Steven Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish a breakdown of the cost of £2285 for Government-approved covid-19 quarantine hotels.
Steven Baker: I think that, like me, my hon. Friend would prefer to keep the £20 uplift, but we know that it is about £6 billion, which is 10% of the defence budget. Would he support the Minister pressing, in the spending review, for a sum of money—perhaps to improve the work allowance and taper rate—to help just the people he is talking about?
Steven Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will remove Pakistan from the covid-19 red list of countries; and if he will make a statement.
Steven Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what the average capital cost per megawatt of capacity is for UK offshore wind farms that (a) were commissioned in the last five years, (b) are due to be commissioned in the next five years and (c) was assumed in his Department's 2020 Cost of Electricity Generation report.
Steven Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the two-monthly report on the status of the provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 published on 21 July 2021, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits and demerits of maintaining powers under (a) section 51 and (b) Schedule 21 of that Act.
Steven Baker: Among other things, my right hon. Friend is keeping covid status certification in reserve, and he is leaving mass asymptomatic testing in place, together with contact tracing. As my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said, the public health powers are still there, of course allowing the Secretary of State to lock us down at the stroke of his pen without...
Steven Baker: Just returning to stigmatisation, will the Minister guarantee that a child’s ability to receive an education equally with their peers will never be linked to their vaccination status?
Steven Baker: My hon. Friend has reminded me that I did a terrible thing and failed to acknowledge the great plethora of Conservative councillors who I have in my constituency. I said “supporters”, but there are councillors too. We have had many Conservative—and, indeed, Labour—Muslim councillors in Wycombe for a very long time. I am extremely grateful for all of the brilliant work that they do.
Steven Baker: I begin by referring to my unremunerated interest as advisory board chairman of Conservatives Against Racism for Equality. I am grateful for the opportunity to follow the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana), who made a very moving speech. I am very sorry indeed that she has been treated so very disgracefully. There can be no place at all in our society for the way she has been...
Steven Baker: I want to begin by thinking through what Labour would do if it were in power. [Interruption.] I am very grateful that the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) has just outlined some of the things that he might do. If I understand the Labour Front Benchers correctly, I think they suggested that they would use stamp duty or various transaction taxes on assets. I am grateful...
Steven Baker: That is the fundamental problem that I face today, because I believe that this is just the beginning of the generational crisis of our inability to fund the promises that have been made progressively for more than 100 years, since the National Insurance Act 1911. I have talked about it ad nauseam, particularly in relation to a Bank for International Settlements paper that sets out charts...
Steven Baker: rose—
Steven Baker: I wonder whether the hon. Lady has popped out to the Vote Office and picked up the distributional analysis that the Government have published, which shows the impact across the deciles of income in this country: it just does not bear out what she is saying. I encourage anybody out there to pick up that analysis and have a look.
Steven Baker: Mr Deputy Speaker, it is the second time you have done that to me; the first time was my maiden speech. I welcome this essential Bill. What I want is a fair vote for everyone, and that is why I was very pleased to lead the first Adjournment debate of this Parliament on 19 December 2019. Further to the speech of the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), I am clear that in Wycombe, the...
Steven Baker: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am clear that in speaking in support of the Bill I am standing overwhelmingly for my ethnic minority voters in Wycombe. I am absolutely clear about that in my mind. I am clear that they are the most strident supporters I have on this matter in my constituency. I will not repeat the matters that I raised on 19 December, because that took several times longer...
Steven Baker: That sounds like a very complex matter, and I am sure my hon. Friend deserves an extra minute to explain it to us properly. I am grateful that he is here to do so.
Steven Baker: I take it that the hon. Member is referring to successful prosecutions, but one of the problems is that people are not prosecuted when they ought to be. I made a speech on 19 December 2019—I am sure she has pored over every word of it—in which I pointed out that election officials in Wycombe are not holding people to account even they are walking into a polling station repeatedly in...
Steven Baker: The Government’s measures will have important consequences for taxpayers and energy bills. Will my hon. Friend therefore set out in detail the cost of net zero and the calculations behind that cost?
Steven Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish the number of daily non-covid-19 deaths for as long as he publishes the number of daily deaths from covid-19 in England.
Steven Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of people there were who tested positive for covid-19 on Day 2 tests after returning to England from Portugal for each day in the period that country was on the Green list.