Key events
Mary Kelly Foy (Lab) asks about Send (special educational needs and disabilities) provision.
Lammy says the government is investing in Send.
Griffith says the Tories are getting stronger and stronger.
(That generates a lot of mocking laughter.)
He says there are no answers from the government for small business. Won’t the deputy PM admit that what Labour MPs are worried about is not Keir Starmer going to China, but him coming back.
Lammy says: “He’s not going to get this gig again.”
He says Badenoch told Desert Islands Discs this week that Britons need to queue. Her MPs are taking her advice; they are queing outside Nigel Farage’s office.
Griffith says Labour does not understand business. What is the cost of the government’s unemployment act?
Lammy says his father was run out of business under the Thatcher government. He says 26 ex-Tory MPs have already left the party. There are 100 days of the transfer season left, he says. It will be the most disloyal transfer season since Sol Campbell, he says.
Griffith says Lammy is the designation survivor. Lammy does not know the answer, he says. He says the extra cost of hiring a 21-year-person is £3,600. This is bad for ambitous people like “Andy from Manchester”, he says.
Lammy says Griffith cannot lecture anyone on U-turns. He was Boris Johnson’s net zero champion, he says.
Griffith says you don’t make young people better off by putting them of jobs. He says Labour should scrap business rates, as the Tories propose. But Labour won’t cut welfare to fund that.
He asks how much more it costs to hire a 21-year-old under Labour?
Lammy says the Tories left a shameful legacy for young people. The Tories would freeeze the minimum wage. They have nothing to offer the next generation.
Griffith says he spent 25 years building businesses. Lammy spent 25 years manufacturing grievance. This is “too little, too late”. The high streets are bleeding, and the chancellor is handing out sticking plasters. “They can’t even U-turn properly.” He says a senior adviser to Andy Burnham said yesterday Rachel Reeves just wanted a cheap headline.
Lammy says Griffith opposed the minimum wage, and says it was just something MPs passed to make themselves feel good. He says in fact it changes lives.
Andrew Griffith asks Lammy to confirm that 90% of hospitality, retail and leisure premises will get nothing from the business rates concession announced yesterday.
Lammy says it is always a pleasure to hear from the author of the Liz Truss mini-budget. He says under the Tories 7,000 pubs closed.
Anneliese Midgley (Lab) asks about out of control waste dumps, saying it is a problem in her constituency.
Lammy says this is a serious problem.
And, while on the subject of “garbage” he says, he says he notes that Kemi Badenoch has welcomed the clear our her party is having. She is getting rid of the rubbish.
David Lammy starts by saying a Holocaust survivor addressed cabinet yesterday to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. He says her evidence was very moving. The government is building a Holocaust memorial centre next to this parliament.
He also says pays tribute to the army captain who died at the weekend.
From Noah Keate from Politico
Never seen the Commons chamber or press gallery so quiet five minutes before #PMQs. Plenty of hacks are in China but hardly any MPs — public gallery packed to the rafters showing the continual interest in the weekly joust!
