Rob Roberts: It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) in this important debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) on securing it. Earlier this year, following months of disruption to the rail service on the west coast main line, Avanti was put on notice to improve its service. As we have heard already from a...
Rob Roberts: My hon. Friend is making some very good points. Would she, for the record, agree that the staff who are there, despite feeling undervalued and demoralised, do a wonderful job in being cheerful, trying to be as upbeat as they can and delivering the best service they can in the face of such difficult conditions? The staff are doing their best in trying circumstances.
Rob Roberts: What steps she is taking to promote financial education in secondary schools.
Rob Roberts: In conversation with my local Jobcentre Plus team earlier this year, I was told that the No. 1 thing missing for school leavers is employability skills, which are partly about understanding finances, bank accounts, loans, credit cards and taxes—all the stodgy, boring, grown-up stuff. Does my right hon. Friend agree that making sure that school leavers are equipped with information about...
Rob Roberts: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) highlighting issues in Devon around local authority funding, NHS waiting times and ambulances. I must gently tell him that he should try experiencing those things in Wales, where they are all under the control of the Labour Government and are markedly worse in every single area. When the previous iteration of...
Rob Roberts: I have no issue with anything that the hon. Lady says. I cannot be responsible for other people’s comments, but the hon. Lady is 100% correct. The needs of the services are the needs of the services. It makes no difference whether GDP goes up, down, sideways or bloody diagonally: the needs are what they are. I completely agree with the hon. Lady. It is excellent news that Wales is to...
Rob Roberts: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the NHS is a problem generally? We have three different Governments in charge of the NHS in the UK, with Labour in Wales having the worst record of them all. Does he agree that it is not a problem of Government funding or who is in charge, but the fact that the structure and the way that we run the NHS generally across the whole UK is just not workable in...
Rob Roberts: When the Labour Government left office in 2010, the personal allowance was £6,475. Adjusted for inflation, that would be £10,200 today. Under this Government, it is still £12,570, which is significantly more than would have been the case under Labour adjusted for inflation.
Rob Roberts: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress his Department has made on the implementation of pension dashboards.
Rob Roberts: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions he has had with counterparts abroad about ensuring that the standards of nursing education in their countries meet the requirements of the NHS; and what recent discussions he has had with the Nursing and Midwifery Council on their acceptance of the qualifications of foreign nurses applying to work in the NHS.
Rob Roberts: To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, pursuant to the Answer of 14 November 2022 to Question 80942 on UK Shared Prosperity Fund, when he plans to have finalised the validation of investment plans; and whether he plans to notify local authorities (a) when their plans have been assessed or (b) when all assessments have been completed.
Rob Roberts: To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, pursuant to the Answer of 7 November 2022 to Question 76136 on UK Shared Prosperity Fund, when he plans to announce the date by which his Department will have finalised its assessments and notified local authorities of the outcomes.
Rob Roberts: I suspect that the right hon. Gentleman is about to give us a reason why he is not able to commit to legislation, so I thought I would intervene to give him a few more seconds to reconsider, and to think of extra ways in which he might squeeze this change into a bit of legislation.
Rob Roberts: The Minister is being very generous with his time. On that point, he will know better than I do whether there is any mechanism to ask, for example, a bunch of family court judges or High Court judges whether they would be in favour of making the suspension of parental responsibility apply automatically. That would mean that if they hand down a conviction for the murder of another parent, it...
Rob Roberts: Thank you for calling me to speak in this important and solemn debate, Mr Hollobone. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, and to follow the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). I commend my constituency neighbour, the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), for securing this debate on such a vital issue for our Flintshire community. I will...
Rob Roberts: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his powerful speech. Does he agree that “re-victimisation” is not too strong a word to describe what would happen to the family in such circumstances?
Rob Roberts: The right hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time. To expand on this interesting idea, does he envisage this measure being akin to a parole board, where somebody fights their case for early release, or would there be some kind of additional legal process, such as requiring them to go back to court and fight for their rights?
Rob Roberts: To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether all local authorities have received a response to their investment plans under the Shared Prosperity Fund allocations; and when local authorities which have not received a response will do so.
Rob Roberts: What recent estimate he has made of the number of pension credit claimants.
Rob Roberts: I welcome the new Minister to her place and hope she can continue the excellent work done by the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) in this area. Despite all that excellent work, however, take-up is still relatively low, and my constituency has 20% more over-65s than the UK average. Will the new Minister meet me to discuss how we might be able to make pension credit at least in part an...