Alex Cunningham: ...been used at Teesworks and who is deriving the benefit. I think he will discover that Teesworks is not working for our communities, and we have seen only a few hundred of the tens of thousands of jobs promised actually created. In conclusion, we have had the years of austerity and we now have the Prime Minister’s recession. The ramifications have been immense: appalling regional...
Alex Cunningham: ...acting in a unitary fashion, and into its behaviour and leadership. On 18 February, five of the six NEDs resigned with immediate effect, as they felt that they were being prevented from doing the job they believed they had been appointed to do, and that NHSE and the joint chair would steamroller their way to the desired outcome regardless of any advice to the contrary. I suspect that that...
Alex Cunningham: ...by the words of Joe Ashton, the legendary Labour MP, who was unhappy at the idea that a Minister could receive three months’ severance after “having had possibly only two years in a ministerial job.”—[Official Report, 31 January 1991; Vol. 184, c. 1147.] Only two years in a ministerial job! Can you imagine if Joe had known that, 33 years on, Members in the Whips’ Office would be...
Alex Cunningham: I do not think that thousands of jobs will be saved at all. The people of Teesside, who saw the Tory Government abandon them and end virgin steelmaking at Redcar, leading to the loss of 3,000 jobs, will sympathise with those in Wales. The failure of the same Government will see virgin steelmaking also ended in Wales, with the loss of another 3,000 jobs, and leave the UK even more reliant on...
Alex Cunningham: ...100. The retention of those records can be distressing and degrading, and can interfere with the ability of the women to move on with their lives. It can prevent them from getting access to certain jobs and may make accessing certain types of support more difficult. Even when the women are trying to move forward with their lives, they are confronted by yet more challenges because they have...
Alex Cunningham: When I was a young reporter on the Evening Gazette, the steel industry supported tens of thousands of jobs on Teesside alone. The decline started with Thatcher. When the Government abandoned Redcar nine years ago, numbers fell to a few hundred. Steel is a foundation industry. Surely we need primary steelmaking in this country if it has a real future.
Alex Cunningham: ...case load management tool shows that probation officers are working at a case load of between 140% and 180% of their capacity. It should be 90% 95%, so half the current load, for staff to do their job effectively. In the year to March 2023, 2,098 staff left the probation service, which is an increase of 10% on the year before. Two thirds of those had five or more years’ experience; 28%...
Alex Cunningham: .... That may include prisoners who are engaged in higher education that could only be provided in the UK, or prisoners involved in an employment scheme with the prospect of further training or a job opportunity on release in the UK. Transferring prisoners abroad would have an impact on a prisoner’s access to legal advice, legal remedies for prison-related issues or their ability to...
Alex Cunningham: ...prison officers in full riot gear—including overalls, gloves, steel-toed boots, helmets and shields—approaching the prisoner, securing them and getting them into the transport vehicle. Their job is then complete, and responsibility passes to the private security firm staff to deliver the defendant to the court. Unlike the prison officers, neither private security staff nor receiving...
Alex Cunningham: ...is home to some of the most energy-intensive industries in the country, but instead of attracting more of those industries, including primary steel making, we are seeing plants closed down and jobs lost because investors do not see any industrial strategy from the Government. High energy costs mean that it is cheaper to import many of the goods that until now we have made at home. Why are...
Alex Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether she has had recent discussions with the Secretary of State for Transport on seafarer jobs supported by the North Sea (a) oil and gas decommissioning and (b) offshore wind sectors; and if she will make an estimate of the number of such jobs supported by those sectors in each year to 2030.
Alex Cunningham: ...of her own—but she claimed they were facts rather than statistics. Yes, the Government might have gone some way towards replacing the police that they had cut over all those years, but it is the job they are doing that matters and we need more of our police out on the streets. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) talked about the epidemic of knife crime in our...
Alex Cunningham: ...year. In spite of that, we have a rising tax burden, and public services are on their knees, but there is little if anything for those in greatest need, and certainly not for those public services. Job creation should have been a focus for the autumn statement. Teesside is fit to burst with potential when it comes to emerging energy-intensive industries and carbon capture, utilisation and...
Alex Cunningham: A short time after the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), said he was “alarmed” by the amount of tax people are paying, he was out of a job. Was he sacked for highlighting the Government’s tax burden, the highest for 70 years?
Alex Cunningham: ...forward, but we need much more if we are to reverse the industrial sabotage of the Conservatives, who abandoned steelmaking in Teesside in 2015, and if we are to create more than a fraction of the jobs that were lost as a result of their disastrous decision making—more than 3,000 jobs were lost at that time. We need to be more ambitious, and the investment needs to be part of a...
Alex Cunningham: On Teesside, we have been promised thousands of jobs in the offshore wind industry, but investors are getting a little nervous as a direct result of Government failures to provide the right business environment. What will the Minister do to get the business environment right to deliver the jobs we have been promised, which are being put in jeopardy by Government failures?
Alex Cunningham: ...connections to the grid, and for an acceleration of the development of an offshore wind energy grid, both of which are critical for Teesside and the Teesworks site. Given the promise of many more jobs in the industry, connectivity to the electricity grid for the Teesworks site could not be more important. I would be obliged if the Minister updated me on power supplies, which I understand...
Alex Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many safety critical maintenance jobs on offshore oil and gas installations were deferred by operators in each year since 2019.
Alex Cunningham: ...would be able to plug directly into the system to have their emissions stored. Not just that, but the right project with the right supporting infrastructure will also help sustain many existing jobs and halt the exodus of firms that, due to increased energy costs and current carbon costs, find their business is no longer viable. At Billingham in my constituency, we currently have the...
Alex Cunningham: ...Thatcher’s Tory Government as the Bank of England base rate hit 17%. Those who were buying homes at the time knew all about it. My wife Evaline and I, both in relatively well-paid professional jobs, had moved home a couple of years before and, like many others, had maximised our mortgage to secure the house we wanted for our growing family. Little did we know that the cost of our...