The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grahame Morris on 2015-10-27.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, which articles contained in the Human Rights Act are planned to be omitted from the proposed British Bill of Rights.
Dominic Raab
Our Bill of Rights will protect fundamental human rights, and prevent abuse of the system. The Government will fully consult on our proposals before introducing legislation and we will set out our proposals in due course.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grahame Morris on 2015-10-27.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department’s policies on increasing access to public transport for disabled passengers.
Andrew Jones
We have made significant progress since 2010 on increasing access to public transport.
Compliance with bus accessibility regulations is 89% of buses in England in 2015 compared to 59% in 2009-10; while 60% of rail vehicles, up from less than 40% in 2010, were built or fully refurbished to modern access standards.
By the end of this year Access for All will have completed more than 150 step-free routes at rail stations against a target of 125. More than 1,200 stations have also received smaller scale improvements. To build on this success £160m has been allocated to another 68 stations to be delivered by 2019.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grahame Morris on 2015-10-26.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps the Government is taking to increase the use of CCTV in slaughterhouses; and if she will make a statement.
George Eustice
I refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the Rt. Hon. Member for Knowsley, George Howarth on 24 June 2015, PQs UIN 2944 and 2945.
The parliamentary question asked by Grahame Morris, the Labour MP for Easington, in the House of Commons on 28 November 2022.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
What support the Government are providing to help (a) schools and (b) parents with the cost of living. (902428)
The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)
I recognise the current challenges faced by families and public services. We know that things are tough out there, which is why we are acting in the national interest and why we have secured funding to increase the schools budget by £2 billion next year and the year after. All education settings are benefiting from the energy bill relief scheme, which will protect them from excessively high energy bills over the winter. In addition, we are committed to supporting the most vulnerable households through the toughest part of the year with additional direct support, and we are supporting schools and parents to make sure that we can all get through this.
Grahame Morris
I, too, welcome the Education Secretary and her team to the Front Bench. I thank her for that response, but I point out that due to runaway costs, schools can barely stay open for five days a week, let alone provide transport. Home-to-school transport is being pared back and public transport, certainly in east Durham, is unreliable and deteriorating. Can she give us some good news and tell us what she is doing to ensure that schools can afford to pay their heating bills and stay open? How will she guarantee access to education during the cost of living crisis?
Gillian Keegan
I can give the hon. Gentleman good news, because we heard in the autumn statement that education will be funded by an extra £2 billion next year and the year after. We will be working through how that will affect schools; each school will get its individual allocation. School funding is £4 billion higher this year compared with last year, and the autumn statement has confirmed that increase, which takes the core schools budget to an historic high of £58.8 billion. That will deliver significant additional support to pupils and teachers and will, I am sure, be welcomed by the sector.
The speech made by Grahame Morris, the Labour MP for Easington, in the House of Commons on 8 November 2022.
I would also like to quote the Prime Minister’s first speech from the steps of 10 Downing Street on 25 October, only a few weeks ago:
“I will unite our country, not with words, but with action…This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level. Trust is earned. And I will earn yours.”
Well, I am not sure how long those promises have lasted. It is certainly clear that the Prime Minister is avoiding a general election. In truth, he can claim no personal democratic mandate to be Prime Minister. He bases his authority on the Conservative manifesto on which he and his colleagues were elected in 2019:
“the mandate my party earned in 2019 is not the sole property of any one individual, it is a mandate that belongs to and unites all of us.”
By “us”, I think he is referring to members of the Conservative party. He continued:
“And the heart of that mandate is our manifesto.”
The Prime Minister bases his legitimacy on the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto, so may I remind the House of what it said about the triple lock? Many Opposition Members have already said this, but let me do it again for the sake of completeness. It said:
“We will keep the triple lock, the winter fuel payment, the older person’s bus pass and other pensioner benefits”.
The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) said he was gratified that Labour Members were supporting the Conservative manifesto. Can I tell him that the Conservative party was not alone in making those promises? In fact, 626 hon. and right hon. Members of this House, including myself, were elected on a manifesto commitment to maintain, retain and protect the triple lock. So it is in order for us to make reference to that.
Other colleagues, including the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), referred to the relative position of the UK. The UK has one of the least generous state pensions in the developed world, as is demonstrated by the OECD figures, which show that the UK spends less on old age pension benefits as a proportion of GDP.
In April, when the Prime Minister broke the Conservative party manifesto pledge, the state pension increased by only 3.1% instead of the 8.3% due under the triple lock. That has cost someone in my constituency on the new full state pension £487 a year. I am sure Conservative Members are going to be concerned. I lived through the days of terrible pensioner poverty and I felt that the last Labour Government went a long way to address that, through not just the basic state pension, but the supplements introduced by Gordon Brown and others.
I would be terribly embarrassed if my Government’s legacy was one of pensioner poverty. However, the groundwork for poverty has been laid by the current Government; those foundations have been laid over the past 12 years. It has left groups such as the WASPI—I know that the Minister and others do not like to hear that term—cohort of working women born in the 1950s and 1960s in desperate hardship through no fault of their own.
Fifty of the UK’s areas most at risk in the cost of food crisis have been identified and not surprisingly the north-east and my constituency are among the worst affected. This year, our communities will see the introduction of “warm spaces” to help those who are unable to heat their homes because of spiralling energy costs. Our Government and the economy are failing to meet the most basic needs—food and warmth. A real-terms cut to the state pension, alongside soaring energy and food costs, will force many more pensioners into poverty. So I urge Conservative Members to do the right thing, back their own manifesto commitment and vote to retain the triple lock.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grahame Morris on 2015-10-09.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent estimate the Government has made of the number of people in Easington constituency who are unable to access the internet.
Matthew Hancock
Information provided by ONS for the period January to March 2015 shows that 11% of adults in the UK (5.9 million) had never used the internet. In 2015 14% of households in Great Britain had no internet access.Official data at local constituency level is not available.
The Digital Inclusion Strategy launched in 2014 outlined that by 2016 we will have reduced the number of people who are offline by 25% and by 2020 everyone who can be online should be online. 85 partners work with government to reach this goal, including the Tinder Foundation, Post Office, Argos, Barclays, LGA, Go ON UK, Society of Chief Librarians, Digital Unite and Age UK.
The government recognises that there are many reasons for not being online. We will always provide assisted digital support for people who need help accessing government services.
Many of these partners have local delivery networks, and work with hard to reach groups. Details of local resources can be found from a number of sources, including libraries and the Post Office. A range of services are available in Easington, including Easington Colliery Library, which provides internet and email facilities; and there are a number of UK Online Centres in the Easington area.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grahame Morris on 2015-10-09.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps the Government is taking to promote digital inclusion in Easington constituency (a) in general and (b) for hard to reach groups who have never accessed online content.
Matthew Hancock
Information provided by ONS for the period January to March 2015 shows that 11% of adults in the UK (5.9 million) had never used the internet. In 2015 14% of households in Great Britain had no internet access.Official data at local constituency level is not available.
The Digital Inclusion Strategy launched in 2014 outlined that by 2016 we will have reduced the number of people who are offline by 25% and by 2020 everyone who can be online should be online. 85 partners work with government to reach this goal, including the Tinder Foundation, Post Office, Argos, Barclays, LGA, Go ON UK, Society of Chief Librarians, Digital Unite and Age UK.
The government recognises that there are many reasons for not being online. We will always provide assisted digital support for people who need help accessing government services.
Many of these partners have local delivery networks, and work with hard to reach groups. Details of local resources can be found from a number of sources, including libraries and the Post Office. A range of services are available in Easington, including Easington Colliery Library, which provides internet and email facilities; and there are a number of UK Online Centres in the Easington area.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grahame Morris on 2015-10-09.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that people unable to access the internet are not (a) disadvantaged as consumers and (b) denied access to government services.
Matthew Hancock
Information provided by ONS for the period January to March 2015 shows that 11% of adults in the UK (5.9 million) had never used the internet. In 2015 14% of households in Great Britain had no internet access.Official data at local constituency level is not available.
The Digital Inclusion Strategy launched in 2014 outlined that by 2016 we will have reduced the number of people who are offline by 25% and by 2020 everyone who can be online should be online. 85 partners work with government to reach this goal, including the Tinder Foundation, Post Office, Argos, Barclays, LGA, Go ON UK, Society of Chief Librarians, Digital Unite and Age UK.
The government recognises that there are many reasons for not being online. We will always provide assisted digital support for people who need help accessing government services.
Many of these partners have local delivery networks, and work with hard to reach groups. Details of local resources can be found from a number of sources, including libraries and the Post Office. A range of services are available in Easington, including Easington Colliery Library, which provides internet and email facilities; and there are a number of UK Online Centres in the Easington area.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grahame Morris on 2015-10-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much schools have spent renovating, replacing or installing new kitchen equipment prior to the introduction of the universal infant free school meals programme.
Mr Sam Gyimah
The Government has provided significant support for schools to improve kitchen and dining room facilities for their infant pupils. We have allocated £184.5 million capital funding in total specifically for this purpose, and an additional £32.5 million UIFSM funding to support small schools in improving their infant meal provision, which can be used to purchase equipment or fund minor capital works.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grahame Morris on 2015-10-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many additional pupils have become eligible for free school meals in (a) the North East and (b) Easington constituency since the introduction of the universal infant free school meals programme.
Mr Sam Gyimah
Based on information collected by the Department for Education in the January 2015 school census, 1,616,154 infant pupils in England, 69,381 infant pupils in the North East and 2,037 infant pupils in the parliamentary constituency of Easington were entitled to universal infant free school meals. These figures exclude infant pupils who were entitled to free school meals because their parents or carers were in receipt of qualifying benefits.