debates/debates2025-06-11c conversation_9
Source: hansard.parliament.uk (2025-06-11)

UK Parliament Hansard data: debates/debates2025-06-11c conversation_9

Richard Burgon:Belated birthday greetings to you, Mr Speaker.

It is wrong for any Labour Government to try to balance the books on the backs of disabled people, and no Labour Government should ever do it, but it is what the Prime Minister will ask the House to do in just a few weeks’ time. Many of us will not be able to go along with that, because it will mean that people who need assistance to cut up their food, to wash themselves, to dress themselves and to go to the toilet will lose the personal independence payments that they currently receive—they will lose that vital support. This week, the Prime Minister changed direction on winter fuel payments. Will he do the same in relation to this matter, and drop these disability benefit cuts? \p Keir Starmer: It is very important that we make the changes to our welfare system. It is not working, and it needs reform. I think everyone agrees with that. It does not work for anyone. We will do this on a principled basis, namely that those who can work should work, that those who want to work should be supported so that they can do so, and that we must protect those with the most severe disabilities who will never be able to work—and we are doing that by ending reassessments and paying a new premium. \p Lindsay Hoyle: I call the leader of the Liberal Democrats. \p Edward Davey: Let me join others in wishing you a belated many happy returns for yesterday, Mr Speaker. Let me also welcome the Government’s sanctions on two Ministers in the Netanyahu Government, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. The settler violence that they have incited against innocent Palestinians on the west bank is intolerable, and the Government were right to act.

As it is Carers Week, may I pay tribute to the millions of unpaid family carers across the country, recognising the challenges that they face? The last Conservative Government left our health service on its knees. We have heard reports that the NHS will receive extra funding in the spending review, and if it does, we will support that, but does the Prime Minister agree that no amount of money for the NHS will solve its crisis unless we also invest to fix care? Without pre-empting the Chancellor’s statement, will he reassure me that both social care and family carers will be given the priority they deserve in the spending review? \p Keir Starmer: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the health crisis created by the previous Government cannot be—[Interruption.] Opposition Members groan, but that is exactly how the country feels about the last 14 years and the mess that they made of everything. Yes, we do need to fix social care as well as putting money into the NHS. We are putting record amounts into the NHS, which is the right thing to do, and we are seeing the results. We promised 2 million extra appointments in the first year of a Labour Government, and we have delivered 3 million. So there will be that extra funding, but let me gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that while he welcomes all the extra funding, he cannot at the same time simply say that he is against any way of raising the money for the funding. There is an incompatibility there. \p Edward Davey: The Prime Minister knows that he has a fairer and better way of funding NHS investment, and I regret the fact that he did not answer my question about care, but let us move on.

The Prime Minister is right to increase defence spending, and later we will hear about the difficult choices that the Chancellor has had to make partly to fund that defence expenditure, but there are frozen Russian assets worth £25 billion in the UK right now— billions that could be used to stop Putin’s war machine and to boost Britain’s defence industry even faster. At the G7 summit this weekend, will the Prime Minister seek an agreement to seize those frozen Russian state assets and use them to support Ukraine? \p Keir Starmer: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, that is an issue that is being considered, but it is complicated and there are a great many countervailing factors that need to be carefully balanced in any decision. We are talking to allies about it, but I do not want to pretend to the House that there is an easy answer on this, because there is not.