Sittings of the House (22 March)
Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Spellar(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Ms Eagle
If one takes into account all the recesses since this Government have been in office, the figure goes up to 58%. That is a difference and it rather proves that this Prime Minister has a strange aversion to the House sitting on Wednesdays. That is what we are dealing with in our amendment.
Why on earth can the Prime Minister be frightened of Wednesdays? Last year’s Budget was enough to put the frighteners on anyone, let’s face it. It certainly set the bar high in standards of incoherence and incompetence, which even our part-time Chancellor will find hard to match this year. Let us remember that we had the granny tax, the churches tax, the charities tax and the pasty tax. The Chancellor had been so busy swanning around Washington in search of President Obama’s coat tails that he had forgotten to pay enough attention to one of his day jobs.
Last year’s Budget was unravelling even before the Chancellor had sat down. It was so disastrous that it spawned its own new word—omnishambles—which became the “Oxford English Dictionary” word of the year. There was open revolt against Budget measures on the Government Benches. Nine Tory MPs and four Liberal Democrats voted against the pasty tax, in defiance of their Whips. Sixteen Conservatives and one Liberal Democrat voted against the caravan tax, with two Liberal Democrat Ministers strangely missing the vote completely. No lesser person than Lord Ashcroft was moved to observe:
“The main problem is not so much that people think that the Conservative Party is heading in the wrong direction, it is that they are not sure where it is heading. And that includes me.”
Mr Spellar
Does this not speak to a greater truth, which also affects the issue before us, given that the Budget date had already been announced prior to the motion being put to the Commons? If my hon. Friend has read analyses of how Budgets have traditionally been made up properly, under Labour and Conservative Governments, she will know that many of the proposals in the last Budget had been proposed a number of times before by the civil service and had been batted back. What we have with this Government—here is the relevance to this debate—is a failure of process: a failure to attend to detail and a complete failure to attend to proper parliamentary and governmental process.
Ms Eagle
I agree wholeheartedly with the points that my right hon. Friend has made. As a former Treasury Minister, I can attest to the fact that some of the more disastrous bits of last year’s omnishambles Budget had indeed been put to Ministers for their consideration prior to their adoption last year and had been batted back for the nonsense that they were.
Because of the Government’s cynical manipulation of the recess dates, it took 28 days after that botched Budget for the Prime Minister to find himself back at the Dispatch Box to account for it. By then we had also had the fuel strike scare and the jerry can scandal to add to the chaos. Understandably, he was so unnerved that, red-faced and angry, he started attacking his own side. The hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) was wholly unfairly ticked off for having a sense of humour failure by a rattled Prime Minister who was demonstrating to the House just how easily he seems to be able to channel his inner Flashman. The memory of this omnishambles is obviously still raw. According to samizdats emerging from the 1922 Committee, the Chancellor has admitted to Tory Back Benchers that last year’s Budget was a disaster. Why else would he have been seen nodding vigorously as he was being exhorted, in language so earthy that I cannot repeat it here, not to—how can I put this politely and stay in order—mess it up this time?
Perhaps the Prime Minister’s reluctance to appear at the Dispatch box the day after the Budget debates to answer for his Chancellor’s omnishambles is an understandable human failing on his part, but it is not one in which this House should be assisting or that we should allow him to repeat this year. However, that is precisely what the motion will do unless our amendment is accepted. The Budget will be on 20 March and the Prime Minister is not due to appear at the Dispatch Box to answer questions until 17 April. Once more, that is 28 days after the Chancellor’s Budget statement.
If the Prime Minister finds it impossible to appear before the House to answer questions on the Budget before 28 days have elapsed, he could do what all Prime Ministers in the past have done and let his deputy do it for him. After all, we are told that the Liberal Democrats are intimately involved in all of the decision making about the Budget. We know that they are so central to the Government’s inner core that they make up two of the “quad” who, we are told, make all the final decisions. They are so closely involved in Budget decisions that they leaked most of it in advance last year so that they could take credit for all of the nice bits and distance themselves from the nasty bits. The only thing left for the poor Chancellor to surprise us with was the granny tax, and that was all he had to take credit for. No one seemed to benefit—unless of course they happen to be a millionaire awaiting their huge tax cut this April while everyone else feels the pain.
In the spirit of being a team player and recognising the Liberal Democrats’ acts of selfless sacrifice on tuition fees, why does the Leader of the House not just accept our amendment, change the sittings motion and let the Deputy Prime Minister step in and help out with Prime Minister’s questions straight after the Budget? Surely the Prime Minister trusts him to do a good job.
Mr Spellar
The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) makes a point which I think needs to be on the record. She says that the House voted for action, not war. The hon. Lady, who is fairly new to the House, will not be aware of the fact—I am sure that my hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House is aware of it—that this country has never formally gone to war since 1939, but we have been involved in a considerable number of military actions. It is quite understandable that the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth, not having been around at the time and not having been here long, would not understand that difference.