Business of the House

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 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 (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

Mr Speaker, may I wish you and the House a happy and peaceful new year?

The business for next week will be as follows:

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

Tuesday 15 January—A 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—A general debate on Atos work capability assessments, followed by a general debate on the nuclear deterrent. The subjects for these debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 18 January—Private Members’ Bills.

The provisional business for the following week will include:

Monday 21 January—Consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill.

Tuesday 22 January—Consideration of an allocation of time motion, followed by proceedings on Second Reading and in Committee of the whole House on the Succession to the Crown Bill.

Wednesday 23 January—Opposition day [15th allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 24 January—Debate on a motion relating to reducing the voting age, followed by a general debate on the Holocaust memorial day. The subjects for those debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 25 January—Private Members’ Bills.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 24 January will be:

Thursday 24 January—Debate on the first report of the Justice Committee on post-legislative scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.



May I also take this opportunity, on behalf of the House, to offer our congratulations to the Members of this House whose public service has been recognised in the new year honours? May I also say how pleased we are by the awarding of Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath to the Clerk of the House? That reflects his fine public service and leadership, and is a tribute to the House service as a whole.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week, and may I join him in wishing you, Mr Speaker, all Members of this House and all the staff who work here a happy new year? I would also like to join him in his congratulations to those who were recognised in the new year’s honours list.

The ongoing disturbances in Northern Ireland concern Members from all parts of the House. More than 3,000 people were killed during the troubles. The peace process has brought to Northern Ireland hope and greater security, and has helped to attract much-needed investment. Those whose only aim is to bring down the peace process are exploiting events in Belfast, and we must not let a small minority undermine all that has been achieved since the Good Friday agreement. May I thank the Leader of the House for arranging a statement from the Northern Ireland Secretary following business questions? Will he undertake to ensure that she keeps the House regularly updated?

On Tuesday, the House considered the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill, and there is more of it to come. The Government have refused to let the Bill have pre-legislative scrutiny and are intent on forcing it through the House in just one more day. Ministers are running scared of scrutiny because they do not want the facts to get in the way of their nasty little caricatures of those who rely on social security. The facts are that 7 million households affected by this legislation are in work; and the Government’s own impact assessment, published at the last minute on Tuesday, thus preventing Members from scrutinising it before the debate, shows that those who lose the most from these measures will be the poorest 10% of households. So can the Leader of the House explain why there is no pre-legislative scrutiny for this Bill, unlike almost all other bills this Session, and look again at the timetabling of this legislation?

Did the right hon. Gentleman find time this morning to tune into the Deputy Prime Minister’s new, gripping, radio show? No doubt, like all Conservative MPs, he has cleared his diary so as not to miss a broadcast. I am sorry to say that expectations were not high among Government Back Benchers, with the view of the hon. Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) being:

“Having sat and listened to him at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions, he has never answered a question yet so he isn’t likely to break the habit of a lifetime on radio.”

Having listened to the broadcast this morning—it was half an hour of my life that I will never get back—I have to report to the House that the Deputy Prime Minister did not break the habit. However, I have discovered that, strangely, although the Deputy Prime Minister is keen to do a London phone-in, yesterday he refused to appear on a Radio Sheffield show to answer questions about the impact of Government cuts in his own constituency. As the Deputy Prime Minister clearly has time on his hands, could the Leader of the House make a change to future business to accommodate a statement on why the Liberal Democrat leader is hiding from the people of Sheffield?

I pay tribute to the former Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Strathclyde, who has decided to leave the Government because he is fed up of having to deal with the Liberal Democrats. If every Conservative Member who was fed up with the Liberal Democrats abandoned politics, the only Tory left in the Government would be the Prime Minister.

This week, the PR Prime Minister managed to bungle his own Government relaunch. First, two Ministers resigned because they had had enough of the coalition and then we had the shambles of the Government’s self-audit. Having put together a document allegedly auditing their first two and half years, Ministers realised, as the memo put it, that it had “problematic areas” that would lead to “unfavourable copy” as a result of identifying “broken” promises. On Monday at the relaunch, there was no audit. It is a unique interpretation of Government transparency first to decide against publishing a so-called audit, only to have to retrieve it from the waste paper bin after a bungling aide inadvertently revealed its existence to the media. I have had a look at what is actually in the document. There is no mention of the cost of living going up, nurse and police numbers going down and the economy flatlining. Who is the Prime Minister trying to kid? Seventy broken promises is just the start. It does not say Ronseal on this tin; it says whitewash.

There you have it, Mr Speaker, in one week: a botched relaunch, a cover-up and a whitewash. This just proves that with this Government an omnishambles is not just for Christmas.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House. Perhaps it should fall to me to express our appreciation of Lord Strathclyde and his fabulous service over many years. He was leader of the Conservatives in the Lords for 14 years and Leader of the House since the election; he has an exemplary record of public service and we in this House, although we do not normally comment on matters in another place, have benefited many times from how he fostered co-operation between the two Houses. We should certainly thank him for that.

The shadow Leader of the House is right that it is the Government’s intention and that of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to keep the House fully informed. My right hon. Friend has made statements and she will do so again today. I share with the shadow Leader of the House the view that those engaging in violence in Northern Ireland are attacking the character and nature of Britain and the flag that represents the United Kingdom as a whole. As the Prime Minister rightly said in Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, we should be working towards a shared future. There is a tremendous opportunity of which we have seen evidence in Northern Ireland and I hope the statement today will further reiterate this House’s support for those in Northern Ireland who are making that shared future a reality.

The hon. Lady asked about the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill. It is a short, simple Bill and what it sets out to achieve is very clear. I do not see any case for pre-legislative scrutiny of a Bill with such a character. More to the point, I think the debate the other day was not about scrutiny of the Bill but about differences of view about how to take forward deficit reduction. The Government recognise that it is a necessity, that everybody must play their part and that it was not acceptable for out-of-work benefits to continue to increase at twice the rate of increases for those who were earning. We are supporting those in work, giving them opportunities by reducing taxation. Some 24 million people have seen their tax bill come down as a consequence of the increase in the personal tax allowance and those on the minimum wage have seen their tax bill halved. That is the right way to go—it is about everyone participating in deficit reduction, but those who are most in need should get the greatest support.

I must confess to the shadow Leader of the House that I did not have an opportunity this morning to listen to LBC and the Deputy Prime Minister because I was preparing for questions in this House. However, I regularly attend and listen to the Deputy Prime Minister as he responds to questions in this House, as he did earlier this week. I thought he did so admirably.

Finally, the Government were always going to publish the audit. It is obvious that, compared with the previous Government, this Government have been transparent, clear and accountable both in what we have set out to do under the coalition programme and in what we have achieved, and 90% achievement in just over half of a Parliament is a record that we can be proud of.