessons are learned and that a tragedy such as the Grenfell Tower fire can never happen again.

The Government recognise that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups and minority communities and that it will continue to affect many people. It is essential that we review the way we prepare for future emergencies to minimise disproportionate impacts. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will chair a dedicated Cabinet Committee on resilience to oversee the work of assessing and improving our national resilience. We are putting people at the centre of the Government’s missions and we will learn the lessons of covid-19.

On behalf of the 12% of people in my constituency who have served in the armed forces, I ask the Cabinet Secretary to explain why he is not joined by a veterans Minister on the Front Bench this morning.

First, let me thank my hon. Friend and his family for walking across the country to raise awareness of child poverty during the pandemic.

The Government recognise the disruption to education caused by the pandemic and the different access to online learning and IT equipment. We are committed to learning lessons from the past and making improvements for the future. In the immediate term, the Government have invested in delivering nationwide gigabit connectivity as soon as possible. We are investing £5 billion as part of this project to ensure that the hardest-to-reach areas across the UK, such as my hon. Friend’s constituency, receive coverage.

Further to the question of the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery), does the Minister hold any statistics on how many individuals are due infected blood compensation in Northern Ireland and how many have been awarded it? I am happy for the Minister to send me the stats if he does not have them to hand.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for that question. I do not have the specific figures for Northern Ireland to hand, but if he writes to me I would be only too delighted to provide them to him.

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I made a statement on the CrowdStrike IT outage in this House on Monday. There will be a lessons-learned process as a result of that, and also a Bill going before Parliament to ensure that we are resilient in relation to our cyber-security. That will strengthen our defences and ensure that more digital services than ever are protected.

I call Cat Eccles for the final question.

A constituent of mine is currently going through the process of adopting a little boy. She and her husband have one daughter already, conceived following several rounds of IVF, but, sadly, that has since been unsuccessful for them and they have chosen to adopt one of the many looked-after children looking for a loving home. My constituent runs a local business—a haberdashery and sewing workshop—that is extremely popular with local people, but in order to integrate the little boy into her family, she has taken time away from her business to be with him at home. She has since discovered that she is not entitled to statutory adoption pay as a self-employed person and will have to take this time off unpaid.

When adopting children from care, there is a really small window of opportunity to successfully integrate the child with minimal disruption. Costs to local authorities for looked-after children are rising. Would you agree that extending adoption pay to self-employed people in line with maternity pay would provide better outcomes for looked-after children?

Order. We are all on a learning curve, but we do need to ask short, punchy questions. Also, “you” means me, but I am sure that we will not be doing that again.

That completes questions. Before we move to the business questions, I shall let those on the Front Benches leave.