Business of the House

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

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

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

The business for the week commencing 7 January 2013 will be:

Monday 7 January—Remaining stages of the Trust (Capital and Income) Bill [Lords], followed by all stages of the Statute Law (Repeals) Bill [Lords], which is a consolidation measure, followed by debate on a motion to take note of a European document relating to the Commission work programme 2013, followed by debate on a reasoned opinion relating to the gender balance on corporate boards, followed by general debate on corporate tax avoidance. The subject for this debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Tuesday 8 January—Second Reading of the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill.

Wednesday 9 January—Opposition Day [13th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on the statutory code of practice for pub companies, followed by a further debate on a subject to be announced.

Both debates will arise on an Opposition motion.

Thursday 10 January—General debate on dementia. The subject for this debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

The provisional business for the week commencing 14 January will include:

Monday 14 January—Second Reading of the Crime and Courts Bill [Lords].

Tuesday 15 January—Motion to approve the draft Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedule 5) Order 2013.

Wednesday 16 January—Opposition Day [14th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 17 January—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 18 January—Private Members’ Bills.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 10 and 17 January will be:

Thursday 10 January—Debate on the third report of the Select Committee on Transport on competition in the local bus market.

Thursday 17 January—Debate on the fourth report of the Select Committee on International Development on tax in developing countries, followed by debate on the sixth report of the Select Committee on International Development on Afghanistan.

May I take this opportunity to wish you, Mr Speaker, and all right hon. and hon. Members a very merry Christmas? On behalf of the whole House, I should like to thank all the staff of the House who have kept the House and ourselves running smoothly: the Doorkeepers, the cleaners, the Clerks, the Officers and all the staff of the House and the House service. We wish a merry and peaceful Christmas to one and all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for the next parliamentary week, even though it is not the next chronological week. I join the Leader of the House in wishing you, Mr Speaker, the staff who work here and have served us so well throughout the year, and all right hon. and hon. Members a happy and enjoyable Christmas.

Unfortunately, food banks had to feed almost 250,000 people this year. Independent figures from the Trussell Trust show that, in my own constituency, 295 children have been fed from food banks. Across the country, thousands of volunteers are helping hard-pressed families who are struggling to put any food on the table, and I pay tribute to their efforts. People are really struggling to make ends meet. Does the Leader of the House agree with me that in 21st century Britain people should not be struggling to feed their children because they have no money? At Christmas, that should be a particular source of shame, but yesterday at Prime Minister’s questions the Prime Minister boasted that this showed the big society was working. How out of touch is he? When the coalition was formed, Ministers could barely complete a sentence without mentioning the big society. This year, as the idea has unravelled and been revealed to be little more than a PR gimmick, they have gone pretty quiet on the subject. May we have a debate on the big society, to give Government Members the chance to explain why, when 250,000 people have had to rely on food banks to be able to eat, the Government are giving a huge tax cut to a few thousand millionaires?

I welcome yesterday’s written statement from the Home Secretary on the Hillsborough investigation and the overturning of the unjust inquest verdicts on the 96 who died. I also warmly welcome the Government’s decision that the Hillsborough single will not be subject to VAT. I welcome the court’s decision this week, but it does mean that the families of the victims, who have fought so hard for so many years, will now have to meet expensive legal costs to ensure that they are adequately represented at the new inquests. Given the exceptional circumstances, will the Leader of the House ask the Justice Secretary to look at whether the Government could meet the families’ costs?

On Tuesday, Her Majesty the Queen made an historic visit to No. 10 to attend the Cabinet, to observe, not to participate in proceedings—much like the Deputy Prime Minister, in fact. Does the Leader of the House agree that it was a sign of Her Majesty’s tireless devotion to her duties that she was willing to put herself through such an experience? I have to admit that the photograph of the Cabinet meeting from the Evening Standard worried me. Where was the Leader of the House? I looked very carefully, but the right hon. Gentleman just was not there. What on earth is going on? I thought perhaps he was a closet republican, as he is from Cambridgeshire, but surely that cannot be the case. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the Prime Minister has simply had enough of him. May I tell the right hon. Gentleman that I have now started a campaign to save him from the chop?

To honour Her Majesty’s Cabinet visit, the Government have very generously named a tract of Antarctic wilderness after her and given her 60 place mats—both of which will no doubt be very useful. As it is Christmas, I have been looking for gifts for the Cabinet. Given the miraculous resurrection of the Government Chief Whip’s ministerial career, I thought he might like a copy of the Australian ex-Prime Minister John Howard’s autobiography, “Lazarus Rising”. We would all be grateful if the Chancellor spent his Christmas reading “Macro-economics for Beginners”. Given that every announcement from the Department for Education inevitably finds its way into the media before the Education Secretary has had a chance to make a statement to this House, I think he would benefit from a copy of “How Parliament Works”, which is an excellent book. I thought you, Mr Speaker, might enjoy a manual written for classroom teachers, “Managing Very Challenging Behaviour”. The Leader of the House might benefit from a copy of the railway timetable, and just about all his ministerial colleagues might benefit from a copy of the book by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), “How to be a Minister”.

Given that this is the last business statement of the year, and provided that the predictions of the Mayan apocalypse are wrong, I look forward to seeing everyone back in the new year.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House, not least for her concern about my whereabouts at the Cabinet meeting. I felt like a reverse Forrest Gump: instead of being always in the picture, I was suddenly out of it. The hon. Lady’s reference to the railway timetable is correct. I must tell my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald) that I have an insufferable knowledge of Letchworth Garden City railway station, where I spent an hour and three quarters. If anyone were to ask me for a debate on recent failings in performance on the east coast main line or by First Capital Connect, I would be very sympathetic to that request.

The hon. Lady will recall that there was a debate in Westminster Hall yesterday on food banks in Scotland and, indeed, that reference was made to the subject at yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions. I think the availability of food banks is an illustration of how we care for each other in our communities. We do not want people to need them, but as discussed in Business, Innovation and Skills questions earlier, there are many reasons why people access them—including money problems, debt management, the ability to manage their resources and so forth. As the shadow Leader of the House says, the Trussell Trust has rightly been working across the country to establish better awareness of, and access to, food banks, and we should recognise and support that.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for what she said about the Home Secretary’s written ministerial statement on a further investigation into Hillsborough and about what the Prime Minister said yesterday about VAT. She asked about legal aid. I can tell her and the House that the Government will provide funding for the legal representation of the bereaved Hillsborough families at the fresh inquests.

At Christmas time, we look back at the past year and forward to the next one. After a year in which we have had the diamond jubilee, the Olympics and the Paralympic games, 2012 will be a year to remember for many positive reasons. At this time, however, we also need to think about the people who might be looking on 2012 with less happy memories—people who are bereaved, people who are lonely, people who are in trouble or in pain and, indeed, people who are in poverty. There may not be such great events next year as there were this year, but I hope that in 2013 we will have many smaller positive events that will enable us as a country to live in greater peace and progress.