Gill Furniss
MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough · Labour · United Kingdom
“T8. Earlier this month, I met Devon Andrews, whose daughter Cherish tragically passed away from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning while on holiday with her partner.”
“The infected blood scandal has rightly been described by the chair of the infected blood inquiry Sir Brian Langstaff as the worst treatment disaster in the history of our national health service.”
“These issues could have been mitigated if, as Sir Brian wrote, “decisions about those who should receive compensation are not made without them.” The minimal involvement of the people affected in the development of the compensation scheme has introduced problems and injustices.”
“In a recent report, the National Audit Office found that there is currently no dedicated team within Government that has central oversight or offers support to those setting up or administrating compensation schemes, and victims have no route for formal redress.”
“Under a provision called the special category mechanism, people can claim additional compensation for the financial loss and care costs that they have occurred as a result of their infection. However, this additional compensation applied only from 2017—an arbitrary administrative date inherited from a previous support scheme.”
“Many of those affected have had to live with the consequences of those failures for decades. One such person is my constituent John, who I know will be watching the debate. Like many hepatitis C patients, John was initially unaware of his illness.”
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“According to recent polling, 69% of my constituents are worried about not being able to pay their energy bills. They are terrified for the future, with prices set to rise in April, but the latest new Prime Minister has shamefully boasted about taking money away from deprived areas like mine. Does the Minister agree that Britain needs a general election now, so that the public can have their say on their future?”
“I and all my constituents in Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough express our deepest sympathies and condolences to the royal family. We share in their grief and sorrow and will miss her greatly. May she rest in peace, and may God save the King.”
“Not having any to hand, we quickly sped to the Lord Mayor’s office to go through the drinks cabinet to see whether there was any there. I have to report that there was not. So someone was sent out to scour the streets of Sheffield, because there was no way Sheffield was going to be known as the one city that could not provide the Queen with her favourite tipple. I am pleased to say that we were able to find it just in time before the dinner. I will always have fond memories of that day—not least as it was one of only two occasions on which I have worn a hat. It brought such joy to Sheffield, bringing together so many people from across the city. Her Majesty represented a unifying figure above the divides of politics, and everybody looked to her for comfort in good times and solace in bad. Her sense of duty was truly felt by all.”
“Their joy, enthusiasm and anticipation were humbling. Having been a council lead for arts and culture for just a few weeks, I had the privilege of meeting Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh at the door of the gallery, and I managed to curtsy without falling flat on my face—this was a great relief. She was incredibly generous with her time, ensuring that she spoke to as many people as possible. Her dignity, compassion and sense of humour shone through throughout the entire day. That evening we welcomed Her Majesty to a very fancy dinner hosted by the then Lord Mayor. As Members can imagine, this was a carefully orchestrated occasion, which took many months of detailed planning. However, on the day, we learned that Her Majesty’s favourite drink was none other than Dubonnet and lemonade.”
“I rise to pay tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on behalf of my constituents in Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough. For people across Sheffield, Her Majesty was a great source of comfort and stability across her 70-year reign. She was our Queen; she belonged to us. We had good times and we had bad times, but all the time she held a special place in all our hearts. I want to talk briefly about one occasion when the Queen’s importance to my city really shone through. In 2001, Sheffield had the great honour of welcoming Her Majesty as she opened the fabulous brand-new Millennium Gallery. It is impossible to overstate what this meant to the city. Never before or since have I seen so many people; it seemed like there were thousands in the streets of Sheffield just trying to catch a glimpse of their beloved Queen.”
“Perhaps that is not surprising, given that one candidate has seemingly accepted tens of thousands of pounds in donations from a notorious climate change denier. The Conservative party is out of touch, out of ideas and, I hope, soon to be out of power. A new leader will not change any of that.”
“This is not levelling up; this is levelling down, and families across the country are paying the price. The Conservative party is truly unfit to govern, as it has shown time and again. I am of course pleased to finally see the back of the Prime Minister, but it is clear that whoever takes over cannot be trusted to truly level up. Instead of focusing on the real issues facing people, leadership candidates are trying to stoke culture wars and divide communities. Today, the Met Office warns that unprecedented heatwaves pose a significant risk of death, but the leadership candidates are not prepared to step up to the serious threats posed by climate change. They instead want to water down net zero targets and roll back green initiatives.”
“Only if we remove the Conservative party from power altogether will we see these trends reversed, and today’s vote is a chance to do that. To take just one example, our local authorities’ budgets have been cut to the bone by the Prime Minister and his two Conservative predecessors. Sheffield City Council’s central Government grant has been cut by more than £3 billion in real terms since 2010, which has put an enormous strain on its budgets. The impact has been stark. According to the End Child Poverty coalition, 45% of children in my constituency are in poverty. That really is a shameful statistic. One of the basics of levelling up needs to be ending child poverty once and for all, but in my region, child poverty rates continue to rise year on year.”
“When the Prime Minister took office, he stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised to level up every part of Britain. He said he would close the opportunity gap and, in his words, unleash the power “of every corner” of the United Kingdom. In 2019, he came to Sheffield and made that same pledge. He continues to boast about levelling up as though it has been some gigantic success, but if we dig deep enough beneath the surface, we find that his legacy is one of broken promises, shattered communities and a failure to deliver. The public know that they cannot trust a word that the Government say. They have concluded that levelling up is just another empty slogan that will do nothing to help them in their everyday life. The effects of 12 years of Conservative mismanagement are plain to see.”
“Prior to the pandemic, more journeys were made on buses than on any other form of public transport—almost 4.5 billion. However, due to 12 years of Conservative cuts, the loss of 134 million miles of bus lanes and an inadequate statutory framework, those vital transport links have been left to decay. Bus coverage is now the lowest it has been in decades. According to the Council for the Protection of Rural England, the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that there are now what it terms “transport deserts” in rural communities. Austerity has seen this Government slash public subsidies for buses: more than 5,000 bus routes have been cut across the country, leading to passenger numbers slumping by 10%, while fares have more than doubled.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship for the first time, Mrs Murray. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby—an absolutely beautiful place, where I have spent a lot of my holidays over the years—on securing this important debate. First, it is important to set the wider context. It is just months since the Prime Minister launched the centrepiece of his levelling-up agenda, the national bus strategy. He trumpeted from the hilltops his love for buses, and how his Bus Back Better strategy would address the vast disparities between services in London and those in the rest of the country. Less than a year on, the Government’s ambition—limited from the outset—has declined even further to a point at which the funding could realistically only satisfy the ambitions of two transport authorities.”
“We should be aiming to build the confidence of passengers, and the way we do that is affordability, reliability, and—in future—proper charging facilities.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The paragraph I have just read out answers his question: over 12 years of Conservative Government, we have seen a massive decline in passenger usage, and as a former member of the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive, I can tell him that what we really need is better investment in the buses. What passengers want is reliability, affordability, and—particularly if we are talking about net zero—a comprehensive charging strategy, but that is not what is on the table. In my region of South Yorkshire alone, one third of routes are at risk, and only one bus in the whole of South Yorkshire will be en route after 10.30 pm. That is how bad it is: one third of our bus services are going to be cut. That is no way to be now, when we are aiming to achieve net zero.”
“The clean transport revolution should mean not only cleaner air and reduced emissions for UK towns and cities but tens of thousands of jobs for British people. British manufacturers should not miss out on these opportunities. The Government need to get their act together—and fast. We need to solve this problem in a positive way for the country, for users and for businesses that would then employ workforce.”
“Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) said that if we sorted all the buses out now, we would cut emissions by one third, because we know that one third of emissions comes from homes, one third from business and one third from public transport. That is a quick win if the Government wanted to sort it out and focus more investment on buses. Most of all, the Government have to increase passenger numbers, because without those passenger numbers, buses are not of much use. That is the key. We badly need the Government to rebuild the manufacturing sector. It is important that other small companies, rather than the big ones that we have heard about, are allowed in to make this country’s manufacturing base more successful and gain more investment.”
“Labour party research has revealed that, far from supporting British manufacturers, ZEBRA funding has been used for hundreds of Pelican Yutong buses from China. The Department’s own website features an article boasting about the £200 million boost to businesses, alongside a photo of a Chinese bus. Can the Minister guarantee that all buses that the Government support through the ZEBRA scheme will be made in the UK? What steps are the Government taking to ensure that that pledge is maintained, given that this is a direct opportunity to support UK manufacturing jobs? Zero-emission buses have the potential to contribute markedly to the decarbonisation of the transport sector. The hon.”
“That uncertainty is hampering manufacturers’ ability to develop a short or medium-term business plan, and is therefore impeding their ability to commit to further investment in the UK. As the APPG for the bus and coach industry has stated, it is highly unlikely that 4,000 buses will be on the road by the end of this Parliament, even if funding is allocated for their purchase. So far, very few orders have been placed with UK manufacturers through the ZEBRA scheme, which is having a detrimental impact on the order books of UK manufacturers. The UK manufacturing industry should be leading the way in the creation of zero-emission buses—I completely agree with the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill), but we simply do not know what proportion is manufactured in the UK.”
“Friend the Member for Barnsley Central, who gave the green light for the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority to investigate franchising. Oliver Coppard is fighting the Tory bus cuts, which represent a betrayal of communities across South Yorkshire. That is the backdrop. The truth is that we cannot afford more Conservative failure. We need a bus service that is fit for the climate crisis and creates good-quality, reliable jobs across communities that are victims of rural poverty. The 4,000 zero-emission buses that the Government announced represent a tiny proportion of the buses on the road, and even that limited ambition is crumbling under scrutiny. The Government have still not specified how the remaining 2,000 buses of their 4,000-bus commitment will be funded. They will not tell us how many are on the road.”
“Andy Burnham, Tracy Brabin and Steve Rotheram, to name just a few, are investing millions of pounds in new routes and services. The Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, recently introduced free travel on buses on Sundays. What is more, bus fares are set to be capped at £2, saving passengers up to £1.50 in West Yorkshire, and in some cases more than £2 in Greater Manchester. Steve Rotheram has also announced plans to bring buses back under public control so that he can build a London-style system that will make travelling around cheaper, greener and more reliable. Meanwhile, Oliver Coppard has made improving public transport the centrepiece of his mayoralty. That follows the work of his predecessor, my hon.”
“The reality is that the Tories promised transformational investment in bus services, but millions of passengers are instead seeing managed decline. The Tories have dramatically downgraded the ambitions of local communities and slashed bus services nationwide. That is proof that they simply will not and cannot deliver for the people who need it most. The Conservatives want communities to put up with shockingly bad bus and rail services. Meanwhile, Labour in power across the country is fighting for better. Labour leaders in power have a simple transformative vision to make buses cheaper, greener, faster and more reliable. Labour Mayors are using their devolved powers and funding to bring down the cost of living and put more money in people’s pockets. They are making local public transport—buses in particular—better and more affordable.”
“This is not levelling up; it is managed decline. The national bus strategy was an opportune moment for the Government to right the many wrongs of failed deregulation, but it offered nothing for those who were looking for a bold vision to reverse the loss of millions of miles of bus routes across the country. It was a missed opportunity for the Government to revolutionise the bus industry and ensure that funds are properly directed to deliver the transition to electric and low-emission vehicles that they promised. What is more, the Government are already backtracking on their meagre progress. Ministers have announced funding for less than half of the 79 areas that bid for funding. Even those that were successful got less than they asked for. Liverpool City Region asked for £667 million and got just £12.3 million.”
“Yes, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: the Mayor of South Yorkshire runs South Yorkshire buses. He has only just been appointed, but prior to that it was my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who, with my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), worked on a total review of our buses, and the Government turned it down. It is a problem for us that it has now come to this. One of the reasons the Government turned it down is that they halved the levelling-up budget. Their decision to do that is why we are in the pickle we are in now. I will come on to talk about the Mayor of South Yorkshire, but if the Government announce that a certain amount of money is available, then cut it by half, there will be cuts to the bids that have been put in, as has happened in South Yorkshire. It is despicable.”
“A reliable charging network is vital to give motorists the peace of mind that they will be able to charge their car wherever they are in the country. We will need up to 480,000 public charging points by 2030. However, the Government have set themselves no target on the roll-out. The electric vehicle infrastructure strategy simply contains an expectation of at least 300,000 charging points. The Government are pinning responsibility solely on local councils and providing no national co-ordination. Placing the entire burden on our already overstretched local authorities means that we will be woefully unprepared for 2030. When will the Transport Secretary finally do something useful and set a national charging points target and give motorists the confidence they need to make the transition to electric?”
“What we have got so far is nowhere near enough. We are asking for justice and closure for all those of the Windrush generation and their families who were affected. The Government must ensure that those people get justice and closure and, most of all, the compensation that they are entitled to. Tanya, who I referred to earlier, got her compensation just last year, after four years. She was one of the just one in four people out there who received compensation. That is not good enough. It is bad enough that these people were in the situation they were in, but to leave them hanging year after year, making unreasonable requests for information that the Home Office already knows they will not have or are unlikely to have, is cruel. The Government must step up and do the right thing.”
“That is the hostile environment policy in action. Far from tackling the endemic problems, the Home Office is instead going forward with the same mindset that caused the Windrush scandal. It is clear that the hostile environment policy is here to stay. Wendy Williams’ review makes it absolutely clear that cultural and systemic changes are needed in the Home Office—that is so important to ensure that another Windrush scandal can never happen again. But time and again we have seen that not to be the case. The Home Office is still guided by its hostile environment policy. Steps must be taken to make Britain once again a welcoming place for migrants, refugees and their families. Change has to come from the very top, but the Home Secretary has shown a complete lack of willpower to make positive change happen.”
“As an adult, he was convicted of a criminal offence and received a custodial sentence. Nobody is defending his actions, but he rightly paid his debt to society. Upon his release, he was told he was to be deported to Jamaica. That came as a huge shock, as he had a young family in the UK and no ties to Jamaica whatsoever. Furthermore, he feared for his safety in Jamaica after his father, who died when he was just two, was killed in a gang-related attack. My constituent was deported to a country he had little to no memory of and with no family around him. Many years later, thanks to his solicitors and my office, he was finally given permission to return to the UK and see his children again. By then, his partner had moved on to another life and his children barely knew him. That is unthinkable yet it was done to him by this Government.”
“The distress and hurt caused is unimaginable. Tanya’s mother could travel; her older sisters had passports and could travel, but she and her younger brother were unable to travel with her family unit. They were unable to visit where her mum and dad had been born when the older sisters went. They were unable to take advantage of going on any trip abroad. How would they have felt, not being able to understand that? They got no sense from the Home office, which is a terrible way for Government to react to that sort of situation. Another constituent came to the UK from Jamaica with his grandparents when he was two years old, following the death of his father. He left Jamaica with no family members remaining there, as his mother had also left. He built his life in the UK and had two children.”
“This approach to policy making must be scrapped, but the circumstances that allowed the Windrush scandal to happen have not been properly addressed. I will touch on that more later. I want to talk about the experiences of some constituents who were affected by the Windrush scandal and the hostile environment. My constituent Tanya and her family had immense struggles with the Home Office as a result of the scandal. She, her brother and her then 12-year-old daughter all had multiple passport applications refused. The reason, according to the Home Office, was that none of them were British citizens. That is despite the fact that they were all born in Britain, had never stepped foot outside Britain and had worked and paid taxes their entire lives in Britain. Never before had their British citizenship been called into question.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms McVey, as usual. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) for securing this incredibly important debate. The powerfulness and eloquence she brought to her opening comments say everything. My hon. Friends’ speeches have really put things into perspective. The Windrush scandal will forever cast a dark shadow over our nation’s history. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Windrush generation, who have worked hard and contributed so much to our society, not least to the NHS, as we have heard in some personal stories today. The way the Windrush generation has been treated is nothing less than sickening. Let us make no bones about it: the Windrush scandal was a direct consequence of this Government’s hostile environment policy.”
“Q14. The victims of black cab rapist John Worboys were able to challenge the police’s failure to investigate his appalling crimes only because of the Human Rights Act. They would not have been able to do so under the Deputy Prime Minister’s new so-called Bill of Rights. Why does he want to stop women like the victims of John Worboys from making sure that police protect them from rape and sexual assault, and getting the justice they deserve?”
“We all want our live entertainment sector to get back on its feet. That will not be possible without the touring haulage sector—a small but mighty industry. Today’s measures are a positive step, but they must be accompanied by a full package of support.”
“While we support dual registration, we believe it should be part of a wider package to support the industry. Will the Minister clarify when she intends to sign the SI into law? In the explanatory memorandum, the Department for Transport states that it will provide guidance to businesses by 15 July. It is important that hauliers have time to prepare properly for the instrument. Therefore, clarity on when it will come into force would be helpful. For the measure to be successful in its aims, it must not inadvertently lead to additional bureaucracy for hauliers. The application process must be quick and simple so that businesses truly benefit from a more streamlined process. Will the Minister outline how the process will work? Will any additional fees be involved when applying for dual registration?”
“As we emerged from lockdown and international touring haulage resumed, operators had to adjust to the provisions of the trade and co-operation agreement with the European Union. That has presented major new challenges, not least given the chaos we have seen at the port of Dover, where hauliers have been left queuing for hours on end and where there has been a lack of drivers’ facilities in the first stages of Operation Brock. We therefore welcome any measures to help smooth over that process. However, I am concerned that major issues remain. In the consultation outcome, some stakeholders raised concerns that operating cultural tours will still be less straightforward post Brexit. In addition, only 40% of respondents said that they believe the number of UK live events will increase as a result of the changes.”
“As usual, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Hosie. The Opposition consider the SI a step in the right direction to help our touring haulage sector. We will therefore not oppose it. Our arts and culture industry is of such importance to us all. Prior to covid, in 2019, it contributed more than £10 billion to the UK economy and supported over 200,000 jobs. The sector also delivers the cultural enrichment that we all cherish. Indeed, one of the parts of normal life we missed most during lockdown was live entertainment. We all want to see the sector thrive as part of our economic recovery, but the industry has faced unprecedented difficulties in recent years. Just as touring hauliers began to prepare for post-Brexit regulations, their entire demand vanished almost overnight when covid struck.”
“The industry needs certainty and stability, but at the moment all it is getting is delays, empty words and a Department that cannot even get the basics right.”
“Will she urgently look at the mistakes that culminated in the inadvertent misleading of the previous Committee? Moving on to matters of substance, chaos at ports is having a major impact on British business. We are now merely weeks away from the summer holidays, when passenger numbers are expected to spike, but still we are lacking a plan from the Government to deal with that issue. The industry is calling out for support, but its call has fallen on deaf ears. It was inevitable that the implementation of more checks on food products would be delayed yet again, but this instrument just kicks the can further down the road for the fourth time. When will the Government produce an effective long-term strategy to fix the crisis at Dover? When will they give the industry the guidance it needs on future checks?”
“It is vital that Members are fully informed when deciding on legislation; that is a fundamental bedrock of our parliamentary system and its democratic duty to scrutinise the Executive. Concrete steps must therefore be taken to ensure that we never again see a repeat of this blatant incompetence, which undermines that function. During the debate on the first SI, the Minister expressed regrets at the error. Her ministerial colleague in the other place, Baroness Vere of Norbiton, stated that “the causes are being addressed urgently as part of our wider review of SI processes.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 9 March 2022; Vol. 819, c. GC490.] Given that three months have now passed, will the Minister update the Committee on what progress her Department has made?”
“During the debate on the original SI, the Minister led the Committee to believe that the issue would be rectified before the legislation came into force. She stated that the second SI could be made imminently using negative procedure, but we now know that that was wrong, too. The first SI came into force on 17 March—almost three months ago—but only now is the correcting SI making progress. How has the Department once again got this so wrong? On what basis did it mistakenly believe that the issue could be rectified using the negative procedure? Why has it taken three months since the first SI came into force to put it right? By inadvertently misleading the Committee in this way, the first SI was passed on what turned out to be a false basis.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Stringer. I must say I have a sense of déjà vu; after speaking on the original SI some months ago, I can only hope that further errors do not come to light and this does not become a trilogy. We do not oppose the SI. The logistics sector has already faced unprecedented chaos in recent months, and it should not be thrown into yet more turmoil due to the Government’s mistake. However, I would like the Minister to address a number of serious points. The Committee would have been completely unnecessary if the Department for Transport got it right to begin with. It does not bode well that the Department in charge of transport links that passengers rely on cannot even get a piece of secondary legislation right first time around.”
“That is perhaps not a surprise when we consider the fact that the funding available under that specific scheme came to just over £1 billion, despite £3 billion being initially promised. The Government are going nowhere near far enough to truly level up constituencies like mine. What we need is bold action, but the Bill, in its current form, is simply more empty rhetoric.”
“My constituents have concluded that the Government simply do not care about them and their everyday struggles. In 2019, the Prime Minister visited Sheffield and delivered a promise to level up every corner of the UK, but let us look at what has happened since. Independent analysis shows that, by the Government’s own 12 levelling-up metrics, my constituency has fallen even further behind. The South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority has big ambitions for the area, but they are being held back by the Government. The Mayor made a detailed £474 million bid for a bus service improvement plan that truly would have helped to level up the region, but it was rejected by the Government.”
“When these issues have been put to Ministers, they have constantly stuck to the line that high-paid jobs are the solution, but, under the Government’s watch, work is no longer a reliable route out of poverty. Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that the proportion of families in poverty where at least one adult is working is at an all-time high. Those figures are the culmination of the Government standing back for more than a decade while low pay and insecure work became more and more prevalent in our economy. The truth is that we have a Government too distracted by scandals of their own making to focus on delivering the changes that the country needs. The never-ending soap opera of the Prime Minister means that, for communities like mine, levelling-up is seen as merely an afterthought.”
“Government Members may be quick to point out subsequent rises in universal credit and the state pension this year, but they are a drop in the ocean compared to the high levels of inflation, which are putting more and more pressure on household budgets. We cannot level up when people are still being pushed into a never-ending cycle of poverty. Decisions were made in a very different economic climate, and inflation has now sky-rocketed to a 40-year high. If the Government are serious about levelling up, they must revisit their cuts, which have taken money out of people’s pockets at a time when the cost of everyday essentials is spiralling out of control.”
“That inevitably means that budgets are being stretched thinner and thinner, and my constituents are left to deal with the consequences. Speaking of budgets being stretched, the cost of living crisis means that families are having to cut back even further to make ends meet, but the Government have turned their back on them. In my constituency, the claimant count is almost double the national average. It was therefore a hammer blow when, last year, the Government callously slashed universal credit by £20 a week. Not only that but they scrapped the triple lock on pensions, leaving households with impossible choices to make.”
“In my constituency, levelling-up is more than just a buzzword. Communities like mine have borne the full brunt of 12 years of the Conservative Government’s austerity agenda and a chronic lack of investment. Forgive me if I do not trust the very same party when it claims that it is the one to fix the mess that it has made. Let us look at what the Government have done to council funding. Local authorities are the backbone of our society, delivering the services that people rely on every single day. Levelling up will be achieved only if our local authorities are empowered with the investment they need to deliver for their communities, but their funding has been cut to the bone by the Conservatives. Sheffield City Council has seen its central Government grant cut by more than £3 billion in real terms since 2010.”
“Q3. Days before the election of disgraced former Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan, his victim warned the Conservative party of the abuse that he had suffered.”
“Shockingly, the party has failed to act on the report and still will not explain why. That is why Rotherham child sexual exploitation survivor Sammy Woodhouse has called for an independent investigation into the failure, warning that the Conservative party has “broken the trust of victims”. Will the Prime Minister personally back that call and launch an independent investigation into the failure to act so that victims can have confidence that his party will never again turn a blind eye?”
“Last year, the Chancellor slashed the road maintenance budget by £400 million, but we now know that those cuts are going even further. Pothole funding is set to be cut by 30% in real terms by the end of this Parliament. That is the equivalent of almost 12 million potholes every single year. Last year, the Chancellor confidently told the British public to enjoy National Pothole Day before the potholes are all gone, but that statement is now nothing more than a distant memory. Is that not further proof, if it were ever needed, that the Government are asleep at the wheel while road users continue to suffer on roads that are not fit for purpose?”
“The cost of living crisis is causing immense hardship for my constituents in Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, many of whom have been struggling for the past 12 years of this Government’s austerity policies. Can the Chancellor look me in the eye and tell me that he is doing everything he can to prevent my constituents from falling into a never-ending cycle of poverty, particularly given that the Prime Minister admitted last week that he believes the Government have not done enough?”
“T-levels are an important addition to our education system, but they should not come at the expense of existing qualifications that have proved to be successful. BTECs are taken by almost a third of 16 to 18-year-old students and help to ensure that young people enter adulthood with a level 3 qualification, which is vital when entering the workforce. Rolling them back will undermine that work as well as cut student choice and degrade the variety of qualifications that employers can look for. Students who do not qualify for T-levels could end up falling through the cracks and miss out completely on any levelling-up exercise, should it even exist.”