Engagements — House of Commons, 2015-01-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Questions: An estimated 13 million people—30% of those who should be eligible to vote—are registered incorrectly or are not registered at all on the individual electoral registration system. In the year of the election, will the Prime Minister ensure that the Government fully support national voter registration day on 5 February, and will he commit himself to taking part in Bite the Ballot’s leaders live event? It might help him in making his decision to know that the Greens have agreed to take part in that debate.; This week, Channel 4’s “Dispatches” did an excellent job of exposing the reality of life for millions of people who are in low-paid, part-time and insecure work. Can the Prime Minister not see that his failure to promote decent jobs with decent pay is still a fundamental problem for our economy?; The target of a maximum two-month wait from an urgent referral for suspected cancer to first treatment for all cancers is being breached. Is there a bigger sign of his Government’s failure than the Prime Minister’s inability to uphold key rights for cancer patients that are enshrined in the NHS constitution?; Last summer my constituent, Mr Kenneth Bailey, suffered a major stroke while out shopping. The emergency call was classed as a Red 2 priority, yet it took Yorkshire ambulance service an hour and four minutes to get to him. That is just one example of a crisis that is now nationwide. What will the Prime Minister do about that situation?; The Leader of the Opposition will not, but will the Prime Minister welcome the International Monetary Fund saying this week that Britain has the “fastest-growing advanced economy” in the world? Will he welcome today’s announcement that unemployment is falling in Dover, Deal and across Britain, and does he agree with President Obama that we “must be doing something right”?; The Prime Minister’s crisis in the national health service has its roots in general practice, and the changes the Government made to GP pensions saw a huge number of GPs retire early. In my area in Chesterfield, 40% of places for the future recruitment of GPs are left vacant. How can we expect the country to recruit the number of GPs we need when so few of them have any confidence in the Prime Minister’s running of the national health service?; The east of England helped boost the nation’s economic recovery, and we could do even more if the East Anglian rail manifesto was implemented. Will the Prime Minister encourage colleagues to fund that with modern rolling stock for the Greater Anglia main line, and infrastructure improvements through Essex?; The delay in the publication of the Chilcot report is widely considered to be a scandal. Does the Prime Minister appreciate that it is important to find out exactly what has gone wrong? We have a major forthcoming inquiry into child sex abuse. The public would not understand if powerful people that might be named in that report are able to delay publication year after year, as seems to have happened with Chilcot.; As we know, next week it will be 70 years since Auschwitz was liberated by the Russians. Is it not important that, when issues such as Palestine are raised—I have raised it and will continue to do so—it should be no excuse for anti-Semitism, a murderous disease that took the lives of millions of innocent people during my lifetime?; The Prime Minister said that his policies would eradicate the deficit in this Parliament. Unfortunately, he was mistaken—a very large deficit remains. What is the reason, in his view, why his economic plan has fallen so far short?
David William Donald Cameron (Conservative, Centre-right): We inherited from Treasury Ministers, including the right hon. Gentleman, the biggest deficit of any country in the western world. As a share of GDP, we have cut that in half. We have done that through a combination of reducing public spending, making sure we have responsible tax policies and strong economic growth. That is what we have delivered. All the way through, the Labour party’s proposals have been for more spending, more borrowing and more debt. They have not even got to base camp of working out why the deficit matters.