Browse content similar to 13/01/2017. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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Hello and welcome to the Week In Parliament. | :00:19. | :00:20. | |
As winter tightens its grip, there's a row in the Commons | :00:21. | :00:24. | |
The only way we can ensure we've got funding | :00:25. | :00:34. | |
for the National Health Service is a strong economy. | :00:35. | :00:37. | |
With the Stormont assembly in crisis, we find out what's gone | :00:38. | :00:40. | |
wrong in Northern Ireland's power sharing agreement. | :00:41. | :00:44. | |
A damning indictment of the UK's approach to defence. | :00:45. | :00:49. | |
We are short-sighted, penny-pinching, | :00:50. | :00:51. | |
We are complacent and we are ostrich-like | :00:52. | :00:55. | |
to the way in which the world has become interconnected. | :00:56. | :00:59. | |
And, how can we get more women into parliament, | :01:00. | :01:02. | |
a senior MP thinks it's time for action. | :01:03. | :01:05. | |
In our committee sessions, we heard very | :01:06. | :01:07. | |
warm words from all of the party chair and leaders. | :01:08. | :01:10. | |
We didn't really hear very much detail. | :01:11. | :01:14. | |
But, first, it was a Parliamentary week dominated by the stresses | :01:15. | :01:17. | |
MPs returned to Westminster after the Christmas break to news | :01:18. | :01:23. | |
that the National Health Service had been at full stretch | :01:24. | :01:26. | |
The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told the Commons that it had been | :01:27. | :01:31. | |
a tough Christmas and that, with cold weather on the way, | :01:32. | :01:33. | |
the winter pressures were likely to continue. | :01:34. | :01:44. | |
The Tuesday after Christmas was the busiest day | :01:45. | :01:46. | |
And some hospitals are reporting that A attendances are up to 30% | :01:47. | :01:50. | |
However, looking to the future, it is clear we need | :01:51. | :02:03. | |
to have an honest discussion with the public about the purpose | :02:04. | :02:06. | |
There is nowhere outside the UK that commits to all patients | :02:07. | :02:09. | |
that we will sort out any health needs within four hours. | :02:10. | :02:12. | |
Since it was announced in 2000, there are nearly 9 million | :02:13. | :02:15. | |
more visits to our A, up to 30% of whom are NHS England | :02:16. | :02:18. | |
So, if we are to protect our four hour standard, we need to be clear | :02:19. | :02:28. | |
it is a promise to sort out all urgent health problems | :02:29. | :02:31. | |
within four hours, but not all health problems, however minor. | :02:32. | :02:42. | |
Labour said the NHS was in a worse state than the Health | :02:43. | :02:45. | |
Several hospitals have warned they can't offer comprehensive care. | :02:46. | :02:52. | |
Elderly patients have been left languishing on hospital | :02:53. | :02:54. | |
trolleys in corridors, sometimes for over 24 hours. | :02:55. | :03:00. | |
And he says care is only falling over in a couple of places. | :03:01. | :03:05. | |
I know La La Land did well at the Golden Globes last night. | :03:06. | :03:09. | |
I didn't realise the Secretary of State was living there. | :03:10. | :03:11. | |
Perhaps that's where he's been all weekend. | :03:12. | :03:19. | |
He seems to be blaming the public for overwhelming A departments | :03:20. | :03:22. | |
when he well knows the reason the public go to A | :03:23. | :03:24. | |
is because they can't get to see their GP, | :03:25. | :03:26. | |
So it was no surprise when the Labour raised the NHS | :03:27. | :03:35. | |
at prime minister's questions a couple of days later. | :03:36. | :03:40. | |
Earlier this week, the Prime Minister said she wanted | :03:41. | :03:42. | |
More people sharing hospital corridors on trolleys. | :03:43. | :03:46. | |
More people sharing waiting areas in A departments. | :03:47. | :03:48. | |
More people sharing in excise duty created by this government. | :03:49. | :03:52. | |
Our NHS, Mr Speaker, is in crisis but the Prime Minister is in denial. | :03:53. | :03:57. | |
Can I suggest to her on the economic question cancel | :03:58. | :04:01. | |
Spend the money where it's needed, on people in desperate need | :04:02. | :04:06. | |
He talks to me about corporation tax, and restoring the cuts | :04:07. | :04:21. | |
The Labour Party has already spent that money eight times. | :04:22. | :04:24. | |
The last thing the NHS needs is a cheque from Labour that bounces. | :04:25. | :04:27. | |
The only way we can make sure we've got funding for the National health | :04:28. | :04:31. | |
Yesterday, the honourable gentleman proved that he's | :04:32. | :04:36. | |
not only incompetent but that he destroy our economy, | :04:37. | :04:39. | |
and that would devastate our National Health Service. | :04:40. | :04:49. | |
Does the NHS have the money it needs? The head of the NHS said that | :04:50. | :04:57. | |
spending in real terms would decrease. | :04:58. | :05:00. | |
I think it would be stretching it to say the NHS | :05:01. | :05:03. | |
has got more than it has asked for. | :05:04. | :05:05. | |
Would you agree there's not enough money, that there is a clear gap? | :05:06. | :05:09. | |
There are clearly very substantial pressures, | :05:10. | :05:10. | |
and I don't think it helps anybody to try and pretend | :05:11. | :05:13. | |
But that's not a new phenomenon, to some extent. | :05:14. | :05:16. | |
It's a phenomenon that is intensifying. | :05:17. | :05:18. | |
I think this debate, 2020 this, 2020 that kind | :05:19. | :05:20. | |
of misses the point, actually, which is that | :05:21. | :05:22. | |
in the here and now there are very real pressures. | :05:23. | :05:24. | |
Over the next three years, funding is going to be highly constrained. | :05:25. | :05:27. | |
And in 2018/19, as I've previously said in October, | :05:28. | :05:29. | |
real terms NHS spending per person in England is going to go down, | :05:30. | :05:32. | |
ten years after Lehman Brothers and austerity began. | :05:33. | :05:35. | |
We all understand why that is, but let's not pretend that's not | :05:36. | :05:38. | |
placing huge pressure on the service. | :05:39. | :05:44. | |
A political crisis is threatening the future of the power sharing | :05:45. | :05:48. | |
On Monday night Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness resigned | :05:49. | :05:53. | |
as Deputy First Minister and in effect brought down the | :05:54. | :05:56. | |
But what's going on and how did we get here? | :05:57. | :06:01. | |
This has ostensibly been triggered because of the financial | :06:02. | :06:16. | |
mismanagement of a green energy scheme. The incentive was set up in | :06:17. | :06:21. | |
2012 and overseen by DUP ministers. It was supposed to encourage | :06:22. | :06:26. | |
businesses to switch to environmentally friendly fuels. | :06:27. | :06:29. | |
There was no upper limit on payments service scheme ran over budget. The | :06:30. | :06:34. | |
overspend is expected to run to almost half ?1 billion. The Deputy | :06:35. | :06:39. | |
first Minister, Martin McGuinness, asked Arlene Foster to stand aside | :06:40. | :06:43. | |
as first Minister for an investigation but she refused to do | :06:44. | :06:47. | |
so, so Mr McGuinness has now resigned himself. That puts Mrs | :06:48. | :06:51. | |
Foster out of a job because under the power-sharing system the first | :06:52. | :06:54. | |
and deputy first ministers cannot work in isolation. There are very | :06:55. | :07:00. | |
many other disagreements on issues like Brexit, same-sex marriage and | :07:01. | :07:05. | |
budgets. It has never been an easy relationship. Under the Stormont | :07:06. | :07:11. | |
rules, if the posts aren't filled within seven days, the Northern | :07:12. | :07:14. | |
Ireland Secretary must, by law, call the new election to the Stormont | :07:15. | :07:18. | |
assembly. It's only been eight months since the last one. | :07:19. | :07:21. | |
The crisis was raised at prime minister's questions | :07:22. | :07:23. | |
by the SNP's Westminster leader, who thought the breakdown could have | :07:24. | :07:26. | |
The Prime Minister has indicated that she wants to take the views | :07:27. | :07:29. | |
of the elected representatives and the devolved institutions | :07:30. | :07:31. | |
So it stands to reason then that if there is no | :07:32. | :07:36. | |
Northern Ireland Assembly and no Northern Ireland Executive for much | :07:37. | :07:39. | |
of the time before the March timetable that she has set | :07:40. | :07:43. | |
for invoking article 50, she will be unable to consult properly, | :07:44. | :07:49. | |
to discuss fully and to find agreement on the complex | :07:50. | :07:52. | |
In these circumstances, will the Prime Minister postpone | :07:53. | :07:59. | |
Or will she just plough on regardless? | :08:00. | :08:12. | |
I am clear that, first of all, we want to try to ensure that, | :08:13. | :08:16. | |
?within this period of seven days, we can find a resolution | :08:17. | :08:18. | |
to the political situation in Northern Ireland, | :08:19. | :08:20. | |
so that we can to see the Assembly government continuing. | :08:21. | :08:25. | |
But I am also clear that, in the discussions that we have, | :08:26. | :08:28. | |
it will be possible, it is still the case that Ministers | :08:29. | :08:32. | |
are in place and that, obviously, there are executives in place, | :08:33. | :08:36. | |
that we are still able to take the views of | :08:37. | :08:38. | |
When Tony Blair swept to power in 1997 there was much fanfare | :08:39. | :08:48. | |
about the number of women who'd become MPs. | :08:49. | :08:51. | |
Nicknamed the Blair Babes they represented a big | :08:52. | :08:54. | |
jump in the numbers, in large part due to Labour's policy | :08:55. | :08:57. | |
In total 101 Labour women were elected in 1997, | :08:58. | :09:03. | |
doubling the overall total of female MPs, from 60 to 120. | :09:04. | :09:08. | |
Spin forward twenty years and there are now 195 women MPs, | :09:09. | :09:14. | |
The Women and Equalities committee has been looking at how | :09:15. | :09:19. | |
It's suggested that in future political parties should be fined | :09:20. | :09:24. | |
if they don't ensure at least 45% of general election | :09:25. | :09:28. | |
I asked the Committee chair, Maria Miller, if a system of fines | :09:29. | :09:33. | |
wouldn't have a disproportionate impact on smaller parties. | :09:34. | :09:38. | |
Well, clearly, you'd have to look at how smaller parties were dealt | :09:39. | :09:41. | |
with but the lion's share of MPs are from the main parties, | :09:42. | :09:46. | |
who contest all of the Westminster seats, and we feel very strongly, | :09:47. | :09:51. | |
if you're going to put measures like a 45% vote | :09:52. | :09:55. | |
on candidates in place, there needs to be teeth there | :09:56. | :09:58. | |
In the end, doesn't this all come down to the local associations that | :09:59. | :10:05. | |
you can say to the parties, this is what we want. | :10:06. | :10:07. | |
But if you have local associations which have slightly older members, | :10:08. | :10:10. | |
slightly old-fashioned views, they might just still cling | :10:11. | :10:13. | |
onto this idea that they prefer to have a man doing the job, | :10:14. | :10:16. | |
and that's what you've got to overcome. | :10:17. | :10:19. | |
At the 2015 general election, only one in four candidates was female. | :10:20. | :10:23. | |
So we're not really giving people the chance to be able | :10:24. | :10:27. | |
Local associations may not be given enough choice from female | :10:28. | :10:33. | |
So I think we've really got to look back at the root cause of this, | :10:34. | :10:39. | |
which is getting more women to consider putting | :10:40. | :10:41. | |
themselves forward to become a member of Parliament. | :10:42. | :10:44. | |
A lot of that is about outreach by Parliament to get | :10:45. | :10:46. | |
people to consider that, but also by the parties as well. | :10:47. | :10:51. | |
What is it that puts women off putting themselves forward? | :10:52. | :10:54. | |
I think we have in the past focused a great deal on things like child | :10:55. | :10:58. | |
care and family friendly working, and the work that Sarah Charles has | :10:59. | :11:01. | |
But I think it's more than that, that's really emerging now. | :11:02. | :11:07. | |
And I think the dissuading effect of online abuse, sexual harassment, | :11:08. | :11:12. | |
but also the murder of Jo Cox last year, I think really shows those | :11:13. | :11:17. | |
intimidatory aspects also need to be dealt with. | :11:18. | :11:22. | |
And Parliament is dealing with that at the moment. | :11:23. | :11:25. | |
But, surely, those would be things that would put off | :11:26. | :11:28. | |
But I think all of the research would suggest that women | :11:29. | :11:31. | |
are disproportionately affected by, particularly, online abuse. | :11:32. | :11:36. | |
And I applaud the work the police are doing | :11:37. | :11:38. | |
on securing convictions there, but it is an element that I think | :11:39. | :11:41. | |
But we also need to have more effective outreach to get more women | :11:42. | :11:48. | |
to consider how important it would be to be able to represent | :11:49. | :11:52. | |
the community but also improve the community in which they live. | :11:53. | :11:56. | |
It's not for your committee to tell parties exactly | :11:57. | :12:00. | |
Isn't the long and short of it that all women short lists have worked | :12:01. | :12:05. | |
and that the Labour Party has increased more dramatically and more | :12:06. | :12:08. | |
Just in the same way as having a female prime minister isn't | :12:09. | :12:16. | |
the panacea for all evils, neither is all women short lists. | :12:17. | :12:18. | |
I think different political parties have done different | :12:19. | :12:20. | |
And they need to have a plan which is effective. | :12:21. | :12:26. | |
And, whilst in our committee sessions we heard very warm words | :12:27. | :12:29. | |
from all of the party chair and leaders, we didn't really | :12:30. | :12:32. | |
So I think the most important thing is those parties have a clear plan | :12:33. | :12:39. | |
How confident are you that things will be different this time around, | :12:40. | :12:46. | |
but going into the next election, there will be more female | :12:47. | :12:49. | |
I think that will only happen if the parties | :12:50. | :12:54. | |
now take a hard look at the processes their following | :12:55. | :12:58. | |
and make sure they've got clear plans in place to put women | :12:59. | :13:01. | |
At the moment, we're not seeing those plans come through. | :13:02. | :13:06. | |
And if we don't have plans in place, there will no | :13:07. | :13:09. | |
It's highly likely at the next election, with the reduction | :13:10. | :13:13. | |
of the number of constituencies, there will be fewer | :13:14. | :13:21. | |
opportunities for women to come through or for new members | :13:22. | :13:23. | |
So, those parties need to have a clear plan and, | :13:24. | :13:27. | |
So, it doesn't sound to me like you're terribly optimistic. | :13:28. | :13:31. | |
Only if we see, I think, a radical change in not just | :13:32. | :13:35. | |
the warm words we're hearing from parties but actually | :13:36. | :13:37. | |
the practical measures that are put in place, | :13:38. | :13:39. | |
the funding they are putting in place will we see that change. | :13:40. | :13:42. | |
Perhaps there's too many other things to think about at the moment. | :13:43. | :13:45. | |
We've got a little bit of time before the next election, I hope. | :13:46. | :13:48. | |
A little bit of time for real action. | :13:49. | :13:50. | |
All right, we will get you back to see how it's going. | :13:51. | :13:53. | |
Maria Miller, thank you very much indeed for coming | :13:54. | :13:55. | |
Now let's take a look at some news from around Westminster in brief. | :13:56. | :14:00. | |
There's was a big surprise in Westminster on Friday morning | :14:01. | :14:03. | |
with the announcement that the Labour MP Tristram Hunt | :14:04. | :14:06. | |
is to stand down to become the director of the Victoria | :14:07. | :14:08. | |
His decision will trigger a by election in the Stoke-on-Trent | :14:09. | :14:13. | |
In a letter to local party members, the former education spokesman, | :14:14. | :14:18. | |
who resigned from the Shadow Cabinet when Jeremy Corbyn was elected party | :14:19. | :14:21. | |
leader, said serving in Parliament had been "both deeply rewarding | :14:22. | :14:27. | |
Financial jobs in London are bound to be affected by Brexit, | :14:28. | :14:33. | |
but a lack of knowledge about the government's plans | :14:34. | :14:36. | |
That was the message to the Commons Treasury Committee | :14:37. | :14:39. | |
from leading financiers including the head of the London | :14:40. | :14:42. | |
They called for the City to have its own transitional arrangements, | :14:43. | :14:47. | |
known as "grandfathering", meaning new rules wouldn't apply | :14:48. | :14:50. | |
Immigrants have to make more effort to fit in, | :14:51. | :15:00. | |
Part of the uncertainty and the planning is how much you would need | :15:01. | :15:09. | |
to move. Clearly, you would need to move the front part of the business. | :15:10. | :15:14. | |
But the question would be whether the negotiation would allow the | :15:15. | :15:19. | |
settlement, the risk management, the accounting and so on to the done | :15:20. | :15:25. | |
outside of EU 27 or whether it is part of the negotiations. That is a | :15:26. | :15:32. | |
political negotiation, as much as a technical negotiation. | :15:33. | :15:37. | |
Immigrants have to make more effort to fit in, | :15:38. | :15:39. | |
that's according to the author of last month's Casey | :15:40. | :15:42. | |
Dame Louise Casey told MPs that Britain needed to be "less shy" | :15:43. | :15:45. | |
about telling immigrants what was expected from them. | :15:46. | :16:10. | |
I think that is a sound bite which people like to say, that | :16:11. | :16:13. | |
I would say that if we stick with the road analogy, | :16:14. | :16:17. | |
I think integration is more like you've got a bloody big | :16:18. | :16:19. | |
motorway, and you have the slip road of people coming | :16:20. | :16:22. | |
in from the outside, and what you need to do | :16:23. | :16:24. | |
is the people in the middle in the motorway need to accommodate | :16:25. | :16:27. | |
and be gentle and kind to people coming in from the outside lane. | :16:28. | :16:30. | |
We're all in the direction and we are all heading | :16:31. | :16:32. | |
We are getting to this place where we have decided | :16:33. | :16:36. | |
To some degree, it is a two-way street but to some worry it is not. | :16:37. | :16:41. | |
There is more give on one side and more take on the other. | :16:42. | :16:44. | |
And I think that is where we have made a mistake which is we have | :16:45. | :16:48. | |
The government was defeated in the Lords on Monday over plans | :16:49. | :16:54. | |
to change the way England's universities are run. | :16:55. | :16:56. | |
The legislation is designed to make it easier for | :16:57. | :16:58. | |
Peers voted in favour of an opposition amendment | :16:59. | :17:01. | |
to the Higher Education Bill to define the powers | :17:02. | :17:03. | |
One of the aims is to extend the University title. This piece of | :17:04. | :17:14. | |
legislation has made no attempt to define what a university is or its | :17:15. | :17:19. | |
role in society more widely and particularly what do we expect these | :17:20. | :17:21. | |
new universities to do. The government spokesman said | :17:22. | :17:24. | |
there were dangers in setting out a definition of a university that | :17:25. | :17:28. | |
could be challenged in the courts. Universities have never been defined | :17:29. | :17:36. | |
in legislation before and we have not led to any problems in the | :17:37. | :17:38. | |
system. Labour says plans to close dozens | :17:39. | :17:40. | |
of local tax offices should be immediately scrapped | :17:41. | :17:43. | |
after a spending watchdog found costs have spiralled | :17:44. | :17:45. | |
The National Audit Office revealed HMRC has had to rethink | :17:46. | :17:47. | |
the proposals after underestimating the expense and scale | :17:48. | :17:49. | |
of disruption involved. The NA oh reports confirm our fears, | :17:50. | :18:03. | |
first of all, it calls the original office closure plan unrealistic, the | :18:04. | :18:08. | |
estimates of the cost of the move increased by 22%, ?600 million | :18:09. | :18:14. | |
extra, further job losses, it finds the cost of redundancy and travel | :18:15. | :18:19. | |
have tripled to 54 million and it says HMRC cannot demonstrate how it | :18:20. | :18:24. | |
services cannot be improved and it hasn't even introduced a business | :18:25. | :18:30. | |
plan. As we predict it, this is an emerging disaster. Given how clear | :18:31. | :18:35. | |
and stark warnings that truly are, would it not simply make more sense | :18:36. | :18:42. | |
to pause this, rip it up, and start again? For the public, this seems a | :18:43. | :18:47. | |
better, more modern service, run by fewer staff, costing ?18 million a | :18:48. | :18:52. | |
year less by the time that changes take effect. It's a plan to say | :18:53. | :18:58. | |
goodbye to the days of manual assessing that can be done more | :18:59. | :18:59. | |
easily with today's technology. The UK's Green Investment Bank could | :19:00. | :19:03. | |
be killed off if the government goes ahead with plans to sell it, | :19:04. | :19:06. | |
according to one MP. The bank supports offshore wind | :19:07. | :19:08. | |
farms and other green projects. The government has announced plans | :19:09. | :19:10. | |
to part-privatise it, with Australian bank Macquarie | :19:11. | :19:12. | |
thought to be the preferred bidder. It has been widely recognised as an | :19:13. | :19:31. | |
innovative project. And yet, this preferred it not only has a dismal | :19:32. | :19:36. | |
and terrible environmental record, it also has an appalling track | :19:37. | :19:37. | |
record of assets. The minister said he couldn't | :19:38. | :19:40. | |
comment on the process, potential It is precisely because we want them | :19:41. | :19:51. | |
to do more unfettered by the constraints of the state that we are | :19:52. | :19:54. | |
seeking to put it into the private sector. The objectives we have set | :19:55. | :19:58. | |
out in the cell could not be clearer. We have also been very | :19:59. | :20:02. | |
clear that the reason we want to move into the private sector is to | :20:03. | :20:06. | |
enable the business to grow and continue as an institution | :20:07. | :20:08. | |
supporting investment in the green economy. | :20:09. | :20:11. | |
A former Nato secretary general has warned against further defence cuts, | :20:12. | :20:14. | |
saying the UK is sleepwalking into potential calamity. | :20:15. | :20:16. | |
Opening a debate on the UK's armed forces capability the Labour | :20:17. | :20:18. | |
former defence secretary, Lord Robertson, also | :20:19. | :20:21. | |
questioned US President elect Donald Trump's attitude to NATO. | :20:22. | :20:30. | |
During the US election campaign Donald Trump appeared to play down | :20:31. | :20:33. | |
the importance of the military alliance which raised questions | :20:34. | :20:35. | |
about Nato's commitment, known as Article five, | :20:36. | :20:41. | |
which says members will support Nato countries if they're attacked. | :20:42. | :20:44. | |
In his speech in the Lords, Lord Robertson warned the world | :20:45. | :20:48. | |
was now seeing a "bonfire of the post cold war certainties." | :20:49. | :20:50. | |
He told peers he'd recently been asked what was the biggest threat | :20:51. | :20:53. | |
to the safety and security of the UK and the list of potential | :20:54. | :20:56. | |
I considered some of the immediate and looming threats and challenges. | :20:57. | :21:04. | |
Migration flows which have suddenly ended up on our shores. | :21:05. | :21:21. | |
The spread of religious extremism and Jihadi violence plumbing | :21:22. | :21:23. | |
But my answer to the question of what is the greatest threat, | :21:24. | :21:33. | |
it is ourselves, we are ur own worst enemies. | :21:34. | :21:35. | |
We are shortsighted, penny pinching, naively optimistic, | :21:36. | :21:38. | |
we're complacent, and we are ostrich like to the way in which the world | :21:39. | :21:42. | |
has become interconnected, more fragile, and more unpredictable. | :21:43. | :21:47. | |
And Donald, with his Mexican wall, with new protectionism | :21:48. | :21:59. | |
and isolationism, with a serious questioning of Nato solidarity, | :22:00. | :22:04. | |
with a belief in torture and with Lieutenant General Michael Flynn | :22:05. | :22:06. | |
as his chief security adviser, perhaps we don't need more | :22:07. | :22:09. | |
I hope President Putin and his colleagues realised how easily that | :22:10. | :22:36. | |
mobilisations and provocations, that accidents can happen, | :22:37. | :22:37. | |
And we don't have to have the memories of the First World War | :22:38. | :22:42. | |
and of the Second World War where wars were started by accident | :22:43. | :22:45. | |
involving the wrong people, the wrong time, they weren't | :22:46. | :22:47. | |
And I just do take that threat very seriously. | :22:48. | :22:52. | |
In the face of Russian ambition, my lords, European can no longer | :22:53. | :22:56. | |
It is an interesting reflection that whereas the word burden | :22:57. | :23:01. | |
sharing used to be used, when I went to Washington, now, | :23:02. | :23:05. | |
the assessment of Europe is my contribution is shall we say | :23:06. | :23:09. | |
expressed in more in trenchant and perhaps less suitable terms | :23:10. | :23:11. | |
We lack strength in numbers and are not well placed to deal with it. | :23:12. | :23:33. | |
More independently minded we become, the more capability we need in a | :23:34. | :23:38. | |
dangerous world. Surely, the two must go together. Defence standing | :23:39. | :23:46. | |
is going up. When it increases by 5 billion, it is nonsense for anyone | :23:47. | :23:51. | |
to suggest there is no new funding. I hope it is clear that the | :23:52. | :23:54. | |
government fully recognises the breadth and severity of threats that | :23:55. | :24:00. | |
face our country today. We know that in this is of uncertainty, we can | :24:01. | :24:04. | |
take nothing for granted. The approach we have taken in the STS or | :24:05. | :24:09. | |
is the right one for strengthening our security and it is the one to | :24:10. | :24:12. | |
which this government is fully committed. | :24:13. | :24:14. | |
Now for something very different, it's time to take a look at some | :24:15. | :24:18. | |
of the other political stories making the news this week. | :24:19. | :24:21. | |
With our countdown, here's Alex Partridge. | :24:22. | :24:23. | |
New minister Lord O'Shaughnessy hasn't exactly made | :24:24. | :24:26. | |
That might be why one was caught asking who he was while he made | :24:27. | :24:33. | |
We are used to political U-turns but Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt | :24:34. | :24:39. | |
ended up doing a real-life U-turn while looking for his car. | :24:40. | :24:42. | |
Tuesday's Foreign Office questions clocked in at more than 70 minutes | :24:43. | :24:46. | |
but it wasn't nearly enough for Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. | :24:47. | :24:49. | |
For two hours, the minister chunters from a sedentary position. | :24:50. | :24:55. | |
Jeremy Corbyn's relaunch also involves chatting | :24:56. | :25:01. | |
He offered to talk some sense into ITV's Piers Morgan | :25:02. | :25:05. | |
on the subject of embattled arsenal boss Arsene Wenger. | :25:06. | :25:07. | |
And on Thursday, Labour's Chris Bryant took an opportunity | :25:08. | :25:10. | |
to send his best wishes to the Speaker | :25:11. | :25:13. | |
Sorry, Mr Speaker, May I first of all wish | :25:14. | :25:18. | |
Kiss A Ginger Day activity is probably perfectly lawful | :25:19. | :25:22. | |
but I've got no plans to partake of it myself. | :25:23. | :25:33. | |
Alex Partridge, bringing us to the end of this week's programme, | :25:34. | :25:37. | |
but do join Joanna Shinn on Monday night at 11pm for another round up | :25:38. | :25:40. | |
of the best of the day here at Westminster. | :25:41. | :25:43. |