Rupa Huq: What assessment he has made of the appropriate scale and scope of BBC services to inform the charter renewal process.
Rupa Huq: Ealing has long been a BBC borough, with the wig and prop department in north Acton and many things filmed there. It has many BBC employees, hundreds of whom have contacted me wanting to safeguard its distinctiveness. The Secretary of State is a fellow music buff—we are both alumni of the all-party group on music—and was at the reception where it was revealed that 75% of music played on...
Rupa Huq: I echo the congratulations to the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing the debate. Youth, the state of being young that is between childhood and adulthood, used to be relatively carefree. In some senses it is now extending—something I say as a mum, as well as an MP—with more and more pressures on us, and people of middle age such as me seem to be on an eternal quest...
Rupa Huq: I am about to finish, so I would rather not, if that is okay. The Prince’s Trust—we are talking about Prince Charles, the heir to the throne—youth index uses a measure of 16 to 25, another different definition of what counts as young. One fifth of the respondents for the index said that they regularly fall apart emotionally and that they suffer from anxiety. It found all those mental...
Rupa Huq: Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating my 17-year-old constituent, Jessy McCabe, on her 3,800 name e-petition, which has managed to get the exam board Edexcel to accept women composers on the syllabus for the first time ever? While he is at it, will he tell us whether he is a feminist?
Rupa Huq: My constituent Dr Amy Di Marco, specialist registrar in general surgery, says that the term “junior doctors” is pretty misleading. She says “in fact it applies to all those who are not GPs or Consultants and therefore includes many doctors who, like me, are nearing 40 (or over), with several years of experience and with responsibilities for patients as well as their own families.”...
Rupa Huq: What recent progress his Department has made on its rail electrification programme.
Rupa Huq: Will the Secretary of State ensure that electrification of the Great Western main line goes ahead on time, along with other improvements on the route, to deliver quickly the benefits for passengers into Paddington? My constituents cannot wait until 2019 and the start of Crossrail for the extra services that are so badly needed.
Rupa Huq: I also add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) on securing this debate in a week of such high drama on this subject. I am very encouraged by the things that I have heard from some Members on the Government Benches, and I hope that that is conveyed to their leadership. Yesterday’s headlines made for confusing reading. The Guardian went for...
Rupa Huq: I think that we have a similar number—6,500 families—in Ealing Central and Acton. It is the children whom we should be thinking about. They are not just columns on a spreadsheet, but real people. There was great drama at PMQs yesterday. The leader of the Labour party asked the Prime Minister six times about these plans and whether working people would be worse off next year, and six...
Rupa Huq: I have already given way once, so I will not do so again. Reduced tax credits are being introduced alongside a gamut of other welfare changes, the cumulative effect of which is an assault on the lowest paid in our country.
Rupa Huq: What I am saying is relevant to the motion, because we need some context.
Rupa Huq: We need to look at tax credits in a wider context. There is the four-year benefit freeze, and the reduction in the household benefit cap. New claimants are no longer entitled to the “family element” of tax credits and, controversially, there is the proposal that, after April 2017, families will not be able to claim for their third child. I cannot imagine that happening in any other policy...
Rupa Huq: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he has taken to support British Airways pensioners since 14 September 2015; and what steps he has taken to encourage British Airways to fulfil its undertakings to pay RPI increases to both British Airways and New Airways Pension Schemes.
Rupa Huq: Did the hon. Gentleman not hear the compelling cost-benefits analysis presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper)? It is the Conservatives who go on about a long-term economic plan. The proposed exemption for the carers who prop up the NHS in so many ways will save the NHS billions upon billions of pounds, so it will be good value in the long term.
Rupa Huq: rose—
Rupa Huq: The briefing all MPs were sent based on research by Leeds University and Carers UK puts the figure at £119 billion, because these are people who take stress off the NHS. As my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley clearly described in her speech, they are people who change incontinence pads and do the feeding; they keep people out of hospital in the long run. This proposal will cost less than...
Rupa Huq: Is not the point that the Bill does not propose a free-for-all for everyone, but free hospital parking just for those on carer’s allowance, which is a paltry £62 a week? These are not carers who come through an agency and indirectly through the local authority and who add to the mounting social care bill. These people keep the social care bill down. We pay them carer’s allowance, and if...
Rupa Huq: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper) on her important private Member’s Bill from which, thanks to Conservative Members’ contributions, a somewhat epic debate has ensued. I am pleased to speak in favour of the Bill. I have broken my usual rule of Fridays in Ealing Action and Bedford Park to be here since 9.30 am. The Bill is an important piece of...
Rupa Huq: I need to do a TV interview that I am late for, so I wish to make progress; I will not be giving way. My parents have had all sorts of ailments. We lost my dad a year ago last September so I have been in and out of Ealing hospital as a visitor, and I have grumbled that it seems to cost no less than £4 for an in-and-out visit. But people on carer’s allowance can be there for days on end, or...