PM, in response to Ed Davey at PMQs, says measures could help address ‘poisonous politics’
Ed Davey , the Lib Dem leader, asks if the PM will support the proposal by the Lib Dem MP Josh Babarinde for people to be allowed to call themselves black English or Asian English on the census.
Davey says it is wrong to claim people have to be white to be English.
double quotation mark Shamefully, even some in this house have argued for this racist ideology. We must reject it as the Conservative leader, to her great credit, has done.
We should start with a census with the only English option, when you’re asked about your ethnicity, is white English.
[Babarinde] a proud Englishman, introduced a bill yesterday to change that to create new options like black English and Asian English. Will the prime minister support his bill?
Burnham says he has also praised Badenoch for her comments on race.
double quotation mark I haven’t looked at the detail of the bill, but I stand here thinking that I would want to support that bill to directly take on the poisonous politics that we’ve seen from some in this house who are seeking to divide us.
We must move on from a decade of division and drift in this country. We must bring people back together.
I am interested in working with anyone in this house who shares that name.
This is from my colleague Pippa Crerar on Kemi Badenoch saying at PMQs that the Treasury forecasts assume the Rosebank oilfield project will go ahead.
double quotation mark Kemi Badenoch says that chancellor John Healey had already banked the revenue from Rosebank oil field, which are expected to hit about £500m by the end of this parliament.
When we revealed this last month, Treasury officials told us the money had been included in forecasts from the OBR since 2019, and that doing so would not prevent the energy secretary from blocking it.
Julian Lewis (Con) asked a closed question (one tabled in advance, where the MP gets a follow-up, but it has to be on the subject previously agreed). His question was whether the threat from Russia now is as great as during the cold war years.
double quotation mark Compared to the cold war, rapid changes in technology, including AI, cyber warfare and autonomous systems mean we face new, complex threats.
Lewis urged the government to stop boasting about how it has increased military spending at the fastest rate since the end of the cold war. That claim does not take account of how the threat now is much greater than it was at the end of the cold war, he said.
Burnham insisted he was not compacent about the threat.
Labour’s Diane Abbott asked Burnham if he agreed “that we should never forget to honour the contribution of generations of immigrants to the society”.
double quotation mark [Abbott] speaks very powerfully on this issue from personal experience .. And I saw a people from around the world caring, for my dad. She is absolutely right to say that we must celebrate their contribution, as I did in my speech to the party conference.
And we must take on a politics that seeks to say to those people that they have no place here. They do.
Martin Rhodes (Lab) asked what the goverment was doing to tackle the problems caused by illegally-modified e-bikes.
Burnham said the government was considering “tougher regulations for the sale of non-compliant e-bikes and conversion kits across the UK”. He said:
double quotation mark The safety risks posed by e-bikes that are running at excess speeds need to be stopped.
Ian Sollom (Lib Dem) asks about a constituent who has been in a wheelchair since he was two and who needs care every day. Every pound he saves above £23,250 has to go into his care, he says. He asks the PM to remove this limit.
Burnham says this illustrates why the system needs to be reformed.
He says the rules are “unfair”. He says the minimum income guarantee for disabled adults is being increased.
And he says cross-party talks on social care will take place before the end of the year.
Jeremy Corbyn , the Your Party parliamentary leader, asks Burnham to ensure that more aid gets into Gaza. And he asks him to back an inquiry into Britain’s participation in “the bombardment of Gaza through his supply of weapons and security information to Israel”.
double quotation mark The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains heartbreaking and we are doing everything that we can to put pressure on the Israeli government to allow the necessary aid into Gaza and to lift the restrictions on it.
Of course, we’ve also taken further steps in relation to sanctions, particularly, in relation to the settlements in the West Bank, to make sure that we preserve the viability of a two state solution.
We await the outcome of the negotiations following the Israeli, general election.
Burnham says Corbyn can be confident the government will follow the path it has set out.
He does not address the call for an inquiry.
Davey turns to Neets, and he says the single biggest thing to help the economy, which would get more young people into work, would be joining the single market.
Burnham says the deal he is agreeing with the EU will add 0.4% to GDP.
On Neets, he says one reason the situation is so bad for youth unemployment is because the last Tory government rejected the recommendations from Sir Kevan Collins, the Covid recovery tsar.
Ed Davey , the Lib Dem leader, asks if the PM will support the proposal by the Lib Dem MP Josh Babarinde for people to be allowed to call themselves black English or Asian English on the census.
Davey says it is wrong to claim people have to be white to be English.
double quotation mark Shamefully, even some in this house have argued for this racist ideology. We must reject it as the Conservative leader, to her great credit, has done.
We should start with a census with the only English option, when you’re asked about your ethnicity, is white English.
[Babarinde] a proud Englishman, introduced a bill yesterday to change that to create new options like black English and Asian English. Will the prime minister support his bill?
Burnham says he has also praised Badenoch for her comments on race.
double quotation mark I haven’t looked at the detail of the bill, but I stand here thinking that I would want to support that bill to directly take on the poisonous politics that we’ve seen from some in this house who are seeking to divide us.
We must move on from a decade of division and drift in this country. We must bring people back together.
I am interested in working with anyone in this house who shares that name.
Badenoch says Burnham does not seem to know about the legislation on the North Sea his government is passing. She says the government is “totally adrift”, and needs consultant to tell it what to think.
double quotation mark Meanwhile, the whole country is in limbo. Labour MPs want to pretend that Keir Starmer simply walked off into the sunset, when in reality this man knifed him in the back and now doesn’t know what to do.
Isn’t it the truth that they’re all sat there shaking their heads and wondering whether it was all worth it?
double quotation mark People at home will have heard that I am bringing forward a National Care Service when they ignored social care for years and years.
I am acting to get people’s energy bills down when they didn’t do it.
And I listen to her when she talks at the despatch box as though they’ve got everything right. A quarter of a million young people became Neet between 2021 and 2024, when she was in was in the cabinet. The welfare bill rose by £33bn in her last year in office, when she was in the cabinet.
When is she going to come to this house with real proposals to address those things, rather than repeating more of the same.
He says people will see his plans when the 10-year plan is published.
Badenoch says the government is legislating to ban drilling off Scotland. That is ludicrous, she says.
Burnham says the Jackdaw gas field has been approved. And the new windfarms are going ahead. He goes on:
double quotation mark If she wants to,address energy policy in this house, perhaps we can talk about why energy bills went up and up under the party opposite. Perhaps we can discuss how they lost public control and lost control of people’s bills and left people paying more and more.
