Business of the House

Andrew Jones Excerpts

Thursday 9th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I start by thanking you, Mr Speaker, all Members and all staff of this House for making the State Opening and the King’s first Gracious Address to Parliament so successful.

I know that many right hon. and hon. Members will be taking part in remembrance services across the nation and overseas this weekend. Medals proudly worn by our veterans are not just thanks from a grateful nation; they are a message for the rest of us. We should remember their service and sacrifice, but also the lessons that made their service and sacrifice both necessary and possible. This weekend, as we attend services and lay wreaths beside memorials, we should reflect on how best to honour them and the freedoms we enjoy because of them, and protect their precious legacy.

The shadow Leader of the House started by talking about the cost of living. I am sorry that, as she did so, she did not recognise that this week we have paid out £2.2 billion in cost of living payments and that 99% of households eligible for the cost of living payment have already received it from this Government. I disagree with the hon. Lady, because I do not think that our cost of living issues are remotely helped by lessening our energy security, which is why we are bringing forward the Bill and why I ask her party to support it. It is not at all incompatible with investing in renewable energy and clean technology.

The hon. Lady is rather fond of criticising both our record and our plans for this Session, so it might be helpful to get the scores on the doors. She believes that our 43 Bills, 1,000 statutory instruments and record number of private Members’ Bills—24—passed in the third Session of this Parliament is a shabby record. I point out to her that only in two of the 13 parliamentary Sessions between 1997 and 2010 were more Bills put through than we put through in the last Session. In the last Sessions of Labour Administrations, the average number of Bills brought forward was 21. The hon. Lady cannot justify her charge against us about the amount we have got done. She might be relying on the time it took us—it did take us less time than we had allocated to pass a lot of that legislation and to do Government business—but that is not really a problem for those on the Government Benches; it is a more a problem for those on the Opposition Benches, although I have no complaints about that. Those on the Government side of the House have been pulling their weight, even in Opposition day debates—in debates on school safety and animal welfare, for example, there were more Conservative speakers than Opposition speakers.

Let me go into the specific points that the hon. Lady raised. On tents, the Home Secretary has no plans to ban Millets—we are not doing that. The Government have made the largest investment ever in tackling homelessness and rough sleeping, providing £2 billion to accelerate its mitigation and prevention, including preventing 640,000 people from becoming homeless in the last five years.

On conversion therapy, we have a manifesto commitment, and it is still a manifesto commitment. The Secretary of State will keep the House informed on the work she is doing on this important matter.

I was surprised to hear the hon. Lady raise nutrient neutrality. I had hoped she would support our measures, but the Secretary of State will no doubt update the House on the further work he is doing in that area. However, we are bringing forward many measures that will assist more developments to happen, including reforms at the valuation office.

At the heart of the charge the hon. Lady presents are values and the question of who is fit to govern for the people of this country, and I would ask her to undertake just a little self-reflection. She mentioned doctors, but 80% of the medical doctors in the House sit on the Government Benches, while 91% of the veterans in the House sit on these Benches, so I do not think there is a problem with our values, our service or our duty.

Yesterday, outside this place, Just Stop Oil activists held up an ambulance on Waterloo bridge. It was Government legislation, passed in this House, that enabled the police to arrest 40 of those protesters and get the traffic moving—legislation that the hon. Lady blocked, along with reforms to protect the public from strike action.

The hon. Lady supports the regressive tax policies of the London Mayor and the tax and spend policies of the shadow Chancellor, which would saddle every household with an additional £3,000 of tax per annum. The one-time party of “education, education, education” is now the party of “tax education, education, education”—the hon. Lady should think about that for a moment and about the values it represents.

I will take no lectures from a Labour party that puts politics before people. Labour Members talk of change, but I am afraid that the Labour party has not changed at all.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

Yesterday, I hosted the first ever parliamentary reception for Yorkshire Cancer Research—a fantastic charity that has been working for nearly 100 years in the fight against cancer, and not just in Yorkshire. It is a significant funder of research, and we have some very fine research institutions in the north. However, institutions in the north as a whole—the north-east and the north-west, as well as Yorkshire—can do more. Please could we have a debate about research funding and the process by which it is allocated?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for the work he is doing. He raises an important point, and if he were to apply for a debate, I am sure it would be well attended. The Department of Health and Social Care invests about £1 billion a year in research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and that institution welcomes funding applications on any aspect of health research. Its expenditure on cancer research in the last financial year was over £100 million. I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important matter, and I shall draw the attention of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to what he has said.