Kerry McCarthy
MP for Bristol East · Labour · United Kingdom
“We see that in four main ways: physical risks, including floods, wildfires, droughts and storms; transition risks as economies move away from high-carbon industries; nature-related risks affecting food production and natural resources; and systemic risks, where shocks spread rapidly across sectors and markets.”
“The glaciers of the third pole function as Asia’s water tower, feeding major river systems that support nearly 2 billion people. When rising temperatures accelerate glacial melt, the consequences extend far beyond the mountains.”
“Following the heatwaves and wildfires across Europe this summer and the destruction caused by the glacier collapse and catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet, the message is becoming impossible to ignore: the consequences of climate change and environmental degradation are real, not some distant future threat.”
“Personally, I cannot see that Rosebank is compatible with meeting our climate objectives, but I recognise that the process should be followed. Green Alliance has reported that the gas being wasted in the North sea would be enough to heat 570,000 homes.”
“I too worked in the financial markets, although I think I have done a better job of hiding it in my 21 years in Parliament. I was more on the debt market side. In fact, I am so old that I was part of the salvage operation for Barings bank when it went under. That brings me to the right hon. Gentleman’s point about regulation.”
“My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I very much agree with the point that he just made. We have some excellent, innovative businesses in Bristol that came up through the Science Creates innovation hubs and attracted private capital.”
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“We have to acknowledge that self-employed people are not the same as employed workers, with the security that they have.”
“It is not easy to plan, because they do not know from one moment to the next when the money will come in. They have additional burdens. According to the FSB, 6,500 self-employed people in my constituency have to make the same calculations. They will now have the added responsibility of extra national insurance contributions, without the security of employment. I had an email from a constituent today, who wrote on behalf of her son who is a construction worker. She pointed out that he has to buy his own tools, his own work safety gear and his third-party liability insurance. He has to have something called a CSCS card and has to pay to travel to jobs. Quite often at the end of one job, there is a break when he does not know whether another job is in the pipeline. Clearly, some of that is tax deductible, but not all of it is.”
“He was not quite a white van man—he had a lorry instead—but in all other respects he fitted that definition, as did virtually all the family friends who came round our house. They were all builders, electricians, plumbers or window cleaners. They did pretty well for themselves, but they did it by working incredibly hard. My dad did not take a day off sick, not least because he would not have earned any money if he had done so. When we went on family holidays, he had to calculate not only the cost of taking a family of eight abroad, which was pretty extortionate, but how much he would lose in earnings and whether he would have to pay other people to keep his salvage yard open. Three of my five sisters are now self-employed. I know how they have to grapple with the fluctuations in income.”
“In my constituency of Bristol East, there are very few who fall into the high income category, but very many who fall into the middle or the bottom and who will not benefit. The Resolution Foundation said that the result will be “the biggest rise in inequality since the late 1980s.” I do not know how the Chancellor can lecture low-paid workers about the dignity of work, when he is watching their living standards fall. The Chancellor is increasing the taxes of self-employed workers, despite the fact that they earn half as much as employees and have fewer rights. I grew up with a stepfather who was a self-employed demolition contractor. My sisters took over his business when he died.”
“According to the Children’s Society, more than 5,000 children were living in poverty in my constituency of Bristol East last year. The Chancellor spoke yesterday of the “dignity of work”, but the majority of those children are in working families. The issue of in-work poverty has been raised frequently in this House and needs to be tackled. It is not enough simply to suggest that moving people into work from welfare is the only solution. Universal credit cuts will only make the situation worse. There was nothing yesterday in response to the Resolution Foundation’s warning that incomes will rise for high-income households, stagnate for the middle and fall at the bottom.”
“The Budget failed to offer any comfort for Bristol in terms of city governance or for my constituents. Bristol is a prosperous city with thriving industries. It is the only city outside London that makes a positive contribution to GDP. That sometimes means that we are seen as having everything sorted and having everything going for us, but not everyone in the city is able to share in its success. Our mayor, Marvin Rees, is working to make Bristol a more equal city and to share the prosperity beyond the wealthy and the recently gentrified parts of the city, so that it works for people who have lived in Bristol all their lives, as well as for people who have been attracted to move there because it is such a thriving place. I fear that yesterday’s Budget made his task that bit more difficult.”
“I did not agree with everything the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said, but he did make some very thoughtful points. I hope that the Economic Secretary was paying more attention than he appeared to be and has taken them on board. I was disappointed by the lack of ambition in yesterday’s Budget. I suppose that we should take some consolation from the Chancellor’s acknowledgement that the Government still have a lot of work to do. Perhaps when we have the combined autumn statement and Budget we will see more ambition from him. The Chancellor talked about improving productivity and ensuring that young people have the skills they need. I agree with that. He identified some of the challenges, but he singularly failed to address Brexit—the elephant in the room that is in danger of trampling everything else underfoot.”
“As I said, we have to acknowledge that the self-employed are in a very different situation from people who have an employer who takes care of all their needs. The Chancellor has singularly failed to recognise that. He seems to be blaming the self-employed for not reading the non-existent small print in the Conservative manifesto. He cannot get away with saying that this is not a broken promise, given what the Conservatives said in 2015.”
“I very much agree with my hon. Friend and recognise the points she makes about the family she grew up in. Surely we want to encourage more people to become entrepreneurs—to strike out on their own and create the thriving businesses of the future. Some of our most successful entrepreneurs started out as self-employed, then set up small and medium-sized enterprises, and went on from there. I think that this short-sighted tax grab by the Chancellor will deter people from doing that.”
“As the Bill goes through Parliament, we will have to scrutinise the detail. All I know at the moment is that I have constituents who are extremely worried about this proposal and it is making them think twice about whether they should continue as self-employed or look for jobs that are potentially less lucrative, but that have more security.”
“That is certainly the concern. As has been said by several hon. Members, if people cannot trust the Government on this matter, they will think that they cannot trust the Government on anything in respect of their future economic security.”
“That would reassure me and my constituents that the Government are capable of working with cities like Bristol to help everyone to achieve their full potential.”
“Environmental regulation, for example, is dismissed as red tape. I have given up hoping that some Conservative Members will see the environmental necessity of so-called green crap—apologies again, Madam Deputy Speaker—but I had hoped that some would see the economic potential. The Government have chosen not to engage, or to take a very half-hearted approach, with the EU’s circular economy work, despite its potential to create half a million jobs and support a genuinely forward-thinking industrial strategy that is fit for the future. The Chancellor promised us skilled jobs and meaningful training, so I hope he will go back to his colleagues at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and look at how a genuine focus on the green economy can support that and ensure Britain really is world-leading.”
“Ministers are rushing headlong into a hard Brexit and abandoning the single market, ignoring how trade with the EU is a major driving force for our economy. Turning us into a bargain basement tax haven may be what some Ministers have always wanted, but it is not what Bristol or the country needs. The Chancellor boasted of infrastructure projects, but my constituents are fed up with broken promises and bad management. We have endured disruption because of the electrification of the Great Western line and the taxpayer has had to cope with the spiralling cost. Now the programme has been delayed indefinitely—at a cost of £330 million. The people of Bristol do not know if they will ever see the benefit, but we have already paid the price. Time and again, Ministers do not bother to consider the bigger picture.”
“The city’s two universities receive over £20 million a year from EU sources. I pay tribute to all the work my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) is doing with universities on Brexit. The European Investment Bank facilitated initiatives such as Bristol Energy, the council’s energy company. Two thirds of exports from Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth go to the EU, which is far higher than the average for UK cities. The Chancellor claimed there would be no complacency, but neither is there any strategy. The Government have no clue about what will replace that EU investment or how to guarantee our exports market. Blithely pretending everything will be fine and dandy is not a legitimate plan.”
“On housing, just as on social care, public health, funding cuts and tax increases, the Government’s instinct is to pass the buck to local authorities. Bristol’s funding has fallen by £170 million over the past six years. Over the next five years, we face a £104 million funding gap as costs rise. The further 30% cut to the Department for Communities and Local Government’s budget suggests Ministers are oblivious to the difficult decisions councils are having to make. There is no recognition of the long-term costs of neglecting our infrastructure and key services. A temporary sticking plaster next year will not rescue our social care system or relieve the burden on council services. The situation will only get worse with Brexit. Bristol City Council received £22 million of EU funding in the 10 years to 2015.”
“I referred to the success of Bristol as a city, but that success comes at the price of a booming housing market that means homes are increasingly out of reach for Bristolians. On average, tenants are having to spend 64% of their disposable income on rent. Our Mayor has created a multi-disciplinary housing delivery team and a city office that has been working hard to try to get more affordable housing built and to find temporary beds for the homeless. They will not be helped by cuts to housing benefit and Ministers’ preoccupation with £1 million houses. I urge the Government to consider our Mayor’s request for the power and support necessary to tackle the housing crisis. It is not enough just to devolve the responsibility; the resources and the money have to go with that if he is to do what he is being asked to do.”
“The Government’s chaotic approach to children’s education is emblematic of a Budget incapable of joined-up thinking or long-term planning. The funding is there when the Government want it to be, but not when people need it to be. The Government seem incapable of looking beyond the short term and of recognising that cuts have consequences. Ministers are denying 18 to 21-year-olds housing benefit, but if just 140 young people are pushed on to the streets the policy will cost the Government more than it saves. Centrepoint estimates that about 9,000 young people will be put at risk of homelessness by the policy. That is not just short-sighted; it is—if you will permit me to say so, Madam Deputy Speaker—gross stupidity on the part of the Government. It is too high a cost for the sake of making very short-term savings.”
“My constituents are paying the price for a tax cut that will benefit only 0.04% of the people, many of whom live in the far more affluent constituencies of Cabinet Ministers. The Chancellor also managed to find funding for the Prime Minister’s grammar school project, despite a dearth of evidence to support the policy. It baffles me why he thinks this is more important than helping the schools we have at the moment, which face a £3 billion shortfall. What good will new grammar schools do for children and teachers at Bristol Met, where half of all pupils are on free school meals but their funding is being cut by 21%, or at Begbrook Primary, which has seen a 16% cut in per pupil funding between 2013-14 and 2019-20? West Town Lane academy has seen a 16% cut and Waycroft academy a 14% cut. I could go on.”
“That leads me very nicely on to my next point, which is that the Chancellor claims the Government have no choice but to raise national insurance contributions. However, he has somehow managed to find £70 billion in tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, including £1 billion for the Government’s pet concern, inheritance tax. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) for her work on this. From next month, the inheritance tax threshold for a couple will start to rise from the current £650,000 to £1 million. Over the past two years in my Bristol East constituency just 17 homes sold for more than £650,000, and not all of them would have been subject to inheritance tax.”
“Surfers Against Sewage organise those, as does the Marine Conservation Society, and they report that plastic bottles in particular are frequently found along with items such as cotton bud sticks and bottle caps. About 8 million tonnes of plastic enter oceans every year and, as I said, it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces causing real harm to marine life and ecosystems.”
“The rest is either landfilled or incinerated or, worse still, it is never collected and ends up clogging up our sewers and polluting our marine and land ecosystems where it can remain for literally hundreds of years. Anyone involved in the protect our waves all-party parliamentary group might have seen the items that Surfers Against Sewage brought along that they had found. The divers and surfers have found items such as Golden Wonder crisp packets with “3p” on them, which have only just been retrieved from the seas, and coke cans with different designs on. That shows just how long those things will last in the marine environment. Something as indestructible as plastic should not be disposable. Plastic bottles and other single-use plastics are commonly found in beach clean-ups.”
“They cause damage in exactly the same way as microbeads do—they just do not start out as tiny items in the first place. I had the privilege of attending the UN parliamentary assembly in New York last month. It had a special focus on sustainable development goal 14, which is about protecting the oceans. It was widely recognised by the delegates taking part in that discussion that implementing sustainable development goal 12, which is about sustainable consumption and responsible production, was critical to achieving sustainable development goal 14 on ocean health. Plastic is a durable material that is made to last forever, but far too much of it is used once and then thrown away. Only a third of plastic packaging used in consumer products is recycled in the UK.”
“I urge the Government to think of this as a pledge we could make under the United Nations’ clean seas campaign; doing so would be a real contribution and we could urge other countries to do the same. As the hon. Member for Taunton Deane said, the issue of microbeads is a manageable place to begin. As expected, she did such justice to the topic and covered almost anything that anybody could say on it—I expected that to be the case. With your permission, Sir David, I want to talk about the much larger problem of plastic litter polluting the marine environment. This is not just about the damage larger objects do. When items such as plastic bottles enter the water, they eventually break down into ever smaller pieces and become microplastics in themselves.”
“That is the sort of approach we ought to urge companies to adopt. As I said, it is welcome that the Government are moving forward with the ban. However, like the hon. Lady, I am concerned that it may not be fully comprehensive and include all products that eventually end up in our water supply. She outlined in detail the difference between rinse-off products and products that stay on the skin a bit longer, and I urge the Minister to be as comprehensive as possible. I hope the Government also see the opportunity to take the lead on this issue internationally. We are so good on marine protected areas and are rightly respected internationally for the action we have taken around our overseas territories.”
“I congratulate the Environmental Audit Committee on its excellent inquiry, which highlighted the loopholes and inconsistencies in voluntary action taken by the cosmetics industry. As we have heard, some companies have decided to phase out products. I had the pleasure of visiting the Lush factory in Poole a few weeks ago, and I am sure the hon. Lady would be very much welcome there. I got to make bath bombs and see all sorts of other products being made. As a company, Lush accepts that it is not 100% perfect but it has an ambition to be as environmentally friendly as possible. For example, when people buy the big gift boxes with several products in, the Wotsit-like things that are used for packaging are now made of potato starch rather than polystyrene, so the moment water is poured on them, they completely degrade.”
“It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir David. I congratulate the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) on securing this debate. I know that she is passionate about this subject, and that came through clearly in her opening speech. I also congratulate the Government on putting aside for once their hard-wired preference for voluntary approaches—a battle that I frequently have with them on these issues—and committing to a ban on microbeads in cosmetic and personal products. As I have said several times, if America can do it, there is absolutely no reason why we cannot; if Obama was persuaded of the need to do it, surely we ought to listen and take the same view.”
“The future is not in low-cost products using finite resources that are designed to fail after their warranty expires but in products that are designed and manufactured for reuse or recycling. Although I welcome what the Government are doing on microbeads, I hope I have stressed to the Minister that they are literally a tiny part of the problem. We need to see a much more ambitious approach not only to microbeads but across the board.”
“I hope the Government will look seriously at the role that regulation can play in stimulating markets to recycle or reuse materials, such as the proposals by the Environmental Services Association for a new framework for producer responsibility. It is terrific that Unilever has announced plans to make all its plastic packaging recyclable by 2025, but to support businesses that have decided to do the right thing we have to stop other companies being able to undercut them, otherwise we will see the situation that has been referred to. Taking the circular economy seriously could be a huge opportunity for us. It has been suggested it could deliver half a million jobs.”
“There are currently too few incentives for or requirements on producers to make their packaging recyclable, leaving local councils to clear up the mess and local taxpayers to foot the bill. Of the 7 million coffee cups thrown away each day, only 1% are recycled through normal collection systems. The Environmental Audit Committee’s next inquiry will be on coffee cups and plastic bottles. Most local authorities do not have the facilities to separate the plastic membrane from the cardboard. We even have new products coming onto the market such as Nescafé’s incomprehensible Azera, which encourages consumers to make their “coffee to go” at home in a non-recyclable takeaway cup, which is ridiculous. Black plastic is frequently used in packaging, especially in high-end products, even though most local authorities cannot recycle it.”
“We will make the litter pickers and hi-vis available in libraries so that anyone can go out for half an hour and pick up if they want to. Hopefully, it will be a three-year campaign. The worst bit of the day was seeing a hedge where it was clear that everyone who walked past thought that that was where to put their Coke can or plastic bottle, rather than putting it in the bin down the road. We need to persuade people that that is not the case. We have heard about the plastic bag charge and how that can make a difference. The hon. Member for Taunton Deane mentioned the circular economy, and I agree that that is where we need to see action from the Government.”
“It has also shown the success of deposit return schemes in massively reducing littering of beverage containers: by as much as 80% in one US study. There is growing support for such a scheme. Even Coca-Cola, having resisted, has now said it is on board, which is great news. We also need to focus on people’s attitudes to dropping litter. Despite the blustery weather, showers and gales, I spent most of the weekend taking part in the Mayor of Bristol’s clean streets initiative. Community volunteers were given hi-vis and litter pickers, and we were out filling sack upon sack with rubbish, most of it plastic, from crisp packets to bottles and all sorts of things. The initiative is partly about making the streets tidier, but also about trying to send a message to the community that they need to play their part.”
“Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) and I recently met City to Sea to discuss its campaign to make Bristol a single use plastic-free city. We have a Facebook page that I would like to plug here to publicise the work we are doing. It is called “Let’s Stop Plastic Pollution”. With litter levels hardly budging over a decade, England stubbornly remains a throwaway society. I very much hope we will see in the Government’s forthcoming litter strategy proposals to introduce a deposit return scheme for single-use drinks containers, which could help reduce littering, increase recycling and cut back on illegal dumping. Research by the Bristol-based organisation, Eunomia, has shown the scale of the problem and how plastic bottles are littered disproportionately more than any other items.”
“Although the wipes disappear when flushed, that gives the impression they are biodegradable and do not cause harm, but they very much do. I want to pay particular tribute to the Bristol-based environmental organisation, City to Sea, which campaigns to reduce the amount of plastic flowing from the Avon into the Bristol channel. As well as organising clean-ups, it has encouraged local shops and bars to allow people to refill their drinking water bottles so that they do not have to buy plastic bottles. It has also been brilliant at going round to retailers to try to get them to stop producing plastic cotton bud sticks. It has now got every single one of them to sign up to paper sticks instead, so that shows what can be achieved. My hon.”
“The best way of stopping such litter reaching our rivers and sea is at source—by reducing the amount of waste that is generated in the first place. In 2014 annual global plastic production stood at 311 million tonnes. Shockingly, more than 40% of it was for single-use packing. As much as possible, we need to stop using single-use plastic, from refusing drinking straws to bringing our own bags to the shops. Plastic Ocean has a great check list. Cities around the world, such as Delhi, have introduced a ban on disposable plastic, and I hope we will soon see an end to the travesty of manufacturers mis-labelling synthetic wet wipes as flushable. I think that will be the next campaign for me and the hon. Member for Taunton Deane.”
“Some Members may have seen the recent documentary “A Plastic Ocean”, which I recommend to them if they have not. It does a phenomenal job of showing what is inside the sea birds and marine animals that they cut open. Sky’s programme “A Plastic Tide” showed truly shocking images of beaches from Mumbai to Scotland, where the daily tide tips up a layer of plastic from around the world. Tourists in Arrochar—have I pronounced that right? I look to my Scottish National party colleagues to tell me—asked why someone had apparently chosen to locate a landfill on a site of such natural beauty. There is a great deal more that we can all do to reduce plastic litter as consumers taking individual action and as producers; also, critically, there can be action by the Government. Prevention is better than cure.”
“I very much agree with the hon. Lady’s point, which is an example of what I am saying—plastics become unrecognisable, but they may have been bigger products in the first place, or used as that size of product in various ways. Plastic entanglement or ingestion can cause choking, intestinal blockages and starvation. One recent study showed that 90% of birds have plastics in their stomachs. On cleanwater.org, Clean Water Action documented the case of a California grey whale that had washed up dead; its stomach contained a pair of pants, a golf ball, more than 20 bags, small towels, duct tape and surgical gloves. Just recently, extraordinary levels of toxic pollutants—industrial chemicals that were banned in the 1970s—were found in the remotest place on the planet: the 10 km deep Mariana trench in the Pacific ocean.”
“As I said, the poultry industry is doing more but antibiotic use is extremely high in the pig industry—more than five times higher per pig than in Denmark and the Netherlands, which are our competitors. As has already been said, intensive farming goes hand in hand with the overuse of antibiotics, which is something the Government need to encourage farmers to move away from.”
“Only last year, new products were licensed by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate in a move that Professor Timothy Walsh, one of the scientists who originally discovered colistin resistance, described as “sheer, utter madness”. He says that that last resort antibiotic will become useless as a drug within 10 years if its usage in veterinary medicine is not stopped. The Government also urgently need to set specific targets for “critically important antibiotics” because of their importance to human health. The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics has called for an 80% reduction in the use of CIAs in farming in five years, and a 95% reduction in 10 years—a call I endorsed this time last year—but sales fell by only 5% in 2015. We need far greater reductions. We also need more ambitious sector-specific targets.”
“There have been welcome moves by the British Poultry Council, but the British pig industry has not moved as fast. Colistin, which is a last resort treatment for life-threatening infections in humans, is now one of few options doctors have left for treating carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae—CRE—which has been described as the nightmare bacteria. It is important to me because my niece and several of my constituents have cystic fibrosis, and colistin is used for treating lung infections arising from CF. The Cystic Fibrosis Trust described growing colistin resistance as a “matter of life and death” for such patients.”
“Last March, the European Parliament voted through proposed new regulations that included a ban on preventive group treatments, but the trialogue between the Parliament, the Council and the European Commission has been delayed yet again until September. At the time of that vote, the then shadow Health Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), and I, in my then capacity as shadow Environment Secretary, wrote to our counterparts to ask them to respond positively to the proposals, but we received a pretty opaque response. Will the Minister say whether the Government fully back the European Parliament’s position? It may take several more years before an EU ban, so I urge the Government to take action now and follow the Netherlands and the five Nordic countries, which do not permit such treatments.”
“It is encouraging that DEFRA has now—after being rather complacent about the routine use of antibiotics in farming, it has to be said—committed to a 20% reduction by 2018, in line with the O’Neill review’s recommendations, but more action is needed. The Government have said that the Veterinary Medicines Directorate is working closely with the sector to embed responsible use of antibiotics, but we know that is simply not happening. Routine mass medication of groups of animals, either on a purely preventive basis or when a few animals within the group are sick, is still far too frequent, particularly in the pig industry.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on securing the debate. For time reasons, I will focus only on the use of antibiotics in farming. We know that, just as there is a clear correlation between rising levels of human use of antibiotics and growing antibiotic resistance among humans, higher use in farm animals undermines antibiotics’ effectiveness in human medicine. Too many of the superbugs listed by the World Health Organisation as posing the greatest threat to human health are also found in retail meat and food animals. At the end of last year, yet more studies found antibiotic-resistant E. coli in British supermarket pig and chicken meat and MRSA in UK supermarket pork.”
“A microbeads ban would be welcome, as would extending it to more products. However, as has been said, larger plastics that break down and become microplastics in the marine environment are the biggest problem. A deposit-return scheme would make a big difference. What is the Minister doing with the circular economy to try to get manufacturers to design out such products so that we do not have the problem of what to do with them in the first place?”
“Under the Government’s new aid strategy, an increasing proportion of the 0.7% is being spent by Departments other than DFID—it is estimated that the proportion will be 30% by 2019. Will the NAO also look at how that money is spent and address concerns that it is being siphoned off, undermining DFID’s core objectives?”
“I recently had the pleasure of meeting one of the partners of Waugh Thistleton, the architects behind a new housing development at Dalston Lane in Hackney, which uses more timber than any other project in the world. Is cross-laminated timber on the Department’s radar, and what are the Government doing to help to support architects who are exploring this very sustainable material?”
“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that as we think about how we ought to spend our farming subsidies in the wake of Brexit, we should look to them to address the issue that he has mentioned? They could perhaps enable farmers to allow their fields to be flooded sometimes as a form of natural flood defence.”
“Does my hon. Friend share my concern that it was found that when the floods hit Cumbria and other areas at Christmas 2015 the Government were not using the most up-to-date modelling? Surely the most important thing is that we try, to the very best of our ability, to predict what is going to come next.”
“Q7. Last night Bristol City Council set its budget. Very difficult decisions were made more difficult by the abject failure of the previous Mayor to get a grip on the council’s finances. It has taken a Labour Mayor to face up to the challenge, but Government cuts are making his task almost impossible, and devolution simply means asking us to do more with less. We did our bit last night in setting the budget; will the Prime Minister now meet the Mayor of Bristol to discuss the fairer funding deal that the people of Bristol deserve?”
“The disabled students allowance has been a great help to students with learning difficulties such as dyslexia in gaining the qualifications they need to enter the world of work. Will the Minister not accept that the £200 fee is acting as a real deterrent to the uptake of this allowance and that it is unfairly penalising students who need that extra help?”