Business of the House

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Government are actively considering the issue. Rather than adopting the last Government’s attitude to the accession of member states, we are deploying as much of the extension of transitional measures as is available to us. My colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government are in contact with local government representatives, and my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration is leading a ministerial group which is considering matters relating to access to benefits and other services for those who come here. We do not want to exaggerate, as it were, the pull of this country rather than others for people exercising free movement in the European Union as a result of the differential in that regard.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

We already know from the former policy adviser to No. 10 that the Government are not in control of some of the policy announcements that are emerging, but this week we heard from Ministers in the Ministry of Defence that they were unable to check 70 A3 pages relating to apparently low-impact cuts. Will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Defence to come to the House to explain exactly what was in those documents, and to reveal whether he is actually in charge of his Department and the decisions that it makes?

[Mr Lansley]

I am not sure that the hon. Lady knows my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence very well. I do, and I can assure her that he is very much in control of his Department—as, indeed, are my other right hon. Friends.