Business of the House

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman was certainly right with his first sentence: we do miss the shadow Leader of the House. He was spot on with that comment, as she tends to be a little more entertaining. It is a shame because he can be very entertaining when he is not at the Dispatch Box, as he was in his wonderful interview on the World at One a few weeks ago, which bears revisiting. He said:

“The state that the Labour party is in right now is we are in a dreadful position.”

It is commendable honesty. That was only the beginning, because he went on to say that the Opposition have

“got to be honest about ourselves…The electorate looks at us and has no idea what our policies are.”—

[Interruption.] He says, “In Scotland.” So he is talking only about a large part of the Labour party. That is his defence. It is only the place where Labour has 40-odd Members of Parliament. He continued:

“We have a moribund party in Scotland that seems to think that infighting is more important than campaigning. And we have a membership that is ageing and inactive.”

There was something about his questions that was a little bit ageing and inactive.

Let me deal with the hon. Gentleman’s questions about the business of the House. On e-petitions, we look forward to the Procedure Committee’s report, which I believe is about to be published. I hope that we can ensure that in this Parliament, before the general election, we put in place a new system for e-petitions that will be helpful to the electorate, that will serve accountability and that will allow the House and the Government to run a system together. I look forward to that report and it will be important to debate it, but we cannot schedule such a debate until we have had the report.

I am not aware of any problem with the money resolution for the private Member’s Bill the hon. Gentleman mentioned. He will know that the Bill falls behind many other private Members’ Bills in the normal procedures for such Bills, but there is no issue at present with bringing forward a money resolution on it.

On early-day motion 454 and firefighters, the Opposition have now asked for a debate on this, but it was only in the past 24 hours or so that they did so. The regulations were laid on 28 October. The early-day motion was put down on 30 October. There have been three Opposition day debates since then, and it is only now that they ask for a debate. We will of course examine that request, but it has been made only in the past few hours. I must point out that Lord Hutton found the firefighters’ pension scheme to be the most expensive in the public sector and said that it has to be reformed to be sustainable. Members will need to bear that in mind.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the Ministry of Defence budget. I should remind him that those of us who sat on the National Security Council in 2010 had to wrestle with a £38 billion black hole that had been left by the previous Government and an over-committal of the defence budget greater than the annual defence budget. The Ministry of Defence had to wrestle with that, but now, for the first time in many years, its books actually balance. It has also undertaken many important procurement programmes.

The hon. Gentleman asked about immigration while neglecting to mention the fact that the previous Government had a completely open door on immigration. Some 4 million people came to settle in the United Kingdom without any control or restriction, so we do not have to take any lessons on that.

The Second Reading of the armed forces Bill will take place, but we must ensure that yesterday’s announcement on stamp duty is enacted in law as soon as possible to give certainty to the housing market, so we have included it in next week’s business. None the less, we remain very committed to the armed forces Bill.

The hon. Gentleman managed to argue that the Government had failed every test on the economy. Given that the Government have cut the deficit by more than half, that employment has reached record levels, that inflation is low, that growth is strong, and that we have had such an excellent week for the economy, we are left wondering what the Labour party thinks the test for the economy is. Perhaps the test is whether we, like the previous Government, have bankrupted the country and left the public finances in an appalling state. That was the only test that was passed by the Labour Government.

I will finish by referring to one of the hon. Gentleman’s previous statements, which he made in a letter to Members and not on the “World at One.” He called for a statue of Tony Blair to be put in the Members’ Lobby as soon as possible. I am pleased that he did not revive that idea today, because the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) might reverse his decision to leave the House in order to prevent such a thing from happening. Of course the right hon. Gentleman could always lend the hon. Gentleman his doll model of Tony Blair in which he stuck pins for so long in place of a statue. But his economic record is not one we want to emulate. This Government are passing their economic test.

[Sir George Young (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), the Leader of the House said, on English votes for English laws, that he planned to publish a command paper before Christmas, which we welcome, setting out the options. He then said that we would consider it together. Has he reached agreement with our coalition partners on the format of that debate, and is he aware that there is a very strong appetite among Government Members for a vote on the options?

[Mr Hague]

There is a very strong appetite, including on my part, for such a vote. I have reached agreement within the coalition on the publication and the format of the command paper. Shortly, I hope to reach agreement on the contents of the command paper, so my right hon. Friend must bear with me. Once we have published the command paper, we will then be able to discuss how we debate it in Parliament and what the format and structure of any debate might be.