Business of the House

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ms Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 19 July will include:

Monday 19 July—Second Reading of the Academies Bill [Lords]. At 10 pm the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.

Tuesday 20 July—Proceedings on the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill, followed by conclusion of proceedings on the Finance Bill (Day 4); to follow, the House will consider a motion relating to information for Back Benchers on statements. The subject for that debate was nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Wednesday 21 July—Proceedings on the Academies Bill [Lords] (Day 1).

Thursday 22 July—Proceedings on the Academies Bill [Lords] (Day 2).

The provisional business for the week commencing 26 July will include:

Monday 26 July—Conclusion of proceedings on the Academies Bill [Lords] (Day 3).

Tuesday 27 July—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee. The House will not adjourn until the Speaker has signified Royal Assent.

Colleagues will also wish to know that, subject to the progress of business, the House will rise for the summer recess on Tuesday 27 July and return on Monday 6 September.

The House will rise again for the conference recess on Thursday 16 September and return on Monday 11 October.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 22 July will be:

Thursday 22 July—A debate on national lottery reform.

[Ms Winterton]

I thank the Leader of the House for the business and very much welcome the first debate that the Backbench Business Committee has initiated, on ministerial statements. I am very hopeful that it will provide an opportunity for Back Benchers to examine closely the right hon. Gentleman’s leak prevention strategy.

As the Leader of the House knows, we Opposition Members had high hopes that he would be able to solve the mystery of why Conservative and Liberal Democrat Secretaries of State seem addicted to leaking major announcements to the media rather than announcing them to the House. I had such confidence in the right hon. Gentleman’s investigative powers that I even likened him to Sherlock Holmes; after the events of this week, however, I am afraid that it is more a case of Inspector Clouseau than Sherlock Holmes.

I fear that the leak prevention strategy will have to be consigned to the dustbin of history unless drastic action is taken. After all, the Secretary of State for Health gave at least three interviews to the media, including an appearance on “The Andrew Marr Show”, before coming to the House to announce his £80 billion gamble with the NHS. This morning, we heard the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills making a major televised speech on the future of higher education policy. He did make an apology, it is true—not for ignoring the House of Commons, but for the fact that details of his policy had been leaked. He shrugged that off by saying that leaks are part of public life.

When the Labour Government launched a review of student finance, there was extensive involvement of the Opposition, including an agreement on the review’s terms of reference. We have seen none of that in the run-up to today’s announcement. The Business Secretary is trying to say that the policy is not really new, but the coalition agreement said explicitly that the Government would wait for the Browne report before reviewing future policy. Surely the future of student finance should be about what is best for students and universities, not what keeps the peace in the coalition.

Can the Leader of the House say when the Business Secretary will come here to tell us exactly what his proposals mean? Will he undertake to remind Secretaries of State that Evan Davis, James Naughtie and Sarah Montague, admirable though they are, are not Members of Parliament, and that John Humphrys is not the Speaker? It would be handy if Cabinet members understood the distinction between a BBC studio and the Chamber of the House of Commons.

I am not sure whether the Leader of the House is expecting to have to make time in the House for any more apologies over the next week or so, but perhaps he will consider dividing Prime Minister’s questions into 15 minutes for answering questions and 15 minutes for apologising for all the misleading statistics that the Prime Minister has been using and all the questions that he has been dodging. That could include, for example, apologising for using figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility, which Sir Alan Budd said was inappropriate. The Prime Minister could apologise for telling Parliament that violent crime had doubled under Labour, especially as Sir Michael Scholar, chair of the UK Statistics Authority, has made it clear that there is no basis whatever for that assertion. Today’s figures show that crime is at its lowest level since records began, thanks to the Labour Government.

The Prime Minister could also apologise for dodging the question—not once, but three times—on whether the Government were going to abolish the two-week cancer guarantee. Can the Leader of the House tell us when the House can expect a proper answer, in this Chamber, on that guarantee—not in interviews to the media or in unattributable briefings from Downing street, but in a clear statement to Parliament about a guarantee that he surely recognises saves lives? Patients, doctors and nurses need to know whether the guarantee is in place and they deserve an apology from the Prime Minister because he has kept them in the dark about it.

[Sir George Young]

There is quite a lot there to respond to. On the Backbench Business Committee, I welcome the debate that is taking place on Tuesday, but I have to say to the right hon. Lady that it is no thanks to the Labour Government that we are having that Committee at all. At the end of the last Parliament, they consistently refused to make the time available to establish the Backbench Business Committee. If we are in apology mode, it would have been appropriate for her to have apologised for the failure of the outgoing Labour Government to set up that Committee.

I welcome that debate and hope that it will be well attended. There is a serious issue for the House about how we get the balance right between what Ministers can say outside the House and inside the House. The motion rightly refers not only to the past few weeks, but to a period that includes the last Labour Government. I welcome the proposal in the motion that the process should be looked at by the Procedure Committee to see whether we can come up with a sensible concordat that is acceptable to the House and liveable with by the Government, and that enables us to have a set of rules that we can all observe.

On health, if the right hon. Lady looks at the coalition agreement, she will see that much of what was in the Health Secretary’s statement on Monday was in that agreement. The proposals had been been mentioned in Health questions and in debates in the House. There was no leak of the health White Paper.

As for the Business Secretary, he went out of his way to explain that there was no policy change. I watched his speech on television, and he made it absolutely clear that he wanted Lord Browne, who is conducting a review, and whose terms of reference were set up by the outgoing Labour Government, to include the option of a graduate tax. There has been no policy announcement. When the Government have a policy on how higher education is funded, the House will be informed and there will be an opportunity to cross-examine the relevant Secretary of State. However, there has been no policy announcement whatsoever on the funding of higher education.

I think that the right hon. Lady will find that Sir Michael Scholar has had an opportunity to admonish those on both sides of the House about misuse of crime statistics. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is considering how crime statistics should be collected and published in future, and we are working with the UK Statistics Authority and others to consider the matter carefully. I welcome the reduction in crime—a trend that started in 1995 and has been replicated in many other western European countries—but the level of crime is still too high, and we must drive it down.

The right hon. Lady asked about the cancer guarantee. The revision to the NHS operating framework in June removed targets on the NHS that were without clinical justification. The cancer waiting time targets are clinically justified and have been retained.