Business of the House

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 31st 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)]

The business for next week will be as follows:

Monday 4 February—Second Reading of the European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords].

Tuesday 5 February—Second Reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill.

Wednesday 6 February—Opposition day [16th allotted day] (first part). There will be a debate on a motion in the name of the Democratic Unionist party on suicide prevention in the UK, followed by consideration of opposed private business nominated by the Chairman of Ways and Means.

Thursday 7 February—Debate on a motion relating to subsidies for new nuclear power, followed by general debate on the closure of A and E departments. The subjects for these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

The provisional business for the following week will include:

Monday 11 February—Consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords], followed by general debate on the local government finance settlement for rural local authorities. The subject for this debate was nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Tuesday 12 February—Opposition day [17th allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Wednesday 13 February—Motions relating to the police grant and local government finance reports, followed by motions relating to the draft Social Security Benefits Up-Rating Order 2013 and the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2013.

Thursday 14 February—Debate on a motion on protecting future generations from violence against women and girls, followed by general debate on preventing sexual violence in conflict. The subjects for these debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 7 February will be:

Thursday 7 February—Debate on the Environmental Audit Committee report on Protecting the Arctic, followed by debate on the Defence Committee report on Future of Maritime Surveillance.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting an urgent question on Tuesday to the Defence Secretary. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) said, we support the decision to send troops to Mali and neighbouring countries to help to train the Malian army, but the deployment of troops to conflict areas raises important issues on which Members wanted to question the Defence Secretary. It should not have taken an urgent question to force the Defence Secretary to the House. It is not the first time that an urgent question has been necessary to get the Defence Secretary to the Dispatch Box to answer questions on important matters concerning our armed services. Will the Leader of the House therefore undertake that in future, while our armed forces are deployed, the Defence Secretary will keep the House regularly updated without being forced to do so? Will the Leader of the House now agree to a general debate on the developing situation in north Africa?

Last Friday’s GDP figures were terrible. After two and a half years in government, the Chancellor has presided over a double-dip recession and a flatlining economy. Once again on the part-time Chancellor’s watch, the economy is contracting. We warned that the Government’s economic strategy—if one can call it that—was damaging the economy: they cut too far and too fast. The Deputy Prime Minister has popped up to attack his own Government’s record of cutting infrastructure expenditure. It is a bit late to be saying so, since his party voted for each and every cut. While the economy has nose-dived, the part-time Chancellor has been filling up his time with pizzas in Davos, and not one but two dinners with Rupert Murdoch. With all these dinners, I fear that the only thing now growing is the Chancellor’s waistline.

With bankers lining up to pay themselves massive bonuses over the forthcoming weeks, may we have an urgent statement from the Business Secretary on what the Government are going to do to stop this abuse?

We welcome the cross-party decision on Tuesday on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. The Conservative party’s attempt to gerrymander parliamentary boundaries was rejected by Members across the House from all political parties—an alternative coalition, one might call it. I welcome the fact that the Leader of the House has returned to his rightful role after subbing for the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith) in that debate, for reasons that were somewhat opaque. None the less, we enjoyed his performance on a sticky wicket.

The Leader of the House will have heard in Tuesday’s debate the clamour among those on the Conservative Back Benches to hear from the Deputy Prime Minister, who was strangely absent from the proceedings. It is not very often that the Leader of the House’s Back Benchers want to hear from the Liberal Democrat leader. Given the demand, will he arrange for the Deputy Prime Minister to make a statement? I think we would all enjoy that.

Relate tells us that January is the month in which couples are most likely to break up, so may I congratulate the coalition on managing to get through it? [Interruption.] Just—there is one day left.

Last weekend I was troubled to read not about coalition tensions but about tensions within the Conservative party. There was even the suggestion of a plot to depose the Prime Minister. I do not know where the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) is today; perhaps the Chief Whip could tell us. The way things are going, we do not want to lose the Prime Minister and his chums, so may we have a debate on Government leadership to give the hon. Member for Windsor the opportunity to share with the House the qualities he thinks he has to lead the country?

I have been looking at the voting records in Hansard. What we have learned this week is that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), managed to vote both for and against the Succession to the Crown Bill. She then failed to participate in the boundaries vote on any side, so engrossed was she in meeting Shami Chakrabarti from Liberty. She was not the only Conservative Minister to miss Tuesday’s crucial vote. In a brilliant whipping operation, the Foreign Secretary decided that he would rather have dinner in Washington than vote in the House. You would have thought, Mr Speaker, that the Cabinet was a dining society given the number of dinners that Ministers are having. Can’t vote, forgets to vote, can’t be bothered to turn up—what a shambles!

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House. I think she asked one question relating specifically to future business.

Of course, it is absolutely our intention and that of my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary that the House should be regularly and appropriately informed about our engagement in Mali and in north-west Africa. On the issue of a statement or an urgent question, the circumstances were that EU agreement had not yet been reached on the EU training mission, and in my colleague’s mind was the intention to update the House in the light of the EU training mission as well as the bilateral agreements that were entered into. I make no bones about that—it was absolutely fine for the urgent question to be responded to and we will keep the House informed. I cannot promise an oral statement in every case, for reasons of the progress of business, but I am sure we will keep the House fully informed through a combination of written ministerial statements, oral statements and answers to questions.

The hon. Lady asked a number of questions. It is interesting—the Leader of the Opposition made almost exactly the same point yesterday—that the Opposition try to argue that the economy requires the Government to spend more money, but complain, at one and the same time, that the Government are borrowing too much. They cannot have it both ways. They have to decide. Not only does their position represent utter confusion on the part of the Labour party, but, to be frank, it carries no credibility outside Parliament—that is the essential point. As the Prime Minister rightly said, the public will not trust the people who crashed the car last and put them back in the driving seat. It is not going to happen.

I listened to yesterday’s debate on Europe, but did not hear the confusion regarding the Labour party’s position remotely clarified. As far as I can see, the Opposition’s position now is that they are not in favour of an in/out referendum today, but they might be at some point in the future; yet, at the same time, they manage to be opposed to the idea of making a future commitment to the public that a new settlement with Europe should be the subject of a referendum. If they, like us, do not want a referendum now, why can they not just agree with us that there should be a referendum in the future on the basis that the public have the right to decide on the character of the settlement that we seek to negotiate with Europe?

On the question of powers in Europe, the Foreign Secretary has made it clear that, through the review of competences, we are looking at that negotiation with specific objectives for the return of powers. The hon. Lady and the Leader of the Opposition talk about returning powers, but the shadow Foreign Secretary has said that the Opposition are talking not about repatriation but about reform and a flow of powers to and back from Europe. I thought that the Opposition had just agreed to the referendum lock on powers to Europe, yet they seem to be reopening that question. There is utter confusion on their part.

Finally, the hon. Lady referred to collective ministerial responsibility. It was my happy duty to lead from the Dispatch Box on the debate on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. She was very kind about that. In fact, she was so kind that she did not observe that, although I was defending a sticky wicket—though I did make the odd stroke here and there—the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), who is not in his place, took the bails off my stumps later on. He was rather good—I give him credit for that.

The point is—the hon. Lady has to give the Government credit for this—that the mid-term review shows that we are very clear about where we are going and we are doing it together as a coalition. We have entered into not only a coalition but a mid-term review. We understand that we have a collective responsibility. I wish that the shadow Leader of the House and her colleagues would stand at the Dispatch Box and take either collective or individual responsibility for the mess they left this country in—for the debt and the six-and-a-half per cent. collapse in the economy. The reduction in GDP was not 0.1% but 6.3%. It was a bust like we had never seen before, after her then leader had promised that there would be no more boom and bust.