Business of the House

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

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

The business for next week will be:

Monday 21 May—Remaining stages of the Local Government Finance Bill.

Tuesday 22 May—Remaining stages of the Financial Services Bill, followed by Third Reading of the Civil Aviation Bill.

Wednesday 23 May—Second Reading of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, followed by a European document relating to the proceeds of crime.

Thursday 24 May—Motion on the Whitsun recess Adjournment.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for his announcement of next week’s business, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) on her re-election unopposed to the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee.

Analysis of last week's Queen’s Speech has demonstrated that this Government have already run out of ideas. Of the 19 announced Bills, three are carry-overs from the previous Session, and now we learn that the passage of as many as five of the new Bills might be delayed until the next Session, making this by far the slimmest Queen’s Speech in living memory. Will the Leader of the House tell us why?

Today is the international day against homophobia and transphobia, and it is right that we mark it in this House. There are five countries where people can be sentenced to death for being lesbian or gay, and 76 where it is still illegal. We should pay tribute to all those who are bravely campaigning for equality around the world.

Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Equalities Minister to make a statement on the Government's proposals for equal marriage? This weekend, the Defence Secretary said that it was “not a priority”, and the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), said that he is “totally opposed”, but across the country there are couples who want to know whether to have a civil partnership, or to wait until the law is changed. What they do not want is to be in limbo while Conservative MPs fight among themselves and the Government prevaricate. The Prime Minister has said it is an important matter of equality. I agree. Will the Government now commit quickly to introducing legislation on equal marriage?

The whole House will be concerned about the eurozone crisis. On Monday, the Chancellor said

“the open speculation from some members in the eurozone about the future of some countries in the eurozone…is doing real damage across the whole European economy”—

only for the Prime Minister to indulge in precisely that speculation two days later. The Government’s plan A has pushed us back into recession. It has failed in Britain and it is now failing across Europe. Instead of manoeuvring to blame Europe for his failed economic policy, the Prime Minister should be pushing for a solution to the eurozone crisis.

At the election, Government Members promised not to cut front-line services, but that is exactly what the Home Secretary has done. More than 5,000 police officer jobs have been cut. When she spoke to the Police Federation conference yesterday, the right hon. Lady insisted the podium be shifted, because she did not want to be filmed in front of a conference slogan opposing police cuts. She can shift the podium and the camera angle, but she cannot shift the responsibility. Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Home Secretary to make a statement on police numbers so that she can explain what happened to their manifesto promise not to cut front-line staff?

While the Home Secretary is at it, she could also explain the ongoing immigration shambles at Heathrow. Every week we hear reports of thousands of people stuck at immigration and passengers queuing for hours while immigration desks are closed. It takes something when even Joan Collins feels the need to tweet from the queue that the Home Secretary should get a grip. And it is not just the Home Secretary; the Immigration Minister’s justification for the shambles at Heathrow’s border control was that it was the result of the wrong type of wind. What is it about this Government and the weather? First they blamed the economy’s performance on the snow, then the excuse was the wrong type of rain, and now we have the wrong type of wind. May we have a statement on the ministerial code? Does the Leader of the House intend to amend the code to say that Ministers are responsible unless they can blame the weather or, perhaps, their special advisers?

At Justice questions this week neither the Secretary of State nor his deputy were present. The ministerial code states that Ministers are accountable to this House, so they should at least turn up for departmental questions rather than leaving it to junior Ministers and Whips to do their work for them. Will the Leader of the House undertake to make sure that senior Ministers are present for oral questions in future?

Justice Ministers dodge their responsibilities to the House, the Home Secretary refuses to take responsibility for her police cuts, the Immigration Minister refuses to take responsibility for the shambles at Heathrow and the Chancellor refuses to take responsibility for a double-dip recession made in Downing street. What a way to start the new parliamentary Session.

[Sir George Young]

May I begin in a conciliatory way by congratulating the hon. Lady on her promotion to the chair of her party’s national policy forum? We hope that she can do that without becoming a part-time shadow Leader of the House. I know that she will bear in mind what her leader said on 10 January:

“in these times, with less money, spending more on one thing means finding the money from somewhere else.”

That is something her colleagues seem to have forgotten. Her previous job was shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, so she will want to bring some financial discipline to her party’s policies if they are to have any credibility with the electorate.

The hon. Lady asserted that there were not enough Bills in the Queen’s Speech. If she looks at earlier Queen’s Speeches, she will find that the number of Bills introduced in this Session is not dissimilar to the number introduced in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Sessions. She will also find that three Bills are being carried over from the previous Session. We are not going to do what the previous Government did, which was to bring so much legislation to the House that they were unable to process it properly. As I have said before, the House is not simply a legislation factory. We are not going to make their mistake of imposing too many ill-considered and ill-drafted Bills on the House.

The hon. Lady mentioned that today is a day to celebrate equality. Had Mr Speaker been in the Chair, I would have commended the article he wrote for today’s copy of The Independent. Today is international day against homophobia and transphobia. The Government are strongly committed to advancing equality and want to ensure that public services are accessible to all and free from discrimination. She will know that we have lifted the ban on civil partnerships taking place on religious premises and are currently consulting on how to implement equal civil marriage. We are continuing to remove barriers and tackle prejudice.

On the economy, the hon. Lady will know that we are about to debate economic matters on an amendment tabled by the Opposition, but I have to say that her policies would increase this country’s debt and provide no solution to its problems whatsoever.

On policing, I remind the hon. Lady that before the election the then Home Secretary was asked whether he could guarantee police numbers, and he said “No.” I remind her also that the Labour party has now endorsed cuts of £2.1 billion to the police budget, and the official Association of Chief Police Officers response, from Chief Constable Peter Fahy, stated that

“the effectiveness of policing cannot be measured by the number of officers alone but by reductions in crime and increases in public confidence.”

It is an inconvenient truth for the hon. Lady that, although she might suggest that crime is going up, official figures show that police-recorded crime has fallen by 3%.

Turning to immigration, I note that we inherited a shambles at the UK Border Agency, which we are putting right. The hon. Lady will welcome the Immigration Minister’s announcement before the Home Affairs Committee of an additional mobile unit at Heathrow to cope with the delays to which she refers.

I am astonished that the hon. Lady mentions the absence of the Lord Chancellor from oral questions. She was a Minister herself, and she will know that occasionally Ministers have responsibilities other than in the House. The Lord Chancellor, in line with precedent, wrote to Mr Speaker and to the shadow Lord Chancellor to explain that he would not be at oral questions but at an international legal forum in Russia. I am sure that he would have preferred to have been here, because he enjoys his time at the Dispatch Box, but I commend the performance of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), who was an understudy for the Lord Chancellor and not only kept the balls away from the wicket but swept many of them to the boundary.

Finally, I say to the hon. Lady that it is a fortnight since the Labour party candidate was defeated in the election for Mayor of London, and less than two months since the hon. Lady’s party lost Bradford West, so any triumphalism on her part is very premature.