Business of the House

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I wonder if the Leader of the House will give us the business for a couple of days next week.

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

The business for next week will be as follows:

Monday 20 May—Remaining stages of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill (Day 1).

Tuesday 21 May—Conclusion of the remaining stages of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, followed by motion to approve a European document relating to Syria.

The business for the week commencing 3 June will be:

Monday 3 June—Remaining stages of the Energy Bill (Day 1).

Tuesday 4 June—Conclusion of the remaining stages of the Energy Bill.

Wednesday 5 June—Opposition Day [1st Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 6 June—There will be a debate on a motion relating to student visas, followed by general debate on pollinators and pesticides. The subjects for these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

The provisional business for the week commencing 10 June will include:

Monday 10 June—Second Reading of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 6 June will be:

Thursday 6 June—Debate on the ninth report of the Home Affairs Select Committee on Drugs: Breaking the Cycle.

May I also take this opportunity to be among the first to congratulate the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee on her re-election?

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week and the business that will follow yet another recess. I also add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) on her unanimous re-election without an election as Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, which is to her enormous credit.

Next week the House will return, albeit briefly, to debate the remaining stages of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. This will ensure that the historic progress on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality accomplished by the previous Government will be consolidated. I thank the Leader of the House for making two days available for Report and Third Reading. Will he consider doing that for other Bills? After all, his legislative programme is hardly packed.

Back in February, the Prime Minister was triumphant about his EU budget deal. He tweeted:

“Today we agreed the first ever cut in the EU budget and the British rebate is safe. This is a great deal for Britain.”

Three months on, we have learned that the UK will have to pay £770 million extra. May we have a statement from the Prime Minister on the budget, and may we seek an assurance from him that it will not go up again?

Last week, as all the grandeur of the state opening of Parliament unfolded, the Government presented a united front and revealed a mouse of a legislative programme. Before the Cap of Maintenance was even back in the wardrobe, Tory Eurosceptics had tabled a motion regretting their own Government’s Queen’s Speech. No. 10 said that it was “relaxed”.

By the weekend, the Tory rebellion had gathered pace and the Cabinet joined in. Both the Education Secretary and the Defence Secretary announced that they wanted out of the European Union, but that, sadly, the Liberal Democrats would not let them have a vote on it. The hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) proclaimed that if the rebellion ended the coalition Government, “so be it”. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) pronounced that the Prime Minister’s referendum plan was “not yet believable”. Meanwhile, the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) denounced the rebels as “irresponsible” and “offensive”, and the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said that it would be a catastrophe to quit the EU.

As the Tory party descended into chaos, the Prime Minister shared with us his unique concept of firm leadership. A leader should proclaim that he is “intensely relaxed”, leave the country, blame the Liberal Democrats, panic, and rush to publish an entirely spurious private Member’s Bill that contains no implementation clause and no money resolution.

In 2006, the Prime Minister said that the Conservative party should stop “banging on about Europe”. In 2009, he said that his party’s position on Europe was “settled” and promised that he

“will not have an undisciplined team whoever it is. Full stop.”

However, last night 116 of his Back Benchers voted against him in the 35th Tory rebellion on Europe in this Parliament. If that is not an undisciplined team and a Prime Minister who follows his party rather than leads, will the Leader of the House tell me what is?

In last night’s rebellion, 13 Parliamentary Private Secretaries voted against the Government. I would like to draw the attention of the Leader of the House to a clause in the ministerial code:

“Parliamentary Private Secretaries are expected to support the Government in important divisions in the House. No Parliamentary Private Secretary who votes against the Government can retain his or her position.”

That seems to be fairly clear. Will the Leader of the House confirm that those PPSs will be sacked, or is the Prime Minister going to rewrite the ministerial code?

In light of the Tories’ panicked Back-Bench EU Bill, I also want to draw the attention of the Leader of House to some comments that he might remember making to the Procedure Committee on private Members’ Bills a few weeks ago. He said that

“if a Government really wants a Bill and it is contentious, it should find time in the legislative programme for it.”

Am I correct, therefore, that the Government do not want this Bill at all?

In “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, Karl Marx wrote that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. With the antics last night, we are firmly in the farcical stage and we have a Conservative party determined to prove that Karl Marx was right.

When the economy is flatlining, living standards are falling, and people up and down Britain are suffering real pain, people will not forgive a Government who are too focused on their own obsessions to address the challenges that the country faces.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for her response to the forthcoming business.

On the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, we are providing two days on Report. I remind the hon. Lady that under the last Government, there were Sessions in which virtually no Bills were given two days on Report.

[Ms Eagle]

We had more Bills.

[Mr Lansley]

That is not the case. Seventeen Bills were announced in the Gracious Speech last week, which is in line with the single year numbers we saw in a number of Sessions under the last Government, including 2008 and 2009. As part of the reforms of this House, and of improving scrutiny, we gave 14 Bills two days on Report over the last two Sessions, and we are proud that the business I have just announced will give both the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill and the Energy Bill two days on Report. The hon. Lady is barking up completely the wrong tree.

The Prime Minister was told by the Labour party that he would not deliver a reduction in the EU budget, but he did deliver one. As a consequence, our rebate is protected and we will have the opportunity to debate that in due course. Once the decision is through the Council, we will be able to bring forward a Bill to ratify the EU own resources decision.

The legislative programme is not a mouse. Not only was it a full programme, but we are making good progress with it in a way that is, I think, exemplary. Ten Bills have been published in the week since the Gracious Speech: the Offender Rehabilitation Bill, which is important as it tackles an area of reform that has not been tackled previously; the Care Bill, which is important and cannot be called an insignificant piece of legislation; the Intellectual Property Bill; the Local Audit and Accountability Bill; the Mesothelioma Bill; the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill; the Pensions Bill; the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill; the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill; and the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill. All have been published within a week of the Gracious Speech and that is a substantial programme of legislation.

The hon. Lady’s final points were all, in one way or another, about the vote last night, which in all respects proceeded from a complete misapprehension. The point is that the Government did not have a policy on whether there should be an EU referendum Bill, and so voting for the amendment last night—which many of my colleagues in the Conservative party did, as did Labour Members and a Liberal Democrat Member—was not voting against Government policy because the Government did not have a policy on that. Therefore, the rest of the hon. Lady’s argument does not follow. The simple point is that what is in the Queen’s Speech is agreed Government policy. There may be no Government policy on something that was not in the Queen’s Speech, so of course Ministers could not vote for it, but everybody else was able to vote as they saw fit, which is precisely what they did last night.