Engagements — House of Commons, 2017-11-22
Topic: Technology
Questions: Divorce and family breakdown take an emotional toll on all those involved, but the family dynamic that is often overlooked is that between grandparents and their grandchildren. If access to their grandchildren is removed or blocked, some grandparents call it a form of living bereavement. Will the Prime Minister therefore join me, Dame Esther Rantzen and thousands of grandparents across the country in calling for a change to the law to give grandparents access rights to their grandchildren, as is the case in France?; Will the Prime Minister reassure people that this Conservative Government are committed to maintaining the United Kingdom’s strong commitment to the highest standards of animal welfare, both now and post-Brexit?; Last year, housing associations generated £5.5 billion in cash surplus—this is money that could be used to build 48,000 new homes in this country. The accumulated reserves of housing associations come to £42 billion, which would mean that 36,500 properties a year for the next 10 years could be built. Will my right hon. Friend examine ways in which we could ensure housing associations use the money to build the new homes that people want, rather than having this sitting in the bank?; My thoughts are with my many constituents who have friends and family in Nigeria.The SNP has asked 140 times for the VAT paid by our police and fire services to be scrapped, and for the £140 million to be refunded. The Chancellor said only last month that legally, we would not be able to recover VAT and that the UK Government are now constrained by the VAT rules that are in place. Was he misleading us?; Given that revised housing proposals would force unprecedented numbers of homes, equivalent to the size of a new town, to be built on what is left of Medway’s green belt, will the Prime Minister assure me and my constituents that the necessary large-scale investment will be made to boost the public service infrastructure, which will have to cope with up to 100,000 more people?; I am proud that the last Labour Government lifted more than 1 million children out of poverty. This Government seem committed to doing the very opposite, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicting that an additional 1.2 million children will be pushed into poverty by 2021, and that comes on top of the 4 million in 2015-16. Is the Prime Minister proud of her Government’s record of failure on this issue, and does she think that that worrying forecast is acceptable?; As the Prime Minister is aware, Scotland is lagging behind the rest of the United Kingdom in the roll-out of superfast broadband. My constituency of Angus is even further behind the poor Scottish average. A huge volume of my casework comes from one of my largest towns, Arbroath, where 20,000 of my constituents reside. It could hardly be deemed a remote area. Will the Prime Minister confirm that the next generation of UK funding to support the roll-out of Scotland’s full fibre broadband will bypass the shambolic Scottish Government and go directly to local authorities so that businesses and residents in my constituency of Angus get the broadband they deserve?
Theresa Mary May (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very happy to confirm that to my hon. Friend. She will know that we are making progress on this in Scotland, but we need to go further. Programmes such as local full fibre networks and 5G will allocate funding directly to local projects, based on the quality of the bids put forward. The Minister for Digital, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), recently confirmed in the House that we will deliver the next generation of technology directly to local authorities in Scotland, rather than going through the Scottish Government. We will make sure that Scotland is not left behind.