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Tag: 2022

  • Jonathan Gullis – 2022 Comments on Sending Migrants to Rwanda for Processing

    Jonathan Gullis – 2022 Comments on Sending Migrants to Rwanda for Processing

    The comments made by Jonathan Gullis, the Conservative MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, in the House of Commons on 25 April 2022.

    The people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke are delighted with this groundbreaking economic and development partnership with Rwanda, which will help to break the business model of vile people smugglers once and for all. Does my hon. Friend share my concern and that of my constituents that the Labour woke warriors are quite happy to stick with the status quo, meaning that more people are going to leave safe mainland France, risking their lives and putting thousands of pounds in the hands of smuggling gangs, which will mean more death in the channel and illegal economic migrants continuing to enter the United Kingdom?

  • Lindsay Hoyle – 2022 Statement on Misogynistic Allegations in the Mail on Sunday

    Lindsay Hoyle – 2022 Statement on Misogynistic Allegations in the Mail on Sunday

    The statement made by Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, in the House on 25 April 2022.

    Before we start today’s business, I want to say something about the article in The Mail on Sunday yesterday about the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner). I said to the House last week, in response to a point of order about a different article, that I took the issue of media freedom very seriously. It is one of the building blocks of our democracy. However, I share the view expressed by a wide range of Members—including, I believe, the Prime Minister—that yesterday’s article, which reported unsubstantiated claims, was misogynistic and offensive. That is what we believe.

    I express my sympathy to the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne for being subjected to this type of comment, which, in being demeaning and offensive to women in Parliament, can only deter women who might be considering standing for election, to the detriment of us all. That is why I am arranging a meeting with the chair of the press lobby and the editor of The Mail on Sunday to discuss this issue affecting our parliamentary community. I am also arranging a separate meeting—I believe we now have a time this evening—with the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne.

  • Jonathan Gullis – 2022 Speech on Foster Carers

    Jonathan Gullis – 2022 Speech on Foster Carers

    The speech made by Jonathan Gullis, the Conservative MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in Westminster Hall once again, Mr Robertson. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing this important debate and sharing her personal experience. As Members from across the House have said, it is truly inspiring.

    My partner and I hope one day, when our children are slightly older, to offer a home and an opportunity to young people. For eight and a half years before entering this place, I worked as a head of year, dealing with behavioural and pastoral issues in the secondary education sector, and I had direct contact with some of the fantastic foster carers of the children I was proud to look after. It was an enlightening and warming story. Looking at how to spend money from the budget to invest in those young people and give them exciting opportunities outside the school gates, as well as pushing their learning and educational outcomes, was something that I thoroughly enjoyed.

    I want to focus on the great work that is being done in the constituency I am proud to serve, Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, and across the wider city of Stoke-on-Trent. Since 2019, Stoke-on-Trent City Council has made it very clear that children and young people need to be its No. 1 priority. A complete overhaul is needed, as the challenge in 2019 was, quite frankly, immense. Children’s services in Stoke-on-Trent have never been rated good or outstanding. An Ofsted inspection in early 2019 showed that the situation was dire—that is the only word I can use to describe the quality of services available to more than 1,000 of the most vulnerable young children in our city, who required us to look after them. Children’s services received the worst possible rating of inadequate from Ofsted, and inspectors uncovered multiple failings, which left youngsters at risk of harm.

    Since May 2019, Councillor Dave Evans, who was appointed to the children and young people portfolio, has been working with Councillor Abi Brown, the leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, and has made big strides to improve fostering services across the Potteries. Ably assisted by team manager Kate Bailey and recruitment officer Marie Plant, Councillor Evans and his team have radically changed the council’s approach. The council has been pushing hard to get as many organisations signed up to the fostering friendly scheme, the Fostering Network’s programme to encourage employers to support fostering and, in particular, foster carers. Stoke City Football Club, Bet365, Staffordshire police, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and health groups are all now signed up to the scheme. That effort is part of the team’s new approach to running family services.

    To be recognised as a fostering friendly employer, the council has had to demonstrate support for employees, make the workplace friendlier for foster carers to benefit the children in their care, and also make it easier for people to consider fostering. In 2020, the council launched a new fostering friendly policy for all its employees, setting out benefits for any staff member who decides to come forward to become a foster carer. They include flexible working arrangements and paid time off for those going through the foster care approval process. Councillor Evans and his team are urging organisations and businesses across Stoke-on-Trent to become fostering friendly, as part of the push to become recognised as the first fostering friendly city in the United Kingdom.

    Part of the new approach that Stoke-on-Trent City Council is taking is making fostering more visible and spreading the word. Social workers now go to events across the city such as Stoke-on-Trent Pride and the Better World Festival, and they hold coffee shop drop-in sessions. I am pleased to say that the new approach that the council has taken is paying off. Recruitment of foster carers is up, with 33 recruited last year compared to 30 the year before, and the council is now the fifth biggest recruiter of social workers in the country.

    As well as getting more organisations signed up to the fostering friendly scheme and boosting recruitment, Councillor Evans and the team have worked to improve retention of foster carers, which is important as there are more than 1,000 cared-for children in the city of Stoke-on-Trent. Fosterers have been given a stronger voice, with increased representation on the corporate parenting panel to give them a say on key decisions across children’s services in the city. All of this progress has been reflected in Ofsted’s latest monitoring report

    Even the Stoke Sentinel has had to be positive about the turnaround. As Councillor Evans has said, the clearest sign of improvement is that Ofsted has found that children in Stoke-on-Trent are now safe—Ofsted had previously found that they were not. Of course, there is still a long way to go. As I said earlier, the council has never been ranked as good or outstanding for children’s services, but that is the goal, and I am 100% confident that thanks to the new approach adopted by Councillor Evans and his team, when Ofsted carries out its next full inspection this autumn, that goal will be achieved.

    Before I close I want to give the fostering team a shout-out for running the Potters ‘Arf marathon last year, and again this year. This is something I know my hon. Friend the Minister will be proud to hear. Having seen and walked the hills of Stoke-on-Trent, I will not be anywhere near that race, apart from standing on the sidelines and cheering with a cheesy oatcake in my hand. I warmly congratulate all those taking part to raise awareness and money for good causes, and I look forward to cheering the team on.

  • Kate Osborne – 2022 Speech on Foster Carers

    Kate Osborne – 2022 Speech on Foster Carers

    The speech made by Kate Osborne, the Labour MP for Jarrow, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    I beg to move,

    That this House has considered the recruitment and retention of foster carers.

    It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I thank the Backbench Business Committee and the supporting Members who made it possible to secure this debate. I also thank the Fostering Network, Home for Good and one of my local authorities, South Tyneside, for organising meetings and relevant briefings for me and my team, which were very useful for this debate. I put on record my thanks to those bodies for their work in championing the overlooked and neglected fostering sector. I am sure all Members present will want to join me in welcoming the Fostering Network and foster carers to the Public Gallery. It is great to see them here.

    One cannot overestimate the important role fostering plays across child protection and safeguarding. In a climate where, over the last 12 years, local authorities have been forced to adapt their operations through cuts to local expenditure, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, the demand for foster carers has never been greater, with many children needing emergency support. That is why I will focus my opening remarks on why the fostering sector and carers need increased recognition and wraparound support from local authorities and independent fostering agencies.

    While the debate is centred on the recruitment and retention of foster carers, we also need to look at the challenges faced by the sector more broadly, and at where we can share experiences of local authorities and constituents to not only platform the sector, but raise its profile and actively encourage people to enter into fostering.

    Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)

    The Welsh Government’s initiative Foster Wales has created a network of local authority fostering services across Wales, showing a clear national commitment to the cause. Does the hon. Lady agree that England and Scotland would benefit from a similar national call to action?

    Kate Osborne

    Yes, I agree, and I will refer to a similar point in my speech.

    As I was preparing for this debate and looking at the statistics, two particular facts on recruitment stood out to me. First, the number of initial inquiries to foster is at an all-time high. There were 160,635 initial inquiries from prospective fostering households in the year ending 31 March 2021. In contrast, only 10,145 applications—a mere 6% of initial inquiries—were actually received. Secondly, according to the annual fostering statistics published by Ofsted, the number of foster carers in England has increased by only 4% since 2014, while the number of children in foster care has increased by 11%.

    Those statistics show a crisis in recruitment and retention. Members on both sides must ask why those significant shortfalls in the fostering sector are occurring and what we in this place can do to help to alleviate this recruitment and retention crisis. I believe that we need to champion foster carers, but central to that must be deeds, not just words: we need to make sure that foster carers are fairly paid and respected as workers.

    Set out in its 2021 “State of the Nation’s Foster Care” report, the Fostering Network’s findings on pay are damning:

    “Over a third of foster carers said that their allowances do not meet the full cost of looking after a child.”

    That is certainly something I can give personal testimony of, from my experience as a foster carer before entering this place; it has also been said to me today by some of the foster carers present.

    Secondly, the report notes:

    “Fourteen local authorities reported that their foster care allowances were below the NMA for at least one age group across England. Of these, two were in London, four were in the South East and ten were in the area of the rest of England.”

    While I thank the Children’s Minister for writing to 13 local authorities on the specific issue of the national minimum allowance, that has to be weighted against this Government’s political decision to put the burden of inflation and the cost of living crisis on the backs of ordinary people.

    Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)

    My hon. Friend is making a meaningful speech, including about her own experiences as a foster carer. She may or may not know that I used to be a manager in fostering, and for as long as I can remember there was an issue with the retention of foster carers and with those carers not being valued enough. Does my hon. Friend agree that the severe cuts to local government funding have had an indirect impact on the support that social workers can offer foster carers, which in turn has an impact on their ability to continue fostering and how they can look after, or manage the welfare of, a child?

    Kate Osborne

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we cannot keep taking money out of local authorities and expect them to still deliver the same level of services. The impact, unfortunately, is felt by the children and young people who are in the fostering system or child services.

    The financial pressures and stresses felt by carers, highlighted by the Fostering Network’s research, are only set to get worse. The Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers believes that the Government should urgently make a pay award to foster carers, both within local authorities and independent fostering agencies, to preserve and protect this precious resource for children and young people in need. This would be an important signal to foster carers that the Government really do value their contribution.

    Another critical issue that we have to be aware of is the responsibility local authorities and IFAs have in providing vital—often emergency—wraparound support for foster carers and their families. I put on record my thanks to South Tyneside Council, one of my local authorities, for its progressive outlook in prioritising this area. First and foremost, we have to recognise that each child currently being supported through fostering services has different and complex needs, which must be met from the first moment that child comes under the care of their carer. That is why South Tyneside’s model of training carers to degrees, whereby they can be matched with the child best suited to their level of training—a model that is in the best interests of all parties and, most importantly, those of the child or young person—is highly commendable. In this, it is vital that children are kept as close to the local authority as possible. This approach means that at crisis point there is no delay in support, and any crisis has a better chance of being mitigated, as tailored, traumatic and therapeutic support can be accessed quickly.

    Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)

    My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech on this important issue. Regarding the role of local authorities and the point about funding, does she agree that the crisis with children’s social workers and the shortage that we have is exacerbating the problems, and will impact on the very commendable operating model she is talking about?

    Kate Osborne

    I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. As has been said, the funding that is being taken out of the system means that, unfortunately, we are not continuing to provide the support that is needed, in terms of both social workers and the many other people who are involved in children’s care.

    The system South Tyneside Council has in place means that if a breakdown occurs between the child and foster family, the local authority is accountable, thus upholding the fostering standards to improve outcomes. With such support mechanisms in place, more people will be encouraged to become foster carers.

    However, we must recognise that South Tyneside’s model relies on factors for which the responsibility lies truly at the feet of Government Ministers. The cuts to local authorities over the past 12 years, along with the present day record levels of children needing emergency foster care mean that my local authority, like most others, must turn to independent fostering agencies to plug the gap. The money local authorities have to spend from Government grants, council tax and business rates has fallen by 16% since 2010. That means that local authorities have an increasingly limited capacity to respond to significant inflationary pressures.

    While I respect the work that members of IFAs do to alleviate the pressure felt by local authorities, those agencies have the ability to add another complex, unnecessary layer between the child and the local authority, meaning that when crisis hits, unnecessary delays, which are detrimental to all involved, are often hard to avoid. In South Tyneside Council, 50% of children are placed into IFAs.

    We also need to break down the popular perceptions of fostering, which undermine the diverse and varying shapes that it can take. Fostering should not be compared with adoption, although it often is. We need to break through the perception that fostering is a means, whereas adoption is the end, because one size does not fit all. We also need to recognise that circumstances in the lives of carers can change. The value of a carer fostering one child needs to be recognised as the same as a carer who may foster many children.

    Finally, we need to appreciate that, more often than not, foster carers can be thrust into a situation at extreme short notice. Their presence in the safeguarding process can often be to provide emergency care.

    Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)

    My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. The House is always at its best when Members draw on their personal experience and my hon. Friend’s speech shows that she knows what she is talking about. I add my thanks to Fostering Network, who I have worked with a lot in the past and who I have found to be incredibly helpful.

    I want to pick up on black, Asian and minority ethnic foster carers and children from BAME communities. BBC analysis shows that two thirds of councils in England have a shortage of BAME foster carers, but 23% of children on the waiting list are from BAME backgrounds. Black boys are left longest on the waiting lists. I wondered whether my hon. Friend might comment, and I hope the Minister will also pick up on that point.

    Kate Osborne

    That point came up in my meeting with the head of children’s services in my local authority. As my hon. Friend says, we are desperately short of BAME foster carers.

    Often children arrive into foster care with nothing apart from the clothes they are wearing. The responsibility lies firmly with the fostering family to pick up from there, otherwise the child would have nothing.

    What do we need from the Government? I would like the Minister to look at and seriously consider the Mockingbird strategy as adopted by South Tyneside and many others, and to listen to best practice from my and other local authorities. I hope we will hear more on that today from other Members.

    The Mockingbird model is based on the idea of an extended family. The strategy focuses on a fostering hub, where satellite carers work in sync to provide specialist and centralised care to children along with real-time support for those satellite carers. Mockingbird means intervention can take place without the need to necessarily remove children completely from their support network, should an emergency occur. Depending on circumstances, the programme can be adjusted to include birth families and adoptive families, and to provide support for independent living, while giving assurance to foster carers and those in care that a secure and close support network is at hand.

    I also want the Minister to listen to the recommendations set out by the Fostering Network, which with others is calling for a fully funded national fostering strategy, a national fostering leadership board and a national register of foster carers. In addition, the Government need to carry out a comprehensive review of the minimum levels of fostering allowance, using up-to-date evidence to ensure foster carers are given sufficient payment to cover the full cost of looking after a child.

    There is no one quick fix to address the issues relating to the retention of foster carers. The themes of carers feeling unsupported, making a financial loss and not being treated as workers would lead to a high turnover rate and chronic difficulties in recruitment in any workforce. I hope that today’s debate acts as an opportunity to address Members’ concerns from their constituencies and encourages the Minister to put recommendations in place.

  • Liz Truss – 2022 Comments on Re-Opening of Embassy in Ukraine

    Liz Truss – 2022 Comments on Re-Opening of Embassy in Ukraine

    The comments made by Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, on 22 April 2022.

    The extraordinary fortitude and success of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people in resisting Russian forces, means we will shortly be re-opening our British Embassy in Kyiv. I want to pay tribute to the bravery and resilience of the embassy team and their work throughout this period.

  • Boris Johnson – 2022 Statement Made in India

    Boris Johnson – 2022 Statement Made in India

    The statement made by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, in India on 22 April 2022.

    Good afternoon, before turning to the topic of visit we have had, the fantastic visit we’ve had here in India, I just want to say something about the latest situation in Ukraine.

    Because I know everyone is deeply concerned about events, the barbarism we have seen, that barbarism by Vladimir Putin in the Donbas region, and in particular his brutal offensive against Mariupol, which is why yesterday I announced we would be sending more artillery and doing everything possible to help the people of Ukraine defend themselves those areas.

    And at the same time, the extraordinary fortitude and success of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people in resisting Russian forces in Kyiv, means that I can today announce shortly, next week, we will re-open our embassy in Ukraine’s capital city.

    I want to pay tribute to those British diplomats who remained elsewhere in the region throughout this period.

    The United Kingdom and our allies will not watch passively as Putin caries on this onslaught.

    And what I think we’ve seen here in New Delhi is one of the world’s oldest democracies, and the largest democracy, sticking together. And confronting our shared anxieties about autocracies and autocratic coercion around the world and acting together to make our countries safer and more prosperous.

    Our new and expanded Defence and Security Partnership will enable India to strengthen its own domestic defence industry as well as protecting vital shared interests in the Indo-Pacific.

    Our collaboration on energy security – including our new offer on offshore wind, the new UK-India Hydrogen Science and Innovation Hub and our joint work on solar power – will help to reduce our collective dependence on imported hydrocarbons in favour of cheaper, more sustainable home-grown renewables.

    And our Global Innovation Partnership will help transfer climate and energy-smart innovations to developing countries across the wider Indo-Pacific.

    As we deepen the partnership between our countries, we won’t just make our people safer, we’ll make them more prosperous too, creating new jobs, driving up wages, and driving down prices for consumers, all of which will helps with the cost of living.

    And our partnership with India is particularly powerful in achieving these things because India is an incredible rising power in Asia, with one of the fastest growing economies in the world – already worth £2.25 trillion – and set to be the world’s third largest economy by 2050.

    India is also our biggest partner in the Indo-Pacific, which is increasingly the geopolitical centre of the world, with two-thirds of humanity, and a third of the global economy – and that share is rising every year.

    Indian investment already supports almost half a million British jobs, and with a population bigger than the US and the EU combined, there is so much potential for us to take our trade and investment to a whole new level.

    On this visit alone we’ve secured new deals worth £1 billion, creating more than 11,000 jobs.

    And perhaps most significantly of all, we’re using our Brexit freedoms to reach a bi-lateral Free Trade Agreement, and today Prime Minister Modi and I told our negotiators to get it done by Diwali in October.

    This could double our trade and investment by the end of the decade, driving down prices for consumers, and increasing wages across the UK by as much as £3 billion.

    So what we have been getting on with here is getting on with the job of delivering on the priorities of the British people, deepening a friendship with a nation with whom we have profound ties of culture, language and kinship, while making both our countries safer and our economies stronger.

  • Nadhim Zahawi – 2022 Speech at the Natural History Museum

    Nadhim Zahawi – 2022 Speech at the Natural History Museum

    The speech made by Nadhim Zahawi, the Secretary of State for Education, on 22 April 2022.

    Hello everyone,

    I hope that you are as thrilled as I am to be standing in this incredible hall, in one of the most famous museums in the world.

    I really do feel very honoured to be with you.

    None of us can be in any doubt just how critical climate change has become.

    I want to thank all of you, and my colleagues from parliament but also my team, Minister Walker who’s led on this project, and are already doing so much to reverse the damage, to put our planet on a safer, more sustainable course. We will continue, I pledge to you, that we will continue to work tirelessly with you and of course to listen, listen to you, teachers, leaders, and of course young people themselves who are shaping much of what we do in the department.

    But while the scale of the challenge is great, there is still much that we can do now and we are already making sure happens.

    This is not, I think, a time for doom and gloom. This is a time, as Phoebe just reminded us, for positive action.

    The entrepreneurial, that can-do, Bear Grylls spirit in this country can make all of us, certainly me, much more confident that we will win this fight.

    At COP 26… it was the first time that I was able to bring together fellow ministers of education to a COP gathering. Environment Ministers coming together for that summit and I hope to build on that at COP27 in Egypt and COP28 in the United Arab Emirates. It was a proud moment to be able to announce how we are putting climate change and sustainability at the heart of education.

    Today we see the proof of those words of that with the final version, I hope, of the Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy that we announced.

    Young people have to be given a reason to believe that they can change the world for the better. If you give them the facts about a situation, it gives them the levers to change it for the better. And that will, I hope, give them hope. That move from anxiety to agency. We want them to be fired up by determination and not cast into despair.

    So how are we going to do this?

    Well, I announced two important measures at COP that we will be launching this autumn. The National Education Park, the education estate is the size of Birmingham, and we’re going to link it up so that students all around the country, and I hope that other countries, the Italian Minister when I shared this with him immediately thought this was something we could hopefully build together. They can do geospatial mapping, and they can see through sharing videos how they can rewild the education estate, as I know the Natural History Museum is determined to do here as well. This is alongside, The Climate Leaders Award. Both of these are going to shift the dial in how we approach sustainability in education.

    It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that young people are already very committed to a greener, more sustainable planet and I want to do everything to continue and to back them in this encourage this passion.

    One of the most exciting announcements in our strategy is to capitalise on that passion and to extend learning about the natural world.

    So we will introduce a natural history GCSE, giving young people a real chance to develop a deeper knowledge and understanding of our amazing planet.

    We want to inspire the next generation of David Attenboroughs, on the day he was recognised by the United Nations for his work in preserving our wonderful planet, it really is a privilege to be here, and of course the future scientists and tech entrepreneurs who will preserve and protect our planet who will make the leaps we need to keep our world safe.

    We are also taking steps to extend teachers’ skills and new professional development support, so that they can be confident in the classroom in teaching about climate change and sustainability.

    We’re going to speed up carbon literacy training throughout our education communities, so that by 2025 every nursery, school, college and university can put in place a climate action plan.

    But innovation and green growth will not flourish unless we deliver a workforce with the right skills to make them a reality.

    It is not enough to simply hope that talented people find green career pathways, we need to build these career pathways and provide those people, who want to join in this endeavour with the skills they need to fulfil that career in the future.

    This strategy sets out how we are rapidly skilling, reskilling and upskilling our workforce for green jobs.

    For example, there are a wide range of green apprenticeships already up and running from nuclear desk engineers, wind turbine maintenance and research scientists.

    By September 2023 students will be able to apply for a T Level – a T Level is a fusion between an A Level and an apprenticeship and I am determined to make them as famous as A Levels – in agriculture, land management and production.

    We have already promised that all new schools and colleges are going to be net zero in operation and of course resilient for a 2oC temperature rise. It means that our school building standards will be the best in the world.

    We are committed to building four new schools and one college using this innovative technology, so that one day all our schools can be built in this way, from natural materials.

    I would urge you to have a look at our wonderful Gen Zero prototype– we’ve brought a portion of the prototype that we had at Glasgow, here to the Museum tonight. Have a look at it, it really is a remarkable piece of engineering and design.

    Future generations will judge us on how we responded to this challenge. This strategy shows how we will not let them down.

    Education is how we will equip young people with the future agency to make real difference, with the skills they need to look after this precious Earth.

    Education is how we unlock the unlimited potential of the next generation to make that difference.

    We must not, and I am determined, that we will not, give in to despair.

    Together, I know that Phoebe and her generation can do this, and they have our full backing.

    Thank you.

  • Liz Truss – 2022 Statement on Support for Low Income Countries

    Liz Truss – 2022 Statement on Support for Low Income Countries

    The statement made by Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, on 22 April 2022.

    The UK and our partners have secured the largest ever World Bank financial commitment to low income countries around the world.

    It will provide $170bn over the next 15 months with $50bn delivered by the end of June, supporting countries faced with economic hardship as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Russia’s bombardment across Ukraine has brought exports from the world’s breadbasket almost entirely to a halt, leading to steep price rises and jeopardising livelihoods across the globe.

    Through this support we are standing together with the most vulnerable countries in the face of Russian barbarism. The UK has led by stepping up our support through the World Bank, including nearly $1bn in loan guarantees so the Bank can lend more to Ukraine without taking resources away from rest of world.

    Despite Russia’s refusal to take responsibility for its actions, the UK and World Bank partners this week have delivered for the people of Ukraine and for the wider world.

  • Liz Truss – 2022 Statement on Luke Symons and Yemen

    Liz Truss – 2022 Statement on Luke Symons and Yemen

    The statement made by Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, on 24 April 2022.

    I am pleased that Luke Symons, who was unlawfully detained, without charge or trial since 2017 in Yemen, has been released. Luke was 25 when he was unlawfully detained by the Houthis. His son was only a few months old at the time. He was allegedly mistreated, in solitary confinement, and refused visits by his family. He has been flown to Muscat and soon he will be reunited with his family in the UK.

    We thank our Omani and Saudi partners for their support in securing his release. I pay tribute to our excellent staff for their hard work in returning Luke home.

  • Dave Doogan – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    Dave Doogan – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    The speech made by Dave Doogan, the SNP MP for Angus, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    I say at the outset that apologies are one thing, but apologies that are made in the wholesale absence of any evidence of repentance are not worth a button. I am pleased to stand and speak for the many Angus constituents—almost 100 now—who have written to articulate their outrage at this debacle of accountability at the feet of this Prime Minister. He was always a questionable choice to lead the Conservative party because he would inevitably have become—indeed, he immediately became—Prime Minister under the politics of that time. He was the indiscreet, verbose showman that the Conservatives seemingly required to unlock the Brexit impasse in this place. It was always going to be a high-risk strategy, and the chickens have now come home to roost. If the Tories claim to have got Brexit done—which in itself is a questionable assertion that rests uncomfortably with the truth—why are they so reluctant to dispose of their one-trick-pony leader?

    I say this in all candour: with this train crash of a Prime Minister, it was always going to be a question of when, not if. If the reputational capital and parliamentary respect that the Prime Minister is furiously feeding off to keep himself on political life support is a function of a zero-sum game, that which he is gorging upon is coming at a direct and equal cost to all Conservative Members, because they have the ability to stand up for what is right and remove him. More seriously, it is also coming at a cost to the public’s faith in political leadership, such as it is, except, I am pleased to say, in Scotland, where Scottish Tory voters—including in my Angus constituency—needed to take only one look at this Prime Minister for Tory seats in Scotland to fall by 55% at the 2019 election. Only two Scottish Tory MPs were present for this debate today. They are not in their place now, and the Scottish Tory leader never showed up at all.

    The Prime Minister’s vacuous claim that he must stay in office to help with the cost of living crisis and the crisis in Ukraine is a grotesque contortion of reality and history. In reality, the UK Government under this Prime Minister are adding to the cost of living crisis with tax increases heaped upon soaring fuel and food prices. In France they are in the final throes of a presidential election while supporting Ukraine. Politics is not displaced by conflict; quite the opposite, in fact. In historical terms, the UK and other nations wasted no time in changing leaders ahead of or during two world wars, so this charade is little more than a disgraced Prime Minister desperately seeking to attach himself to a convenient cause to distract from his now trademark injudicious character.

    I know that Conservative Members get this. We heard earlier from the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), who is no longer in his place. His excellent speech highlighted the risks to the parliamentary and democratic reputation if the Prime Minister does not take responsibility. Similarly, the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) made his position on the Prime Minister clear earlier this week. The public have not forgotten the nature and letter of the rules or the immeasurable constraints on their lives and freedoms during lockdown. As other hon. and right hon. Members have said, it is inconceivable that there was any grey area over these parties and bring-your-own-booze-ups.

    The Prime Minister’s refusal to go is beyond acceptable. These views are shared by constituents up and down these isles, not just in Angus. My constituent Nicola Livingstone has pointed out:

    “The Prime Minister’s refusal to go and the Conservative party’s acquiescence undermine the rule of law and any trust in political institutions. The Conservative party’s tawdry self-preservation is an insult to the nation and to the behaviours we expect from our leaders. It will be profoundly damaging to our faith in Government at a time when it is already dangerously low.”

    I deeply regret that the Government have weakly withdrawn their amendment. I look forward to ensuring that we can put on record our position on this matter in the voting Lobby today.