Business of the House

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 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 will be as follows:

Monday 30 June—Opposition Day (3rd allotted day). There will be a debate entitled “Chaos and Waste at the Department for Work and Pensions” on an Opposition motion. I expect my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to make a statement following the European Council.

Tuesday 1 July—Motion to approve a procedural resolution relating to the Finance Bill, followed by motions to approve Ways and Means resolutions relating to the Finance Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Finance Bill (Day 1).

Wednesday 2 July—Conclusion of the remaining stages of the Finance Bill.

Thursday 3 July—General debate on protecting children in conflict, followed by a general debate on social mobility and child poverty strategy. The subjects for both debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee in the last Session.

Friday 4 July—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 7 July will include:

Monday 7 July—Estimates day (1st allotted day). There will be a debate on universal credit implementation, followed by a debate on the implementation of the common agricultural policy in England. At 10 pm, the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates. Details will be given in the Official Report.

[The details are as follows: Universal Credit implementation: monitoring DWP’s performance in 2012-13, 5th Report from the Work and Pensions Committee, HC 1209, Session 2013-14, and the Government response published as a 2nd Special Report, HC 426, Session 2014-15; and Implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy in England in 2014-20, 7th report from the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee, HC 745, Session 2013-14, and the Government response published as 7th Special Report, HC 1008, 2013-14.]

Tuesday 8 July—Second Reading of the Modern Slavery Bill, followed by proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Bill.

Wednesday 9 July—Opposition Day (4th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced.

Thursday 10 July—General debate, subject to be announced.

Friday 11 July—The House will not be sitting.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 3 July will be:

Thursday 3 July—Debate on the seventh report of the Foreign Affairs Committee on the UK’s response to extremism and instability in north and west Africa, followed by a debate on the sixth report of the Communities and Local Government Committee on local government procurement.

I should like to draw the attention of the House to the written statement today from the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, informing the House of the publication on 17 July of the report of Lady Justice Hallett on the on-the-runs administrative scheme.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for that announcement.

Later today, we will debate the commemoration of the centenary of the first world war. We must never forget the monumental sacrifice of those who gave their lives, including Thomas Neely, a Victoria Cross recipient from Seacombe in my constituency, who died less than 50 days before the armistice.

Andy Coulson’s conviction this week has raised serious questions about the Prime Minister’s judgment. He and his staff were warned that some brave journalists were writing openly about Coulson’s behaviour, but he carried on anyway and brought a criminal into the heart of No. 10. Does the Leader of the House agree that the Prime Minister was not just ignorant about Andy Coulson, but wilfully negligent? Does he support calls for uniformity of vetting for senior Downing street advisers? Will he ask the Prime Minister to return to the House to make a statement, including telling us if he was advised by any senior civil servants in No. 10 against employing Andy Coulson?

Next week, we will be discussing the Finance Bill. The Leader of the House told me last week that everything is going very well, so will he explain why the Chancellor’s plan to cut the deficit is already running four years late and why he is borrowing £190 billion more than he planned? While he is at it, will he tell us why the Chancellor boasts about unemployment rates, while a report this week shows that new job creation has slumped and 60% of those on benefits are actually in work? Is not the truth that this is the slowest recovery for 100 years and that the vast majority of people are just not feeling the benefit?

The crisis at the Department for Work and Pensions just gets worse and the lives of some of the most vulnerable in our society just get harder. On Friday, the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee condemned the personal independence payment as a “fiasco”. On Monday, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions sounded increasingly deluded as he defended his calamitous universal credit programme. Yesterday, it was revealed that universal credit could cost the public purse another £750 million because the DWP has not worked out how to integrate it with free school meals.

The Work and Pensions Secretary told the House:

“Universal credit is on track to roll out against the timetable set out last year.”—[Official Report, 23 June 2014; Vol. 583, c. 9.]

However, at the current rate of progress, will it not take a staggering 1,052 years before this programme is complete?

Universal credit is in chaos. The Secretary of State has lost control of his Department. Given that the Leader of the House is such an expert on “pausing” costly and calamitous reforms, does he accept that the Government should now pause universal credit?

This Government are completely out of touch and completely unable to deliver on any of their promises. When they came to office, the vast majority of people could see a doctor within 48 hours; now one in four cannot do so within a week. They promised a bigger Army for a safer Britain, but the former Chief of the Defence Staff has warned that the Army is not in a “fit state” to deal with current threats.

It is no wonder that two parliamentary private secretaries resigned from the Government this week to spend more time with their marginal constituencies—and the Government are in such disarray that their Departments did not even notice that they had gone. The Government have a Tourism Minister who declared from Brazil that people without passports should holiday at home, they have a Health Minister who thinks it “exciting” that the Government have lost control of the national health service, and they have a Prime Minister who claimed that he had done nothing wrong, but apologised so profusely that he very nearly wrecked the high-profile criminal trial of his mates at News International.

This week, I received an invitation to the Commons versus Lords shooting competition. I hope that the Commons team does not include any Ministers, because if it does, they will end up shooting themselves in the foot—or they might even end up shooting each other.

Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister sent the England football team a recorded good luck message, and just over a week later, the team crashed out of the World cup. With the European Council upon us and the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker looking increasingly inevitable, may I suggest one last desperate tactic that the Prime Minister could use to stop him? Forget about the Luxembourg compromise; the Prime Minister should send him a good luck message.

When it comes to negotiating in Europe, the Prime Minister should learn a lot from the World cup. Do not let expectations get the better of you; do not underestimate the power of smaller countries; and biting—or, indeed, backbiting—is never a good idea.

[Mr Lansley]

As the shadow Leader of the House said, we are rightly having a debate today to commemorate the events of the great war, and I am glad that we are able to do so just two days before the centenary of the events that precipitated that calamity. I hope that, during today’s debate, we shall hear from Members who represent constituencies throughout the country whose constituents are planning a wide range of commemorations over the next four years. For my part, I remember talking to my grandfather about the second battle of Ypres. He was at Hill 60, where Lieutenant Harold Woolley was the first member of the Territorial Army to earn a Victoria Cross. I think that all of us, through our families, have recollections of those who were there—including those who were injured or, indeed, lost—and today’s debate will give us an important opportunity to commemorate that sacrifice.

I am afraid I must tell the shadow Leader of the House that, although the jacket has got brighter, the jokes have got a bit duller. It is a shame. They are better than my jokes, though.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

I will wear a black jacket next week!

[Mr Lansley]

No, please don’t. As we move to summer, it is a great step forward.

In earlier sessions of business questions, the shadow Leader of the House had a thing going. It was called “mind the gap”, and it sort of disappeared. [Interruption.] Or was it there? If so, I missed it. I was wondering whether it would put in an appearance. It seemed to me that it was probably better to mind the gap than to throw someone in front of the train, which appears to be the latest suggestion. I am not quite sure who is in charge of Labour party policy, and I am not sure that it really matters that much, but the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) seems to be suggesting that no one else needs to be thrown in front of the train, because the Leader of the Opposition is already standing in front of the train and will be the subject of the train crash when it comes. I think that is a rather sad reflection on what the hon. Lady’s colleagues feel about the position of the Leader of the Opposition.

I listened to Prime Minister’s questions yesterday; I think the Leader of the Opposition asked exactly the same question and got absolutely the right answer. If we look back at the evidence that was taken and the conclusions reached by Lord Justice Leveson, we see that he made it very clear that the Prime Minister received those assurances and acted on the basis of them at the time. If he had known then what we know now, it would have been very different. He has made it clear that he gave Andy Coulson a second chance and he regrets that he did, because it was, as it turned out, a misjudgment.

The hon. Lady asked about security clearance. Well, these are matters for the civil service, and the Leveson report is very clear, as was the evidence given by Gus O’Donnell, that it was a matter determined by civil servants, and rightly so, in relation to identifying where there is any risk.

The hon. Lady asked about the economy, which is good—I am glad she did. We are reducing the deficit we inherited from the Opposition. Their recession—Labour’s recession—cost every household in this country £3,000. We are cutting the deficit. It is down by a third already, and it will be down by a half by the end of the financial year. Two million private sector jobs have been created—[Interruption.] I am afraid that any amount of wriggling will not get out of the simple fact that jobs have been created in this country on an unprecedented basis, not least because small businesses are being created on an unprecedented scale—400,000 more small businesses and five new private sector jobs for every job lost in the public sector—as we are taking the necessary steps to reduce the waste and inefficiency that we found in the public sector under the last Government. That includes in the Department for Work and Pensions.

It was Labour who presided over the tax credit disasters, and Members all across the House in previous Parliaments will remember how many of their constituents found that the tax credit system was simply not working for them. Fraud and error were costing the welfare system £30 billion and there was no control on the welfare budget, and now, we have capped the welfare budget and Labour is in no position to criticise that. It will try on Monday and it will fail, because it cannot criticise the programme of welfare reform that is delivering on capping the costs of welfare while focusing resources on those who are most in need. That is what failed under the last Government. Costs were out of control and those often in the greatest need were not getting the greatest help.

At the Department of Health, I was only too aware of that waste, for example. In this Parliament, we will have taken £1.5 billion a year—in total in this Parliament, I think that the figure is about £5 billion—out of the administration cost of the NHS. It is because we have cut the number of administrators by 19,000 that we can increase, as we have, the number of doctors, nurses and other health professionals by 16,000, including over 1,000 more GPs than three years ago. The number of GPs per 100,000 in the population is now higher than it was at the time of the last election.

Overall, I noted that the shadow Leader of the House now no longer has some of the questions that she had last week, because we have presented this week two more of the Bills that were announced in the Queen’s Speech, so eight out of the 11 Bills announced in the Queen’s Speech are under way. She asked when we would have the first Second Reading. We are going to have the first Second Reading of one of those Bills taking place—on modern slavery—and I am looking forward to us proceeding successfully with the legislative programme set out in the Queen’s Speech.