Business of the House

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 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 is as follows:

Monday 17 March—All stages of the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Bill [Lords], which is a consolidation measure, followed by a motion to approve a Ways and Means resolution relating to the Pensions Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Pensions Bill, followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to mesothelioma.

Tuesday 18 March—A general debate on Ukraine, followed by motions to approve statutory instruments relating to combined authority orders, followed by a motion to debate three EU proposals on criminal procedural rights.

Wednesday 19 March—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will open his Budget statement.

Thursday 20 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.

Friday 21 March—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 24 March will include:

Monday 24 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.

Tuesday 25 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.

Wednesday 26 March—Motion to approve a statutory instrument, followed by remaining stages of the Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Bill [Lords], followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments.

Thursday 27 March—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 28 March—The House will not be sitting.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 20 and 27 March will be:

Thursday 20 March—A debate on the contribution of women to the ordained ministry of the Church of England.

Thursday 27 March—A debate on the seventh report of the Transport Committee on local authority parking enforcement, followed by a debate on the eighth report of the Transport Committee on access to ports.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business.

Reports this week have suggested that the House might prorogue at least a week earlier than the recess date the Leader of the House has announced, because there is so little business in the Commons. Will he confirm whether that is the case? If so, why will he not give us some more Opposition days so that we can set out our alternative to this clapped-out, zombie Government?

Last year, Eurosceptic rebels on the Tory Back Benches tried to amend their own Queen’s Speech in order to deliver a referendum on EU membership. In a panic, the Prime Minister was forced into setting an arbitrary date for an in/out referendum, proving that he is desperately trying to manage his own party rather than acting in the national interest. While the Prime Minister is banging on about Europe, Opposition Members are clear that our national interest is best served by remaining in Europe, focusing on tackling the cost of living crisis and providing an in/out referendum should there be a further transfer of powers. Is the Leader of the House expecting his Eurosceptic rebels to attempt to amend the Queen’s Speech again, and if so, what else will the panicking Prime Minister be forced to concede to buy them off this time?

Last week, the Leader of the House was unconvincing when he tried to claim that the Government take account of votes in the Commons, despite the fact that they have ignored more than 20 of them. Later this afternoon, the House will vote for a second time on a Back-Bench motion to end the badger cull. Will he now confirm that if the House again votes to end the cull the Government will abide by the will of the House?

Yesterday, it was revealed that a report on the Work programme that was ready six months ago is being suppressed by Ministers, because its contents would embarrass the Government. The report reveals that nearly 50% of employers found the programme ineffective and criticised the support that participants received. So far, more than £1 billion of public money has been spent on the Work programme, yet people who go through the scheme are more likely to return to Jobcentre Plus than to get a sustainable job. The Department for Work and Pensions is acquiring a reputation for incompetence and cruelty. Given the importance of tackling long-term unemployment and the public money spent on this programme, will the Leader of the House arrange for the Work and Pensions Secretary to make a statement on the serious allegation that the report is being withheld?

When the Chancellor gets to his feet for the Budget statement next week, the British people will wonder why, despite his self-satisfied spin, they still do not feel any better off. In 2010, he predicted that the economy would grow by 8.4%, but it has grown by just 3.8%. In 2010, he told us that he would balance the books by 2015, but we will instead have a deficit of nearly £80 billion. He told us that he would get Britain working, but there are 1 million young people without a job, and under-employment is at the highest level since 1992. He told us that we are all in this together, but he has cut taxes for millionaires, while working people are £1,600 a year worse off and thousands are forced to turn to food banks to feed themselves at the end of the month. It is not a recovery if millions of people do not experience it.

On Saturday, the Deputy Prime Minister told his spring conference, without any sense of irony, that “consistency matters in politics”, so how are the Liberal Democrats doing? On Tuesday, the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) failed to move a new clause in his name in relation to the hospital closure clause in the Care Bill, despite claiming to have led the opposition to it. Despite all the Lib Dem handwringing in public, when it came to it, not one Liberal Democrat voted to remove the draconian ministerial powers from the Bill. At the Lib Dem spring conference last weekend, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) said that the new homes bonus was “incoherent”, “unfair” and “absurd”. Who would have thought that he is actually a Minister in the Department responsible for it? The Liberal Democrat party president, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), has called the bedroom tax “wrong and unnecessary”, although the Deputy Prime Minister reaffirmed his strong support for it in the House yesterday. It is clear that what we get with the Liberal Democrats is the rhetoric of Arthur Scargill and the voting record of Mrs Thatcher. It is no wonder they were beaten into fifth place in a by-election last week by the Bus Pass Elvis party. Come the general election next year, we will all just be waiting for the Liberal Democrats to leave the building.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for her response. On the date of Prorogation, she is getting a bit confused. We have published the calendar, including the recess dates, which are not changing—Prorogation is not a recess; it is Prorogation—and as she knows, the date of Prorogation is subject to the progress of business.

We are using less time than we expected for two reasons. First, the House of Lords is not insisting on its amendments, but accepting the amendments that are made in this House. As far as the Government are concerned, that is a good thing, because we are securing agreement on Government legislation and consuming less time in ping-pong than would otherwise be the case.

The other reason, which the shadow Leader of the House ought to acknowledge but does not, is that there is a zombie Opposition. Yesterday, the Intellectual Property Bill came forward on Report and Third Reading, and not one Labour Back Bencher spoke. The Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, which is a major piece of legislation, had its Second Reading a fortnight or so ago. Three Labour Back Benchers spoke all day, one of whom was a Labour Whip, hoisted rapidly on to the Back Benches in order to say something.

We have a zombie Opposition who do not have anything they want to say. That deals with the hon. Lady’s point about Opposition days. The days have been allocated, although we will happily talk about the matter. There is nothing else that the Opposition are able to talk about, but they may be able to think up something. However, there were many weeks earlier in the Session when they had the chance to debate the economy and they did not do so. We will have a chance to debate the economy in the Budget debate and we will find out what the position really is.

That will be very interesting, given what has been said in the last couple of days. The shadow Business Secretary said on the “World at One” programme:

“Most of our thirteen years in office we didn’t have a debt, er, a deficit,”—

he was a bit confused about that—

“because we hadn’t had the financial crash.”

That is complete nonsense. The shadow Chancellor said:

“I don’t think Governments should spend money they haven’t got”.

The Opposition are in a parallel universe. They ran a deficit not just in the immediate run-up to the last general election, but from 2002. They did not mend the roof when the sun was shining. They spent money that they did not have. One pound out of every four that they spent went on borrowed money. That was a disgrace, and what was the result? The result was that 7.2% was wiped off the value of the economy of this country. That is the equivalent of £3,000 for every household in the country.

That is why we are pursuing the long-term economic plan, which will no doubt be the centrepiece of the Budget debate that I have announced. We are reducing the deficit that Labour left us, taking 3 million people out of income tax altogether, freezing fuel duty, capping welfare, delivering the best schools and skills for young people, creating more jobs, and backing small business and enterprise. We are doing those things. That is the debate that will matter most in the business that I have announced. It would not be appropriate during the Budget debate to have an Opposition day. The Opposition will have the chance to have their say. Perhaps they will explain why they are in such denial.

The House voted for the European Union (Referendum) Bill by 304 votes to none in this Session. It was not a Government Bill, but a private Member’s Bill. The House knows perfectly well that it was not a coalition commitment. The same principle will apply in the next Session. If the ballot affords it, there will be an opportunity for a Member to bring forward a private Member’s Bill in the same way.

I do not know where on earth Labour is coming from on that issue. The moment the leader of the Labour party got up and talked about it, the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) said that it was a “shoddy compromise”. The Institute of Directors was more or less right when it said that

“the EU has to change, and it makes sense to put such changes to the British people.”

The Government have already put it into legislation that there cannot be a further transfer of powers to the European Union without a referendum and the consent of the people of this country. As a Conservative, I believe that the people of this country are looking not simply to have that but to have a renegotiation of our relationship with the rest of Europe. They want a focus on the things we want to achieve, such as completion of the single market, competitiveness, free trade and working together on issues that matter, while at the same time ensuring that we in this country have greater freedom and sovereignty to decide on issues that we are responsible for, and that do not need to be agreed and delivered through a European Union mechanism. We are clear that an EU referendum for that purpose is necessary, but that is not the same as what the Labour party is offering.

The shadow Leader of the House also asked about the Department for Work and Pensions, but that is a bit rich coming from the Labour party, which every time has left government with unemployment higher than when it came to office. Labour Members are now complaining about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and a Work programme that has supported 1.36 million people. There are 1.6 million more jobs in the private sector. There are nearly 1.3 million more jobs than when Labour were in office. For a Department that is concerned with getting people into work, that is a record of which it can be proud.