Engagements — House of Commons, 2019-03-27
Topic: Foreign Trade
Questions: North West Leicestershire voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union and for the past two years the Prime Minister has told my constituents on over 100 occasions that we will be leaving on 29 March 2019 with or without a withdrawal agreement. At the last minute, she begs our EU masters for an extension to article 50, delaying our departure. Does my right hon. Friend realise that the good people of North West Leicestershire will forgive her for this? They are good people, but they are not stupid people, and they will never trust the Prime Minister again.; Will my right hon. Friend undertake to reform the Government’s online petition system, which currently accepts unverified signatures from across the world? This fundamental flaw can produce an inaccurate reflection of public opinion on important issues, such as revoking article 50, and leaves our democracy potentially under threat of manipulation by foreign state aggressors.; Under my right hon. Friend’s Government, 1 million more disabled people are in work, but I am sure she would like to do so much more. For example, can she get disabled access for Ledbury station so that disabled passengers can simply get off the train, saving them an extra 20-minute journey to Hereford and back? The Access for All programme is too slow, and disabled people need to go to and from work, too.; Violent crime has risen by 19% and robberies have risen by 17%, and we have all seen the devastating and tragic impact of the increase in knife crime in our communities. This is the reality of the Prime Minister’s reckless cuts since 2010, with youth centres closed, police budgets slashed and the closure of all early intervention services across the UK. I plead with and beg the Prime Minister to understand that we need more real investment—before any more lives are lost.; When I have asked on previous occasions why we cannot stop this ongoing, politically motivated witch hunt of our Northern Ireland veterans, the answer has always been, “We cannot interfere with the judicial process.” But surely the Good Friday agreement was entirely predicated on interfering with the judicial process, with convicted terrorists being let out of prison, royal pardons and letters of comfort being provided to terrorists on the run. I have a son who serves in the Royal Artillery, Gunner Michael Lopresti, the fourth generation of his family to do so. So can my right hon. Friend reassure him that when he goes on an operational tour, which he is very keen to do, if something goes wrong, officers lose control of the situation and terrible mistakes are made, in 50 years’ time he will not be dragged out of bed at six in the morning, taken to a police station, questioned and then charged with murder?; We all know that policing has changed significantly over the past 50 years; we have seen that with cyber fraud and cyber-bullying, and the recent tragic increases in knife crime. On the way, the public have lost trust in politicians when it comes to policing. There is a way to restore that trust, Prime Minister: will you commit to setting up a police royal commission, so that facts and evidence, rather than political spin, prepare our police to properly tackle 21st century crime?; I have an unlicensed airfield—Eshott—in my constituency. It is a small business that is continuing a long history of general aviation on that site ever since the airbase was built during world war two as the home for one of the largest Spitfire bases. A neighbours’ dispute is threatening the safety of the runway, but the Civil Aviation Authority is refusing to assist the owners to enforce safety orders. Can the Prime Minister please help us to stop a totally avoidable disaster?; The condition myalgic encephalomyelitis affects approximately 25,000 children in the UK. When those children’s parents make the extremely difficult decision to remove their sick child from a programme of graded exercise therapy, child-protection proceedings are triggered against many of these families. In the midst of this Brexit chaos, will the Prime Minister commit to looking into this issue, to ensure that loving parents who are caring for extremely sick children are not threatened with that child being taken into care?; Following the referendum result, the Government have had the responsibility of negotiating the withdrawal and transition, and then there will be future negotiations. Up to now, the deal has not passed Parliament because of three incompatible groups that surround the Government: those who want to stay in, those who want to be out-out, and the Labour party, with its vague policy that even the Labour leader does not agree with. Most people in the country want the Prime Minister to succeed and the deal to go through so that we get the best possible advantage in future arrangements.; My constituents are pleased that it has been decided that the UK’s first space-launch facility will be in the north of my constituency. They are pleased not least because it gives us a great opportunity to redeploy the considerable skills that we have at Dounreay in Caithness. Does the Prime Minister agree that it is a splendid business opportunity, not only for my constituency and for the UK, but in terms of building and launching rockets for countries in Europe and the rest of the world that will never have their own launch facilities?; No matter what happens with Brexit, I am sure we all agree that we need a new industrial renaissance in the north. With the northern powerhouse and Yorkshire devolution stalling, is it not about time that we gave the same priority and attention to the Humber docklands as has been given to the London docklands for the last 40 years?;   Newcastle voted, by 50.7% to 49.3%, to remain. It divided our city, and I was determined that we should not have to vote again, but this is a complete shambles. Parliament gridlocked, Government paralysed, businesses stalled, jobs lost, households stockpiling, our global reputation trashed and a Prime Minister incapable of holding her Cabinet together, never mind the country. Will she consider the possibility that she is making a terrible mistake?; This weekend The Guardian reported that 15 Tory councillors who were suspended for Islamophobia or racism had been quietly reinstated. The Conservative party has so far failed to quell fears that it is in denial about Islamophobia. Since I asked the Prime Minister about this issue in June 2018, there has been no concrete action. Will she instruct her party chairman to respond to the three letters that I have sent him on this subject, and when will the Tory party adopt the definition of Islamophobia set out by the all-parliamentary group on British Muslims, as the Labour party, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, the Mayor of London and councils across the country have done?
John Charles Baron (Conservative, Centre-right): Most of us would prefer a good deal to no deal at all, but may I urge the Prime Minister to ignore the dire forecasts about what would happen should we leave on World Trade Organisation terms? It is the same people who predicted doom and gloom in 2016 if we voted to leave. Since then, we have had record low unemployment, record high investment and record manufacturing output. Those people were wrong then. They are wrong now. We could be leaving as per the legal default position of article 50, which is without a deal.