PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Engagements - 17 May 2023 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

The Royal Lancaster Infirmary is a 130-year-old crumbling hospital. It was meant to be one of the Government’s 40 new hospitals. However, the funding announcement has been delayed four times already. Can the Deputy Prime Minister reassure my constituents that this is not going to be another broken Tory promise?

We come to the deputy Leader of the Opposition.

It is a pleasure to welcome yet another Deputy Prime Minister to the Dispatch Box—the third deputy I have faced in three years. You know what they say: the third time’s a charm. I am also pleased to note that the Prime Minister has a working-class friend—finally.

I seem to remember that, after the loss of 300 Conservative seats at last year’s local elections, the right hon. Gentleman resigned, saying “someone must take responsibility”. After 1,000 more Conservative councillors have been given the boot by voters, who does he think is responsible now?

It is absolutely amazing that while the Labour party is preparing to govern with a Labour majority, the right hon. Gentleman’s party is starting to prepare for Opposition. This week, at the National Conservative conference, the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) blamed the country’s problems on a “new religion”. He even hit out at the “dystopian fantasy of John Lennon”. The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) identified falling birthing rates as the “overarching threat” to the UK. She criticised “woke” teaching for “destroying…children’s souls”, causing self-harm and suicide among young people. And the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) really let the cat out of the bag when he said:

“Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever schemes come back to bite them, as dare I say we found when insisting on voter ID”.

The Deputy Prime Minister, while working in No.10, said he had to listen to the radio every morning to find out what was really going on in the country. Apparently, he was “surprised” on a daily basis by what he learned and most of his time was spent on “day-to-day crisis management”. Eleven years on, nothing has changed.

The reality is that after 13 years of Tory rule, they are still lurching from crisis to crisis and wallowing in their own mess. They cannot solve the crisis, because they are the crisis. The right hon. Member should take more note of what is happening at his conferences in his party before trying to make up what is happening in mine.

The Prime Minister pledged that by March NHS waiting lists would fall. It is now May. Can the Deputy Prime Minister tell us whether, since the Prime Minister made that pledge, the number of people on waiting lists is higher or lower?

Even before the pandemic waiting lists were going up, so it does not wash that this Government, after 13 years in power, are blaming everybody but themselves for what people are having to put up with. The right hon. Gentleman appears to be claiming that 11,000 patients waiting more than 18 months is an achievement. The last Labour Government reduced waiting times from 18 months to 18 weeks. He can come back to me when he has achieved that. The fact is that waiting lists are longer than when the Prime Minister made his pledge five months ago. The number of people in England waiting to start hospital treatment is the highest since records began—7.3 million patients left waiting.

I know the Prime Minister has his own private GP, so maybe he does not appreciate the urgency, but he has left people like my constituent Carol waiting over a year for an urgent appointment, moved from waiting list to waiting list, with appointments cancelled again and again. If not now, when will waiting lists—

Order. We will continue until I hear the end of this question. If I get any more interruptions, it will take longer.

They do not want to hear the question because they know the answer is that they have failed the British people. [Interruption.] When will waiting lists fall?

We all want minimum service levels; it is this Government who have failed to provide them for all our trains and public services because they have run them down and mismanaged them for the last 13 years. It is not just waiting times; 13 years after the landmark Marmot review into child poverty, Sir Michael says that this Government are

“on track to make child poverty worse”,

with more than a quarter of our children living in poverty last year. When I was a young mum, I remember the sick feeling in my stomach not knowing if my wages would cover the bills, yet the right hon. Member’s Government have taken a wrecking ball to measures by the last Labour Government to eradicate child poverty, even abolishing the child poverty unit. They tried to justify that by saying that they no longer needed a child poverty unit because they have abolished the child poverty target. Can he tell us what level of poverty he considers a success?

The last Labour Government made it their mission to reduce the number of children in poverty by a million. We achieved that. Under the Tories, child poverty is nearly back to the level it was at when Labour last inherited the Tory mess. After 13 years, the Tories are stuck in a conveyer belt of crises. While the right hon. Member’s party is preparing for Opposition with their Trump tribute act conference over the road, Labour has focused on fixing the real problems facing British people. They Tories have picked their side. They are for the vested interests, the oil companies and the bankers—for those who are profiting from the crisis, not those suffering from it. Whether it is failing the millions of people anxiously waiting for treatment or overseeing a rise in child poverty, while his colleagues spout nonsense at their carnival of conspiracy, I want to know, when will his party stop blaming everybody else and realise that the problem is them?

We now turn to the deputy Leader of the Scottish National party.

In 2016, the Deputy Prime Minister told his constituents in a blog that it was his duty to furnish them

“with all the facts that are available”

with regards to Brexit. Today, Brexit Britain faces higher food prices, a lack of workers, a shrinking economy and a decline in living standards. Why is he happy to ignore those facts?

The only thing more deluded than that defence of Brexit is the Labour party’s supporting of it. Just today, the world’s fourth largest car manufacturer said that Brexit was a

“threat to our export business and the sustainability of our UK manufacturing operations”.

Even Nigel Farage can admit that Brexit has failed, so why can’t the Deputy Prime Minister?

My constituency has a problem with Travellers pitching on private land and common land and causing a nuisance, currently on Parkgate Industrial Estate in Knutsford. Either the police do not have sufficient powers to deal with this issue, or they do have sufficient powers but they are not using them. Will the Deputy Prime Minister get the Government to speak with Cheshire police to ensure that they have the powers to deal with this blight on our local community and that they use them?

The Deputy Prime Minister will be aware of the ongoing concerns of Unionists in Northern Ireland about our ability to trade freely within the United Kingdom and its internal market, given the continued application of EU law on the manufacture of all goods in Northern Ireland. We now have proposals for a future border operating model that could potentially create further barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Will the Deputy Prime Minister give me an assurance that the Government will in law protect Northern Ireland’s ability to trade freely within and with the rest of the United Kingdom?

Incredible regeneration work is taking place on Teesside, led by our Mayor, Ben Houchen. Sadly, we have seen a shameful attempt, led by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), to whom I have given advance notice of this question, to smear the amazing Teesworks project. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it was always an integral part of the business case that the private sector should co-invest alongside Government and that the Teesworks arrangements have been checked and approved by the Government? Will he reconfirm his full support for the Teesworks project, reassure investors and join me in calling for the Labour party to apologise for talking down Teesside?

It is truly excellent news to see England rising up the international league tables for reading to become the highest performing country in the western world. That is testament to the hard work of our teachers and the dedication of the Minister for Schools, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), to following evidence-based policy, but this progress will only be sustained if children are in school regularly and able to learn. Can I strongly commend to the Deputy Prime Minister and the Government the ten-minute rule Bill presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond)? It has cross-party support and delivers on key recommendations of the Education Committee and the Children’s Commissioner. The Government should adopt it as soon as possible.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on a brilliant first performance at Prime Minister’s questions. Will he keep the Government laser-focused on the issues that matter to people, such as the cost of living and the NHS, and on the issues of the future, such as artificial intelligence, which needs regulatory attention? And will he ignore the reactionary voices, no matter where they come from?

The people of Longport and Burslem, as well as the people of Porthill in the neighbouring constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell), are suffering because of cowboy waste disposal companies such as Staffordshire Waste, which has again been done for having waste on site after being given a notice by the Environment Agency. What support can I get to hold these people to account and to make sure their retrospective planning application for a site they are already using is rejected by Stoke-on-Trent City Council?

This week is Wales Tourism Week, an opportunity to celebrate one of Wales’s most important sectors, which represents 10% of all jobs, supports Welsh farmers and food producers, and generates £6 billion of economic activity each year. Will the Deputy Prime Minister join me in thanking all those who work in the Welsh tourism sector? Does he agree that the UK Government’s Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 demonstrates their commitment to supporting the tourism sector, unlike Labour’s proposed tourism tax in Cardiff, which will undermine visits and jobs?