This was not a bad prime minister’s question time for Jeremy Corbyn. He chose the right subject – tax credits. And he combined the individual questions from the public with the more traditional battering-ram approach that opposition leaders use.
Perhaps it would have been better if he had just stuck to tax credits, but his questions about the demise of the steel industry laid the ground for other Labour members of parliament.
The only ‘Corbyn’ moment came with his question about the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ investigation into effects of the previous administration’s welfare cuts.
But it was so leftfield and backbenchery that it actually had the effect of throwing the prime minister. David Cameron ended up more or less saying he knew nothing about it, but these things were rarely what they seemed. And of course he would cooperate in any investigation.
The tax credits issue was sticky for Cameron especially as Corbyn quoted his own MP Heidi Allen back at him who had criticised tax credits in her maiden speech yesterday.
‘Where,’ asked Corbyn, ‘was she wrong?’
Instead of expressing sympathy Cameron just said he was ‘delighted’ that the government had won its vote on the issue in the House of Commons, which had passed he said ‘with a big majority.’
Corbyn persisted and brought up the case of Lysette who was self-employed and setting up her own business and needed tax credits to do it. ‘Does he not see the value of giving people tax credits to improve their lives?’ he asked.
Corbyn then tackled Cameron on his pre-election promise on television not to cut tax credits. ‘This is all very strange,’ he said. ‘The prime minister has changed his mind on this.’ What, he asked, was the reason this change had come about?
Cameron said that the government had promised to cut the welfare bill. And Cameron said he wanted another strangeness explained – why had Tom Watson, the deputy leader, not turned up for the vote on tax credits last night?
Corbyn spent the next couple of questions on the steel industry complaining that the Government was not doing enough to support the steel industry.
‘Does he appreciate the devastating effects of the government’s non-intervention in the steel industry are having on so many people?’
Was it not time, he said, to walk the walk rather than talking the talk about an industrial strategy? He called for ‘concrete action today’ for a viable steel industry.
Tom Blenkinsop, MP for Middlesborough South and East Cleveland was jumping up and down on the backbenches, so much so that the speaker had to tell him to ‘calm yourself or take a sedative.’ Anna Turley, MP for Redcar in whose constituency the SSI steelworks are, was shouting ‘Rubbish!’ at the prime minister who purported to have done everything he could do to support the steel industry.
Turley got a question later: ‘On September 16 the prime minister told this house he would do everything he could to keep steelmaking on Teesside. He failed. And now we learn that £30m of the support package that the government promised for retraining and economic regeneration is not only going towards the statutory redundancies of those who lost their jobs, but I also have an email here from the “northern powerhouse” minister to a constituent in Stockton South that says it is also going to be used to pay the final salaries of those who lost their jobs in the last month. How much more injustice does he think the people of Teesside can endure?’
Nic Dakin, MP for Scunthorpe, who also has steelworks in his constituency, asked whether the prime minister had asked the Chinese to stop dumping steel – and if so what was the response?
Cameron was clearly too busy doing deals with the Chinese on our nuclear industry to be bothered to talk to them about steel, but said he had some more time with them today to do it.
There were lots of sycophantic questions as usual from Tory MPs. Chris Philp, Tory MP for Croydon South, asked his question so ineptly – something about Gordon Brown and green energy being responsible for the steel crisis – that the speaker disallowed the question.
Other Tories, including Jacob Rees-Mogg (North-east Somerset) are getting worked up about the House of Lords potentially holding up the tax credit legislation – and called for lots of new Tory peers to be created to stop it.
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Sally Gimson is a journalist and councillor in the London borough of Camden. She writes the PMQs on Progress column and tweets @SallyGimson