Engagements — House of Commons, 2018-03-07
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: Over the last three years, more than 2,000 new homes have been built in North West Leicestershire, including a record 731 in the last 12 months. Additionally, my local authority is building new council houses for the first time in decades. That is all in contrast with the 227 houses completed in the year to 2010, which was the last time Labour was in government. Will my right hon. Friend use North West Leicestershire as an example to other local authorities and show them our unemployment rate of 1% and the fact that we have no rough sleepers?; Thanks to income tax hikes by the Scottish national party Government, thousands of UK armed forces personnel who are stationed in Scotland will pay more tax than their counterparts south of the border. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that this Conservative Government are reviewing the steps that they can take to clean up the SNP’s mess and mitigate the tax rise for our brave servicemen and women?; Labour lifted a million children out of poverty, and this Government are on course to plunge a record 37% of children into poverty. Vulnerable people are being denied social care because of Government cuts in local authority budgets. Is this really a society that is working for everyone?; I am sure my right hon. Friend will agree that good air quality will improve the lives of everyone in the country, and the lives of their children and grandchildren. We are launching a Joint Committee on the subject, because cross-Government work between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department of Health and the Department for Transport is important. Will the Prime Minister appoint a member of the Cabinet to co-ordinate that work to ensure that our children and grandchildren benefit from better air quality?; As the Saudi Crown Prince sweeps across Westminster and Whitehall, will the Prime Minister pledge to raise the specific case of the jailed writer Raif Badawi? He has languished in a prison for six years, all because he wrote some things that his Government did not like. His wife and children have now claimed asylum in Canada. Will the Prime Minister pledge to raise his case, and will she also do something that her predecessor never did? Will she stand at the Dispatch Box and say that Raif Badawi is no criminal, and that he should be set free?; Will the Prime Minister support the work that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Oil and Gas Authority are doing to facilitate the production of £1 trillion of oil and gas revenue from the continental shelf, supporting 300,000 jobs? Will she also join me in paying tribute to the men and women who work offshore to ensure that our homes stay warm?; Nottingham needs to find an extra £12 million this year to care for elderly and disabled people, but the Government’s answer—adding 3% to council tax bills—only raises just over £3 million, leaving a huge gap to be filled. No wonder Lord Porter, Conservative chair of the Local Government Association, warns that some councils will“be pushed perilously close to the financial edge.”Will the Prime Minister wake up to the social care crisis and urge the Chancellor to give local government the funding it needs in next week’s spring statement?; The UK internal market is by far the most important market for British goods and services today and post-Brexit. Does the Prime Minister agree that the people and businesses of my constituency and across Wales are best served by the four nations of the United Kingdom working together constructively and positively to make Brexit a success?; York’s housing crisis is out of control: whole families crammed into tiny box bedrooms; hundreds of damp and mouldy council homes; and street homelessness up fifteenfold since 2010. My constituents do not want warm platitudes from the Prime Minister, they just want warm homes, so when can they have the social housing that they so desperately need and that York’s Tory-Lib Dem council has completely failed to deliver, as does the Prime Minister’s strategy?; On Friday next week the House will debate the private Member’s Bill on refugee family reunification being introduced by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil). It is a very simple Bill that will allow families torn apart by conflict to rebuild their lives here together. It is supported by a coalition of organisations including the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Refugee Council. Will the Government add their support to this very important Bill?; The Prime Minister continues to sing the praises of universal credit while wilfully ignoring the devastation that it is still causing. How does she square her position with the fact that her Tory colleagues in Stirling Council have called for over half a million pounds- worth of funding in order to mitigate the enormous human suffering caused by universal credit?; Battersea power station is a £9 billion development pushed through by Tory Wandsworth Council with only 9% so-called affordable homes. Eighty-five per cent. of homes in the development have been snapped up by foreign investors, which is an insult to the thousands of people on the Wandsworth housing waiting list. Is the Prime Minister embarrassed that a Tory council is siding with developers’ profits over the residents of Wandsworth?; The increasing provision of healthcare within NHS England by private providers continues to cause the fragmentation and undermining of patient services. The Prime Minister has thus far refused to exclude such services from a US trade deal. Can she tell us how the Scottish Government will be included in the negotiations so that they can protect our Scottish NHS from being bartered away to get a deal?
Theresa Mary May (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Now is the time for the European Union negotiators to get on with the job of discussing that trade and economic partnership for the future. I am pleased that we will also be able to discuss with the Irish Government and the Commission the practical details of delivering the solution for the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, so that the free flow of trade can continue not just between Northern Ireland and Ireland but between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.