Business of the House

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 20th 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 24 March—My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will update the House on high-speed rail, followed by a continuation of the Budget debate.

Tuesday 25 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.

Wednesday 26 March—My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will update the House following the European Council, followed by a motion relating to the charter for budget responsibility, followed by consideration of Lords Amendments to the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Bill [Lords], followed by a motion relating to the appointment of electoral commissioners.

Thursday 27 March—A general debate on the background to and implications of the High Court judgment on John Downey. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 28 March—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 31 March will include:

Monday 31 March—Second Reading of the Wales Bill.

Tuesday 1 April—Second Reading of the Finance Bill.

Wednesday 2 April—Opposition Day [Un-allotted half day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced, followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument.

Thursday 3 April—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 4 April—The House will not be sitting.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business. I also thank him for his written ministerial statement on the drafting of Government legislation today. There was great promise in the title given this Government’s woeful record on drafting legislation, but, as usual with this Government, the content was a complete disappointment.

The situation in Ukraine has continued to worsen. Crimea has been annexed and Russian troops appear to have taken control of several Ukrainian naval bases. During Tuesday’s debate in the House, there was cross-party agreement that the UK response needs to be much more robust than it has been so far. Will the Leader of the House confirm that if President Putin persists, the UK Government will support wider economic and financial sanctions against Russia? There is a meeting of European Council leaders in Brussels later today, and President Obama will be travelling to Europe next week. I ask the Leader of the House to confirm that there will be a statement from the Prime Minister on any developments.

I thank the Leader of the House for granting my request last week for an extra Opposition day to help fill the gaping holes in his increasingly threadbare legislative programme. Apparently, the void is now so bad that the Whips have resorted to e-mailing Tory Back Benchers to ask for suggestions to fill in the time. I think they might have forgotten what happened with last year’s Tory Tea party tendency’s alternative Queen’s Speech. Can the Leader of the House tell us whether, apart from our new Opposition Day, the rest of the time will now be filled with Europe, Europe and more Europe? Perhaps he is safer given all the yawning gaps he has left in the parliamentary timetable to us.

After the Prime Minister’s assurances that the House will have a say on his plans to bring back fox hunting, the Leader of the House keeps getting hon. Members excited by announcing unidentified statutory instruments. Can he tell us when we can expect the hunting debate to take place and how he and the Prime Minister will be voting when it does?

This week we learned the breathtaking extent of the hypocrisy on pay shown by this Government. Cabinet Ministers have been approving huge pay rises for their special advisers while imposing real-terms pay cuts on millions of public sector workers. The coalition agreement promised to cut the number, and cost, of special advisers, so may we have a statement from the Government on why they have done precisely the opposite?

Yesterday, the Chancellor delivered the Budget and hoped that no one would notice what is going on with his failing economic plan. He said that he had cut borrowing but now he is set to borrow £190 billion more than he first forecast. He said that the economy would grow by more than 8% but it has grown by less than 4%, and he said that he would eliminate the deficit by 2015 but now he has admitted that it will take until 2018. Only this Government could announce a five-year plan that, as they have now had to admit, is already four years late and only this Chancellor could expect us all to congratulate him for it.

Last night, the Conservative party released an ad that reveals what was really meant by its claims to be the workers’ party a few weeks ago. Even the Chief Secretary thought it was a spoof. The reality is that the Tories are patronising and have an insultingly clichéd view of working people. All I can say is that what was trending last night on Twitter showed their view of workers. Posh boys’ den, No. 10; bankers’ heaven, No. 11. It is all about bingo, this Budget.

I do have one positive thing to say about the Budget. It was good to see the Liberal Democrats’ role in the coalition memorialised with the new pound coin. It has about as many sides as they have Members and it has two faces, just like them.

Last Saturday was the ides of March, and our classically trained Education Secretary took the opportunity to strike. He criticised the number of Etonians in No. 10 as “preposterous” and, after a few glasses of fine wine, he waxed lyrical about the Chancellor’s prime ministerial potential to Rupert Murdoch. I think, Mr Speaker, you would need more than a few glasses of wine to think that.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for her questions, and particularly for her welcome for my written ministerial statement. We are pushing forward with the good law project to improve drafting. I am sure that Members will appreciate that after many years in which there has been a degree of confusion about the distinction in legislation between regulations and orders, we will be clear in future when they are regulations to avoid confusion and duplication of terminology.

On Ukraine, we have had the debate that Members sought, and it was right for us to have done so. In future business, I and my colleagues will ensure that the House is regularly updated and, if it becomes necessary, we will look to secure a further opportunity for Members to give their views on the situation. The House will know that after the Prime Minister secured a strategy at the previous European Council, he will be trying at the European Council today to secure the strongest sanctions as regards the Russians’ interventions in Crimea and their transgression of international law and the territorial integrity of Ukraine. He will get the strongest sanctions for which agreement can be secured and, as I told the House on Tuesday, there will be a meeting of G7 Ministers at the nuclear security summit in The Hague early next week. As I have told the House, I expect the Prime Minister to update the House next Wednesday.

I have to tell the hon. Lady that the business is not light, not least because I have announced in the provisional business for the week after next the Second Reading of two Bills, the Finance Bill and the Wales Bill. I am delighted to be able to say that the Wales Bill is being published and introduced today.

The reference to statutory instruments in the provisional business is simply to give the House an indication of what the nature of the business might be. When I announce the business next week, I will be able to give more details. I can tell the hon. Lady that they do not relate to a change to the Hunting Act 2004. No such statutory instrument under section 2(2) of that Act is before the House. If it is of any comfort to the hon. Lady, if there were it would have to go through the affirmative procedure and would require a vote of both Houses.

I am surprised that the hon. Lady had anything to say on the Budget, because her leader seemed incapable of finding anything to say about it. His speech yesterday consisted of an end-to-end collection of Labour press releases that we had known and forgotten. The first half tried to reheat arguments that had failed in the past, whereas the second half consisted mainly of things that he hoped we would have said in the Budget but that we had not. His principal attack seems to be, “Why didn’t you say this in the Budget, because then we could have attacked it?” I am afraid that that was not very compelling.

We did begin to get an idea of how the Labour party approaches such matters. Clearly, the Leader of the Opposition did not feel able to comment on the most important potential changes to pensions and savings for nearly 100 years. None the less, by the evening a Labour spokesman was on “Newsnight” giving it straight about what the Labour party thinks should happen in this country. I think it went along the lines of, “You cannot trust people to spend their own money.” That is what the Labour party thinks about the people of this country. We trust the people. The Conservative party has trusted the people and, if I may say so on behalf of our coalition partners, the coalition Government trust the people. We have worked together and I am looking forward to hearing the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), further setting out that pension strategy.

The plan is working and we are sticking to our long-term economic plan. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was able to say that the deficit is forecast to have halved by next year and if one looks at the Office for Budget Responsibility’s report one can see clearly that that is because we have taken the difficult decisions. It is not the product of economic recovery on its own, but is principally about making decisions on public expenditure and bringing down the costs of administration and the extent to which the people’s money is taken to pay for public expenditure and borrowing.

One of the most interesting numbers was the reduction of £42 billion in the cost of borrowing. That is a measure of the advance we have been able to make from the position we inherited from the Labour party, which borrowed so much. The Budget will help hard-working people by bringing 3.2 million people out of income tax altogether, with £800 for all basic-rate taxpayers. It is helping businesses to invest through the investment allowances and helping them to export through the export finance changes, and it is helping people to save through the changes in ISAs, pensioner bonds and other measures. It is giving people who have retired and are not in a position to change their circumstances so readily the security not only of the triple lock and the single-tier pension, which mean that they have a secure basic state pension that does not expose them to means-tested benefits, but the opportunity to use the money they have saved through pensions as they see fit to boost their standard of living in old age.